Books

Lone Twin — A True Story of Loss and Found

Lone twin: A true story of loss and found has been awarded an Honorable Mention by the book review panel for the 2020 Book Award from the International Congress for Qualitative Inquiry.

On her death bed, Laurel Richardson’s sister whispers a deep family secret to her. Those whispered words send the famed sociologist and author on a personal exploration of a lifetime. Lone Twin: A True Story of Loss and Found is an extraordinary story of a search for identity, wholeness, and forgiveness. Grounded in the cultures of mid-Twentieth Century Chicago, New York City, and Los Angeles, Lone Twin weaves the personal with the social, cultural, and political. Richardson shares fascinating, resonant, and humorous stories about her relationships with a suicidal poet, a Swedish fencer, budding scientist, a Puerto Rican family, a Mafia family, her Russian Jewish and Irish Catholic family, and her famous cousin, Laura Foreman. Her story is at once singular and plural. As Richardson shares her journey towards wholeness and forgiveness, readers are invited to consider their own journeys and ask: Is there something missing in my life? How do I justify my existence? Lone Twin is an exquisitely written book about identity, the search for people who understand us, and the ties that bind. This outstanding example of literary sociology can be used as supplemental reading in a range of courses in American studies, gender studies, social science, child development, and creative writing. It can be read entirely for pleasure and is a great choice for book clubs. An appendix offers discussion questions, projects, and creative writing exercises

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Seven Minutes from Home – An American Daughter’s Story

This book is a collection of linked stories written chronologically from 1980 – 2015. They create a multifaceted narrative of how the public and the private, the past and the present, the local and global connect. With earnest reflection, modesty and humor, Laurel Richardson introduces the reader to her Ohio neighborhood, friends, family, writers and therapy dogs.

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Permission – The International Interdisciplinary Impact of Laurel Richardson’s Work

The impetus for this book was a public lecture Laurel Richardson gave in Melbourne, Australia in 2006. How and why Laurel Richardson’s writing resonates with so many others led to a qualitative research project investigating the impact of her work. This book is the outcome of that project.

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Fields of Play – Constructing an Academic Life

In a series of traditional and experimental writings, a culmination of 10 years work-in-progress, Laurel Richardson records an intellectual journey, displacing boundaries and creating new ways or reading and writing. Applying the sociological imagination to the writing process, she connects her life to her work.

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Writing Strategies – Reaching Diverse Audiences

Richardson uses her own experience to explore strategies for writing up the same research in different ways. By showing the reader the stylistic and intellectual imperatives and conventions of different writing media, she prepares the writer for approaching and successfully addressing diverse audiences. This book will be useful to all social scientists trying to present their material in different ways.

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After a Fall – A Sociomedical Sojourn

For renowned sociologist and writer Laurel Richardson, a broken foot led to a month as a patient in an extended care facility. In this compelling description of her lived experience in one of these institutions, she addresses key questions of health delivery and behavior.

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Last Writes – A Daybook for a Dying Friend

Betty Frankel Kirschner succumbed to emphysema one day in June. She had been a long-term professor at Kent State University, founding member of the feminist caucus in sociology, a political activist, a chain smoker. Close friend Laurel Richardson, a key figure in literary turn in ethnographic writing, kept a daybook, relating their conversations and interactions over Betty’s last few months. Rich in memory, emotion, dreams, and life-and-death decisions, the daybook chronicles the ups and down of a terminally ill woman and the impact that illness has on friends, colleagues, and family alike. Richardson also grapples with the ethics of writing deeply personal narratives. Part memoir, part sociological analysis, part eulogy to a departed friend, Richardson opens a poignant window into living an academic life, and ending it.

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Travels with Ernest – Crossing the Literary-Sciological Divide

Accomplished sociologist Laurel Richardson and published novelist Ernest Lockridge explore the fascinating interplay between literary and ethnographic writing. The exciting result is an intriguing experimental text that simultaneously delves into, reveals, simplifies and complicates methodologies of writing and conveying experience.

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Why I Love Ernest –  A Baker’s Dozen of Reasons

Thirteen of my husband Ernest Lockridge’s paintings accompanied with thirteen of my observations of Ernest at play.

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The New Other Woman – Contemporary Single Women in Affairs with Married Men

This book shatters the stereotype of the ‘other woman’ through fascinating and insightful interviews and a masterly analysis of the ‘whys’ and ‘hows’ of their long term relationships with married men.

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The Dynamics of Sex and Gender

The first book addressing the sociological issues surrounding men and women historically and contemporaneously. A classic that still rings true in describing our social world. The book offers positive ways of addressing social problems across sex, race, gender, sexuality and class.

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