Roots of Empathy: Changing the World Child by Child

Born in New York to a Catholic mother and a father who converted to Catholicism from Judaism, Mary Gordon was raised in a strict, religious environment and at one time considered becoming a nun. She attended Barnard College and in 1978 published her first novel, Final Payments. She followed that with The Company of Women (1981), both books exploring the challenges faced by young Catholic women as they make their way in the larger, secular world. Her other novels include Men and Angels (1985), The Other Side (1989), Spending (1998), and Pearl (2005), the story of an Irish-American mother forced to reexamine her faith and political ideals as her daughter slowly starves herself during a hunger strike in Ireland.
With the The Shadow Man: A Daughter's Search for Her Father (1996), Gordon turned her attention to her own family, examining the mysterious and complicated life of her father, a Jewish convert to Catholicism who died when she was seven, leaving behind a web of lies and half-truths about his past.
Gordon is also the author of three novellas, collected in The Rest of Life; a book of short stories called Temporary Shelter (1987); and two collections of essays, Good Boys and Dead Girls (1992) and Seeing Through Places: Reflections on Geography and Identity (2003). In 2000, she published a biography of Joan of Arc.
She has received the Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Writers Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and is also a three-time recipient of the O. Henry Award for best short story. The Company of Women was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1983.
Gordon currently teaches literature and writing at Barnard College.