GREARSON, Jessie Carroll 1962(?)-

PERSONAL:

Born c. 1962. Education: Williams College, B.A.; University of Iowa, M.F.A., M.A.W.

ADDRESSES:

Office—John Marshall Law School, 315 South Plymouth Ct., Chicago, IL 60604; fax 312-427-8307. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Educator and author. John Marshall Law School, Chicago, IL, professor of writing and director of writing resource center.

MEMBER:

National Council of Teachers of English, Legal Writing Institute.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Thomas J. Watson traveling fellowship, 1984-85; Artists Fellowship Award for Prose, Illinois Arts Council, 1997.

WRITINGS:

(Editor, with Lauren B. Smith) Swaying: Essays on Intercultural Love, University of Iowa Press (Iowa City, IA), 1995.

(With Lauren B. Smith) Love in a Global Village: A Celebration of Intercultural Families in the Midwest, University of Iowa Press (Iowa City, IA), 2001.

Also author of articles, essays, interviews, and poetry published in a variety of periodicals and other forums.

SIDELIGHTS:

Jessie Carroll Grearson has collaborated on two books with Lauren B. Smith focusing on issues of interculturalism. Their first joint effort, Swaying: Essays on Intercultural Love, is an anthology of pieces about relationships that span ethnic, cultural, religious, and racial lines. Mary Carroll noted in Booklist that, although the editors had intended to include male and female contributors as well as gay and lesbian authors, the work is an "all-female, all-heterosexual collection" about "the dilemmas of intercultural couples." Alex Hall wrote in New Community that Grearson and Smith have focused on an area in which there is great paucity of information; Swaying serves to "highlight the difficulties which can make intercultural relationships an area of debate."

Grearson and Smith's second book, Love in a Global Village: A Celebration of Intercultural Families in the Midwest, was published in 2001. Like Swaying, this work focuses on multiculturalism and relationships. One partner in each of the fifteen couples interviewed is American; the other partners come from such places as Iran, Bulgaria, Fiji, Ghana, Taiwan, and Afghanistan. Carroll, again writing in Booklist, commented on the volume's "enlightening narratives of the joys and struggles of these unconventional but increasingly common partnerships." A Publishers Weekly critic noted, "It's the couples that on the surface seem the most intriguing … who turn out to be the most mundane," yet the reviewer concluded that the authors' "underlying message is that these relationships thrive because each partner has to work harder to overcome their differences."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, December 15, 1995, Mary Carroll, review of Swaying: Essays on Intercultural Love, p. 673; February 15, 2001, Mary Carroll, review of Love in a Global Village: A Celebration of Intercultural Families in the Midwest, p. 1096.

Choice, July-August, 1996, R. C. Myers, review of Swaying, p. 1877.

Library Journal, February 1, 2001, Andrew Smith, review of Love in a Global Village, p. 114.

New Community, October, 1996, Alex Hall, review of Swaying, p. 723.

Publishers Weekly, January 1, 2001, review of Love in a Global Village, p. 78.*