Rita Mae Brown
Rita Mae Brown is an American author, born on November 28, 1944, in Hanover, Pennsylvania. Raised in a working-class family after being adopted, Brown's early life was marked by challenges related to her socioeconomic background and gender. These experiences heavily influenced her literary work, which often critiques social class dynamics and the prejudices tied to wealth, gender, and sexual orientation. After moving to Florida at age eleven, she faced cultural upheaval and personal loss with her father's death, which shaped her perspectives on parental relationships and societal expectations.
Brown pursued higher education at New York University and later earned a doctorate in English and political science from the Institute for Policy Studies. Her involvement in feminist activism led her to co-found the Student Homophile League and contribute to feminist literature through "The Furies," a collective magazine. She is best known for her Mrs. Murphy mystery series and Sister Jane novels, which incorporate her love for animals and humor. In recognition of her contributions to literature, she received a lifetime achievement award at the Lambda Literary Awards in 2015. Brown continues to write prolifically, with several works published in recent years.
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Subject Terms
Rita Mae Brown
- Born: November 28, 1944
- Birthplace: Hanover, Pennsylvania
Author Profile
Writer. Rita Mae Brown, born out of wedlock, was adopted by the working-class family of Ralph and Julia Ellen Buckingham Brown. Brown was not only a child of uncertain origin but poor and female. This combination failed to impress the class-and gender-conscious students she trounced academically. Not surprisingly, Brown’s works frequently involve a critical appraisal of the class system and the unfortunate tendency of some individuals to denigrate others as a consequence of their wealth, gender, or sexual orientation.
When Brown was eleven, her parents moved to Florida. This change of scene allowed Brown to transcend the circumstance of her birth but plunged her into an alien society on the verge of chaos. Brown survived the ensuing cultural shock, but her father’s death shortly after proved a nearly insurmountable obstacle. Betrayed and abandoned at birth, she found herself again bereft of parental connection, one to death and another to extended grief, as she slipped into the turbulence of adolescence. Brown’s father died before she observed any flaws, while her surviving parent daily stood revealed with human imperfections. In Brown’s work, men are either paragons of virtue or feckless individuals devoid of redeeming features. As for the maternal portion of Brown’s successive novels, although few attain the savagery of Rubyfruit Jungle (1973), even the more affectionate assessment of Six of One (1978) is often delivered through clenched teeth.
The climate when Brown left for college in 1963 was unfavorable toward anyone committed to the equality of every human being without recourse to limitations imposed by birth or inclination. Convinced the South offered her no quarter, Brown headed north, where she found academic validation at New York University and the Institute for Policy Studies, in Washington, DC, where she was awarded a doctorate in English and political science in 1976. Brown returned to the South; she was not the first Southern writer to seek refuge in the North but to return to the South in memory or in person. With a northern father and a mother of Southern sympathies, she appreciated both sides of the regional coin.
In the 1970s, Brown taught writing at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont, and at the Women Writers Center in Cazenovia, New York. The 1970s were an active time for Brown as she was politically involved in feminist concerns and a member of the National Organization for Women (NOW) until she left due to the organizations lack of representation for LGBTQ women. Instead, she went on to co-found the Student Homophile League and was one of the founders of “The Furies” which was a feminist collective magazine that published some of Brown’s early poetry. Brown continued to express her concerns for women in her collections, including The Hand that Cradles the Rock (1971) and Songs to A Handsome Women (1973).
In the 1980s, she moved to Virginia and bought a farm in Afton. During this time, she began writing the Mrs. Murphy mystery series, named after the protagonist’s pet cat, and, according to Brown, cowritten with her own cat, Sneaky Pie Brown. In the 1990s, Brown began publishing the Sister Jane mystery novels. In the 2000s and 2010s, Brown continued to publish both books for both series, including Let Sleeping Dogs Lie (2014) and Nine Lives to Die (2014), along with her nonfiction Animal Magnetism: My Life with Creatures Great and Small (2009). The majority of her work following 2010 was mystery novels, including Claws for Alarm (2021), Hiss and Tell (2023), Thrill of the Hunt (2022), and Lost and Hound (2023). In 2015, she received the lifetime achievement award at the Lambda Literary Awards.
Bibliography
"About Rita Mae Brown." Rita Mae Brown, ritamaebrownbooks.com/about. Accessed 29 Sep. 2024.
Boutilier, Nancy. "Reading, Writing, and Rita Mae Brown: Lesbian Literature in High School." Tilting the Tower. Routledge, 2023, pp. 135-41.
Boyle, Sharon D. “Rita Mae Brown.” Contemporary Lesbian Writers of the United States: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook, edited by Sandra Pollack and Denise D. Knight, Greenwood Press, 1993.
Brown, Rita Mae. "Novelist Rita Mae Brown on the Peculiar Pleasures of Train Travel." Wall Street Journal, 11 Feb. 2015, www.wsj.com/articles/novelist-rita-mae-brown-on-the-peculiar-pleasures-of-train-travel-1423681659. Accessed 29 Sep. 2024.
Chew, Martha. “Rita Mae Brown: Feminist Theorist and Southern Novelist.” Southern Quarterly, vol. 22, 1983, pp. 61-80.
Davies, Julia A. “Rita Mae Brown (1944- ).” Significant Contemporary American Feminists: A Biographical Sourcebook, edited by Jennifer Scanlon, Greenwood Press, 1999.
Day, Frances Ann. “Molly Bolts and Lifelines: Rita Mae Brown’s Rubyfruit Jungle (1973).” Women in Literature: Reading through the Lens of Gender, edited by Jerilyn Fisher and Ellen S. Silber, Greenwood Press, 2003.
Decure, Nicole. “The Feat of Telling It Like It Is: Concealment Tactics in Rita Mae Brown’s Fiction.” Women’s Studies International Forum, vol. 17, no. 4, July/Aug. 1994, pp. 425-33.
Perry, Carolyn, and Mary Louise Weaks, editors. The History of Southern Women’s Literature. Louisiana State UP, 2002.
Van Dover, J. K., and John F. Jebb. Isn’t Justice Always Unfair? The Detective in Southern Literature. Bowling Green State U Popular P, 1996.
Ward, Carol Marie. Rita Mae Brown. Twayne, 1993.
Zimmerman, Bonnie. The Safe Sea of Women: Lesbian Fiction, 1969-1989. Beacon Press, 1990.