Eve Pell will share her autobiography in afternoon reading

Eve Pell of Greenbrae, Calif., whose autobiography, We Used to Own the Bronx: Memoirs of a Former Debutante, has just been published by Albany?s SUNY Press, will read from her work at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, April 23, in Emerson Auditorium, Palamountain Hall. Admission is free and open to the public.

Born into an ?old money? family in Depression-era New York, Pell was expected to follow her mother and grandmother into a world of foxhunting and houseparties. As she ventured beyond her world of privilege, moving to San Francisco and taking up with leftist revolutionaries, including the Soledad Brothers, Pell came to see?and embrace?a startlingly different world. Now a 72-year-old grandmother and long-distance runner, she has reflected upon the importance of feminism on her self-discovery in a delightful, candid memoir.

?Eve Pell gives us a fascinating glimpse into a secret world of wealth and privilege,? writes Jane Fonda. ?Hers is an unexpected and ultimately hopeful journey of rebellion and reconciliation.? In a Wall Street Journal review, Sol Stern called the book ??a literary treat?Pell gives us a kind of cultural anthropology of the closest thing in America to a landed gentry.?

The reading is free and open to the general public, who are invited to a reception to meet the author, hosted by SUNY Press. The event is sponsored by Skidmore?s American Studies Department.