Bakke, Kit 1946-

PERSONAL:

Born 1946, in Seattle, WA; daughter of a physician and a homemaker; married; children: two daughters. Education: Bryn Mawr College, graduated 1968; graduate of the University of Washington.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Seattle, WA. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer. Worked as a pediatric nurse, in hospital management, and as an information systems consultant. Founding member of the Bryn Mawr chapter of Students for a Democratic Society; member of the Weather Underground.

WRITINGS:

Miss Alcott's E-mail: Yours for Reforms of All Kinds: A Bio-Memoir, David R. Godine (Boston, MA), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

As a young woman, Kit Bakke was active in the civil rights and antiwar movements and, for a time, lived on a commune. Because of her membership in the Weather Underground, the FBI kept a file on her. As an adult, Bakke lived a more traditional life, but when she wrote her first book, it was about a female activist who opposed the Civil War and campaigned for women's right to vote. Miss Alcott's E-mail: Yours for Reforms of All Kinds: A Bio-Memoir, is written as a series of e-mails between Bakke and writer Louisa May Alcott. In part Bakke describes her own history. As she notes on her Web site: "In the book, I tell her about my days with Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Weathermen. I wanted to include this part because I don't think any of the existing books or movies about the Weathermen quite capture the essence of those heady, idealistic and crazy days."

Bakke doesn't address Alcott the writer of books for children and young adults. Washington Post Book World contributor Carolyn See wrote: "Bakke is more interested in Alcott the woman: how and where she was raised; the time she spent on the commune set up by her harebrained dad; her activism as an abolitionist; her campaign for women's suffrage; the months she spent as a Civil War nurse; the gothic novels she wrote for adults, which bristled with ‘incest and drugs and murders and betrayal;’ the hard-won fame, after Little Women, that turned into a gilded cage." Booklist reviewer Colleen Mondor felt that Alcott fans will appreciate the "keen manner in which Bakke assumes Alcott's voice and connects two distant eras."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, September 1, 2006, Colleen Mondor, review of Miss Alcott's E-mail: Yours for Reforms of All Kinds: A Bio-Memoir, p. 36.

Library Journal, September 1, 2006, Erica Swenson Danowitz, review of Miss Alcott's E-mail, p. 144.

Washington Post Book World, September 8, 2006, Carolyn See, review of Miss Alcott's E-Mail, p. C2.

ONLINE

Bryn Mawr Now,http://www.brynmawr.edu/news/ (October 19, 2006), "Revolutionary-Turned-Writer Kit Bakke '68 to Read from Miss Alcott's Email."

Kit Bakke Home Page,http://www.kitbakke.com (May 7, 2007).