Christina was our housemate when she was in Graduate School at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.  We all lived in a brown-shingled house that had two halves. Purchased by Ed and Sue Benson in 1970, it became a communal house with two sides, each with kitchen, dining room and living room on the first floor and three bed rooms/studies on the 2nd and 3rd floor. Its address was on Hope Street—we were all living on Hope— but a long way from “Power” another East Side street, nearer the Brown campus. Between 1972 and 1986 (when Peter Evans and I finally sold it, having bought out Ed and Sue Benson’s half), it housed a rotating groups of graduate students and faculty at Brown, University of Rhode Island, and Bristol Community College. On each side we shared household chores and the whole house came together for dinners several times a week (cooked by those who signed up each week).

Christina lived on our third floor along with Kathy Lewis and of course with her beloved Hussy—who was a great addition to the household. She was only with us a couple of years before she finished her dissertation and took the job at Wesleyan. Those were some of the years she was partnered with Elizabeth Weed who was often at our house to share a meal or attend a party. Christina had a warm, magnetic personality, and a keen mind. One could already see the engaging scholar, teacher, friend and colleague she would become at Wesleyan. Feminism was an important bond in those years in the late 1970s and early 1980s. And I always admired how she could live out a feminist life and convey her point of view vividly in any conversation.

I only saw her a couple of times at Brown events after her accident , but when she died I went back to read her memoir again, sensing her personality come through on every page, especially in the chapters where she describes her relationship with her brother, whose painful illness and health were so vividly described. Her own descriptions of pain, immobility and coping with a body that was a stranger make the memoir “one of a kind.”

All of our housemates remember her fondly and miss her presence in this world greatly. She made an important mark on our lives (as she has on the lives of her colleagues, students, and friends) and we all mourn her passing.