Jessamyn West (writer)
| Jessamyn West | |
|---|---|
| Born |
July 18, 1902 Vernon, Indiana, U.S. |
| Died | February 23, 1984 (aged 81) Napa County, California, U.S. |
| Occupation | writer |
| Relatives | Richard Nixon (second cousin) |
Mary Jessamyn West (July 18, 1902 – February 23, 1984) was an American author of short stories and novels, notably The Friendly Persuasion (1945). A Quaker from Indiana, she graduated from Fullerton Union High School in 1919 and Whittier College in 1923. There she helped found the Palmer Society in 1921.
West was born in North Vernon, Indiana, to Eldo Roy West and Grace Anna Milhous. She is a second cousin of Richard Nixon through her mother's father. Her family left the state to move to California when she was the age of six. The family included two brothers and a sister, Merle, Myron, and Carmen. Growing up in the West Home in the same rural Yorba Linda region as Nixon, West attended a Sunday-school class taught by Nixon's father, Frank, whom she described as "a fiery persuasive teacher." She later wrote that Frank Nixon's version of the social gospel inclined her politically toward socialism.
She graduated from Whittier College with an English degree in 1923 and began teaching. That year she also married Harry Maxwell McPherson, whom she had met at the college. They lived in Yorba Linda before West started graduate work at the University of California in 1929. While there, she attended Oxford University briefly, and visited Paris. Prior to her oral exams at Berkeley, she was diagnosed with bilateral tuberculosis. In August, 1932, she was sent to a sanitorium, and two years later was sent home to be with her mother because she was not expected to live. While in the hospital, she resumed writing to pass her time. West wrote in her autobiography that she felt she had nothing to live for and was tormented by the lives of those who did, but that her mother shared childhood memories of growing up as a Quaker farm girl in southern Indiana to provide her "a life to live in" while she regained her health. Slowly she began a recovery, but the writing continued.
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