Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

 My extraordinary niece, Orli, is subscribed to Good Trouble For Kids in this age category. I couldn’t stop thinking about her the whole time I read this wonderful book. I cried more than once reading it, and I thought about how very lucky young girls growing up today are to have role models like RBG, Michelle Obama, and Kamala Harris, to name just a few. But more than that: to have role models like my sister. From the time she was a little girl – and I mean very little! – she knew she wanted to be an OB-Gyn. I have never met anyone more driven (except maybe my mom!) She graduated Columbia University, put herself through medical school at Mt. Sinai, and in no short time, had her own practice in New York City with two other women. And, while she was doing all that, she also got married and had four daughters (Orli, at 10, is the youngest; her oldest is a senior in high school who just got into the University of Pennsylvania). I thought a lot about my sister and her husband as I read this book – about the way he has been an incredible support to her career, of how much he co-raises their children in a way that would have been almost inconceivable even fifty years ago. Like Marty, RBG’s husband, my brother-in-law loves to cook and entertain, is a very hands-on dad, shares in household tasks, and is involved in his daughters’ education. He is also a doctor!

I am writing about my sister and her family because RBG’s life work made it possible for so many women to model their lives in this way (and Marty provides a model for how to be the kind of man who supports his partner wanting to have both a family and a career). My four nieces have grown up in a home where they have seen their mother accomplish one goal after another: to be an engaged member of the Jewish community and sit on her synagogue board; to volunteer and support organizations that are important to her, like Physicians for Reproductive Health; to be invested in Democratic political causes, including regularly writing letters to the NYT editorial Board, and most recently volunteering at the election polls; to help out at her kids’ school; to interview students applying to her alma mater; to be on call to deliver babies every second or third night; to run a very successful medical practice; and, perhaps most importantly, to be a very hands-on mom. To add to all that, she is also now the primary caregiver for my 89-year-old dad and his wife. Like RBG, my sister clearly does not sleep much. I am sure Malia and Sasha Obama look at their mom (and dad!) in similar awe. 

Notorious RBG and the recent 2018 documentary, RBG, make it impossible not to recognize the power of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s accomplishments, and how important they are to social justice. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, please watch it with your kids. As one of the interviewees says, “RBG quite literally changed the way the world is for women.” You can also not ignore the way RBG’s work intersects with the civil rights movement. As the movie and book make clear, in her pursuit of equal rights for women, RBG was following in the footsteps of Thurgood Marshall and other activists pursuing racial equality. Ginsburg insisted that gender-based discrimination be treated like racial discrimination. On the day that Ginsburg presented her dissent to the Voting Rights decision, she cited Martin Luther King, Jr: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” Per Notorious RBG, Ginsburg added the words: “if there is a steadfast commitment to see the task through completion” (5). Ginsburg, through luck and an incredible stamina, lived a very long life, working up until the very end, unlike King, who tragically was cut down in the prime of his life. Her dissent on the Voting Rights Act certainly honored the work of King and the civil rights movement. 

Shana Knizhnik, one of the authors of this book, started the Notorious RBG Tumblr account after Ginsburg’s important dissent to the Voting Rights decision, and she and others propelled RBG onto social media. Her namesake, the Notorious B.I.G., is considered to have been one of the greatest rappers ever (Rolling Stone and Billboard). This piece in The New Yorker includes some photos of Biggie Small and other hip hop artists. That crown often depicted on RBG’s head is a tribute to the Black artist, Jean-Michel Basquiat, who died far too young from a drug overdose. Art critics have addressed the symbolism of Basquiat’s crown. Some infer the crown logo addressed his own ambition or his way of honoring the “kings” who came before him. At a Basquiat exhibit at the Guggenheim Bilbao, there is the following note: 

 In the context of RBG, the crown is a fitting nod to her majestic accomplishments, her royal poise, and her enormous ability to credit the work of the people who came before her, going back to the women who did so much to get the 19thAmendment passed in 1920. This article addresses the difficulties that remained for Black women even after that amendment gave them the right to vote, and gives information on Black women involved in the suffragists’ movement who have nowhere near the name recognition of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. I encourage you to look up some of these women, including Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Mary Ann Shadd Cary, Mary Church Terrell, Nannie Helen Burroughs, and Ida B. Wells (all discussed here). Sadly, all these names were new to me except for Ida B. Wells. Educators: The National Women’s History Museum features lesson plans on some of these “unsung heroes of the suffrage” movement. 

Ruth Bader Ginsburg quoted Sarah Grimke, abolitionist and feminist, in her first case in front of the Supreme Court. She repeats the words in the RBG film: 

Ruth Bader Ginsburg recognized how essential it is that we unite to combat all forms of hatred, in whatever form it appears: racism, antisemitism, Islamaphobia, homophobia, antifeminism, etc. This, too, needs to be a crux of today’s education model. Programs like the Anti-Defamation League’s No Place for Hate, need to be introduced to schools across this country. 

 Notorious RBG recounts Ginsburg calling World War II a “war against racism” (33). President Harry S. Truman signed an order desegregating the military in 1948, but full integration didn’t take place until 1953. It is hard to conceive of what it must have been like for the Black troops who liberated concentration camps, many of whom grew up in a part of the US with its own incriminating racial discriminatory practices. It is even more painful knowing that Hitler and others were enamored of the United States’ race laws. (You can learn more about this by reading this fascinating and disturbing Bill Moyers interview with James Whitman, author of Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law).

In a 2004 speech on Brown v. Board of Education, Ruth Bader Ginsburg quoted from a Jewish chaplain, Roland B. Gittelsohn, who spoke these profound words in a eulogy for US Marines who had died in Iwo Jima:

 I have not read the unabridged version of Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but this Young Readers Edition certainly provides insight into some of the most important work she did throughout her career. I particularly loved the authors comments that “over the years, Ruth has perfected her dissents, turning protest into an art form” (134). What a legacy RBG left all of us. We are honored to feature her in this initiative, especially since one of our main goals is introducing your kids to the recognition that protest and resistance can take many forms, including art and literature.

On a personal note, I loved learning that RBG learned to value writing from Vladimir Nabokov, her professor of European Literature at Cornell University. As she wrote in this wonderful 2016 Opinion Piece in the New York Times,“Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Advice for Living,” [Nabokov] “changed the way I read and the way I write.” I suspect many of us who admire Ruth Bader Ginsburg, including you who read this book, may come to feel that RBG impacts the way we think and how we want to be in the world.