Chapter 2 In the Company of Friends Summary and Analysis

In chapter two, In the Company of Friends, Mary Catherine Bateson introduces the four women who will be her source of information for this book.

Joan Erikson is a trained dancer, writer, and jewelry designer. She represents for Mary Catherine Bateson the relationship of the physical world to more abstract underlying expressions of human caring and strength. Ellen Bassuk is a psychiatrist who is a wonderful listener and calming personality with an underlying current of mischief. Alice d'Entremont is an electrical engineer who has been a researcher and also the CEO of a high-tech company. Johnnetta Cole is the first black woman president of Spelman College and a woman who has made the transition from campus radical to campus president.

All of these women are continually improvising and composing their lives...