By Nancy Garden
Two girls fall in love
Subject
Themes
Liza Winthrop is a seventeen-year-old senior at Foster Academy in Brooklyn Heights, serving as student council president and dreaming of studying architecture at MIT. On a November afternoon at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, she meets Annie Kenyon, a singer from a performing arts school in Manhattan who lives with her grandmother. Their connection is immediate and electric: they stage mock jousts in the Hall of Arms and Armor, share quiet wonder at the Temple of Dendur, and part in the rain with an intensity neither can name.
Liza Winthrop is a seventeen-year-old senior at Foster Academy in Brooklyn Heights, serving as student council president and dreaming of studying architecture at MIT. On a November afternoon at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, she meets Annie Kenyon, a singer from a performing arts school in…
Published in 1982, Annie on My Mind arrived at a moment of significant cultural tension for LGBTQ+ communities in the United States. The Stonewall riots of 1969 had catalysed the modern gay rights movement, and the 1970s saw the emergence of gay pride organisations, anti-discrimination ordinances in…
Identity is not discovered in a single moment but assembled through a series of namings, each one a small act of courage. Liza's journey toward self-acceptance follows a precise linguistic trajectory: from silence through borrowed words to her own voice, and each stage corresponds to a different…
Prejudice does not require personal malice to destroy lives. It requires only an institution willing to convert suspicion into procedure, and individuals willing to follow that procedure without questioning its moral foundations. The story reveals how prejudice operates not as a single act of hatred…
Love between Liza and Annie does not arrive as a sudden bolt of recognition. It accumulates through small, concrete acts of attention and care until the weight of those acts becomes undeniable. The progression from the first meeting at the Metropolitan Museum to the telephone call from MIT traces a…
Coming of age typically means learning to navigate the gap between who you are and who the world expects you to be. For Liza, this gap is doubled. She must grow up in the ordinary sense of moving from adolescence toward adulthood, making decisions about college, career, and relationships. But she…
The struggle for queer visibility runs through every layer of the narrative, from the personal to the political. At its core is a simple question: does love between two women deserve the same recognition, the same protection, and the same language as any other love? The answer given by the world of…
Liza Winthrop is a seventeen-year-old senior at Foster Academy in Brooklyn Heights, a thoughtful and capable young woman who serves as student council president and harbours ambitions of studying architecture at MIT. She is the narrator of the story, recounting events from her first year at…
Annie Kenyon is a talented young singer who attends a performing arts school in Manhattan and lives with her grandmother, Nana, who raised her. She is warm, musical, spontaneous, and possesses a directness that both attracts and occasionally unsettles Liza. Where Liza tends to circle her feelings,…
Sally Jarrell is Liza's closest friend at Foster Academy, a well-meaning but ultimately conventional girl whose loyalty crumbles when confronted with Liza's sexuality. She serves as the story's most painful illustration of how prejudice can operate through people who consider themselves kind and…
Ms. Stevenson is the art teacher at Foster Academy, a passionate and temperamental woman who lives with her partner, Ms. Widmer, in a Cobble Hill brownstone. She is an artist of genuine talent, a dedicated educator, and a lesbian who has spent her professional life hiding the most important…
Ms. Widmer is the English teacher at Foster Academy and the quieter half of the couple she forms with Ms. Stevenson. Where Ms. Stevenson is volatile and expressive, Ms. Widmer is composed, gentle, and strategically calm. She is the person who holds things together when emotions threaten to overwhelm…
Mrs. Poindexter is the headmistress of Foster Academy, an authority figure whose response to the discovery of Liza and Annie's relationship reveals the institutional machinery of prejudice operating under the guise of pastoral care. She is not a cartoonish villain but a functionary, someone who…
Liza Winthrop sits in her dormitory at MIT on a rainy November day, a freshman architecture student unable to concentrate on her Frank Lloyd Wright paper. Instead, she writes an unsent letter to Annie Kenyon, a girl she has not written to in six months. She acknowledges the silence between them,…
Mrs. Poindexter calls Liza into her dark, brown office and pins the ear-piercing debacle squarely on her shoulders. The headmistress, a stubby grey-haired woman who pinches her nose when thinking up cutting remarks, is furious that Liza failed to invoke the school's reporting rule. This three-part…
Liza tells her parents about the suspension over Friday evening drinks. Her father is furious, insisting she should have shown better judgment as "an intelligent person." Her mother defends her, calling the school's response disproportionate. Chad finds the whole thing hilarious, envying the three…
During Thanksgiving week, Liza smuggles into Annie's school cafeteria and watches in disbelief as a boy whirls a heavy chain above his head while everyone ignores him, until a carpentry teacher calmly leads him away. Annie explains this happens every week or so. When she first arrived at the school,…
That winter is magical. All Annie has to do is appear at a bus stop or a corner and Liza's face smiles on its own. They see each other every free afternoon and on weekends, call each other nightly, and arrange pay-phone calls at lunchtime. Songs on the radio seem to have been written for them; they…
Liza arrives home from the student council meeting to find a letter from MIT confirming her acceptance. She telephones Annie, who has been admitted to Berkeley. The Winthrop family celebrates with champagne, and Liza's parents attend Annie's spring recital, where Annie sings Schubert's "Standchen."…
While searching for the missing orange cat upstairs, Annie and Liza venture into Ms. Stevenson and Ms. Widmer's bedroom for the first time. Behind a glass-fronted bookcase they find shelves of gay literature; a double bed with clothes in both closets confirms what Annie had quietly suspected. The…
On Monday morning, Ms. Baxter grimly directs Liza to Mrs. Poindexter's office. The headmistress is slumped in her chair with red-rimmed eyes. She suspends Liza, removes her as student council president, and strips her of all campaign involvement. She threatens a trustees' hearing that could result…
A long white envelope arrives on Saturday. The letter from Mr. Turner, the Board of Trustees chairman, clears Liza entirely: no disciplinary action, no notation on her record, no communication with MIT. She is reinstated as student council president and told to return on Monday. Chad, who has been…
Liza Winthrop is a seventeen-year-old senior at Foster Academy in Brooklyn Heights, a thoughtful and capable young woman who serves as student council president and harbours ambitions of studying architecture at MIT. She is the narrator of the story, recounting events from her first year at…
Annie Kenyon is a talented young singer who attends a performing arts school in Manhattan and lives with her grandmother, Nana, who raised her. She is warm, musical, spontaneous, and possesses a directness that both attracts and occasionally unsettles Liza. Where Liza tends to circle her feelings,…
Sally Jarrell is Liza's closest friend at Foster Academy, a well-meaning but ultimately conventional girl whose loyalty crumbles when confronted with Liza's sexuality. She serves as the story's most painful illustration of how prejudice can operate through people who consider themselves kind and…
Ms. Stevenson is the art teacher at Foster Academy, a passionate and temperamental woman who lives with her partner, Ms. Widmer, in a Cobble Hill brownstone. She is an artist of genuine talent, a dedicated educator, and a lesbian who has spent her professional life hiding the most important…
Ms. Widmer is the English teacher at Foster Academy and the quieter half of the couple she forms with Ms. Stevenson. Where Ms. Stevenson is volatile and expressive, Ms. Widmer is composed, gentle, and strategically calm. She is the person who holds things together when emotions threaten to overwhelm…
Mrs. Poindexter is the headmistress of Foster Academy, an authority figure whose response to the discovery of Liza and Annie's relationship reveals the institutional machinery of prejudice operating under the guise of pastoral care. She is not a cartoonish villain but a functionary, someone who…
By Nancy Garden
Subject
Themes
Liza Winthrop is a seventeen-year-old senior at Foster Academy in Brooklyn Heights, serving as student council president and dreaming of studying architecture at MIT. On a November afternoon at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, she meets Annie Kenyon, a singer from a performing arts school in Manhattan who lives with her grandmother. Their connection is immediate and electric: they stage mock jousts in the Hall of Arms and Armor, share quiet wonder at the Temple of Dendur, and part in the rain with an intensity neither can name.