Barnard has nurtured many storytellers, and their work has been inspired by a wide variety of locales. Patricia Highsmith ’42 set her novel The Talented Mr. Ripley in Italy. Haiti and New York City became characters in the short story collection Krik? Krak! by Edwidge Danticat ’90. The Oscar-nominated documentary The Edge of Democracy, from director Petra Costa ’06 explored the political landscape of contemporary Brazil.
Some alumnae, however, have turned their gazes closer to campus and used Barnard as the backdrop to their stories. The following projects capture the specificities of the College at a unique moment in time and the universal experiences that tie generations of Barnard students together.
The Last of Her Kind (2005) by Sigrid Nunez ’72
A Guggenheim Fellow and winner of Barnard’s Distinguished Alumnae Award, among other honors, Sigrid Nunez ’72 has earned enormous acclaim for her stories, novels, and nonfiction. In her complex and ambitious 2006 novel, The Last of Her Kind, Nunez drew on details from her time at Barnard — 1968 to 1972 — to craft a story of a profound friendship between two young women and the combustible cultural and political landscape of America in the 1960s and 1970s. The novel follows their complicated friendship, their divergence, and the fallout from a shocking act that raises knotty questions about justice, race, and purpose.
“Tom’s Diner” (1987) by Suzanne Vega ’81
Before the studio albums, top 10 hits, and international tours, Suzanne Vega ’81 was a budding singer-songwriter and English major at Barnard. In her song “Tom’s Diner” — originally written in 1981 — Vega sketched a rainy day in Morningside Heights, reading the paper and people-watching from her seat at Tom’s Restaurant on 112th Street and Broadway as the bells from St. John the Divine chimed in the background.
The Glass Castle (2005) by Jeannette Walls ’84
After years of building a successful career as a gossip columnist and rubbing elbows with New York City’s wealthy and influential, Jeannette Walls ’84 publicly explored her tumultuous childhood in her memoir The Glass Castle. Published in 2005, her second book recounts the peripatetic, unpredictable upbringing that took her from hardscrabble years in the West and Southeast to a Barnard education and a writer’s life in NYC. While much of the book focuses on her pre-college years, Walls details Barnard’s role in her journey to becoming a professional writer, including a stint as the news editor for the Barnard Bulletin. A film adaptation starring Brie Larson, Naomi Watts, and Woody Harrelson was released in 2017.
Time’s a Thief (2017) by B.G. Firmani ’90
In her debut novel, Time’s a Thief (which was celebrated on the Barnard website upon release and in Barnard Magazine’s 2021 summer reading list), B.G. Firmani ’90 crafted a portrait of messy youth and New York City in the late 1980s. Inspired in part by Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, Nunez’s The Last of Her Kind, and her own experiences as a Barnard undergraduate, Firmani tells the story of working-class Francesca “Chess” Varani’s relationship with classmate Kendra Marr-Löwenstein and her wealthy Manhattan family. Narrating from the vantage point of the Great Recession, which occurred 20 years later, Chess describes a social milieu that’s both intellectual and naive and a city of punk grit and enormous wealth. While some College specifics have changed over the past 40 years, plenty of Barnard friendships still begin the same way: “Right there on the corner of Broadway and 116th was this girl.”
Mistress America (2015), co-written by and starring Greta Gerwig ’06
Last summer, it was virtually impossible to miss Barbie (2023), the crowd-pleasing hit co-written and directed by Barnard alumna Greta Gerwig ’06. Prior to becoming the first female director to helm a $1-billion blockbuster, Gerwig made her mark as an actor and writer.
For her 2015 comedy Mistress America, she returned to Barnard’s campus to capture a fascinating snapshot of the College a decade ago. The film follows a lonely first-year student (Lola Kirke) and her relationship with her stepsister-to-be (Gerwig) and realistically conveys the confusion of entering adulthood and the details of campus life. Scenes shot in the College’s Quad, the first-year dorms, Hewitt, and the Diana Center show how much of the campus has changed as well as how much remains the same.
