“Not everybody has seven mothers.”

In Copenhagen in 1972, during the exhilarating early days of women’s liberation in Scandinavia and dramatic social change around the world, seven women had a child together. Recounting her mothers’ history—from the passions and beliefs they shared to the political divisions over sexual identity that ultimately split them apart—Pernille Ipsen’s chronicle of gender, sexuality, and feminism as it was constructed, contested, and lived reminds us that new worlds are always possible. Here, Ipsen is joined in conversation with Adriane Lentz-Smith.

Pernille Ipsen is author of My Seven Mothers: Making a Family in the Danish Women's Movement and professor of gender and women’s studies and history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Ipsen is a historian of gender, women, feminism, race and colonialism in Scandinavia and the larger Atlantic world.

Adriane Lentz-Smith is associate professor of history, African American studies, and gender, sexuality, and feminist studies at Duke University. Lentz-Smith is author of Freedom Struggles: African Americans and World War I.

Praise for the book:

"This book is a treasure, especially for a second-wave American feminist who was thrilled to learn of the boldness and courage of our Danish sisters at the very start of the 1970s women’s movement. I can’t recommend it highly enough."

—Vivian Gornick, author of The Odd Woman and the City

"My Seven Mothers certainly is not all happiness and light, but that makes it even more moving, and as an American feminist I felt a sense of recognition infused with my own memories."

—Linda Gordon, author of Seven Social Movements That Changed America

"Compulsively readable and historically insightful, My Seven Mothers reveals the spirit, courage, and tenacity required of the women who paved the way for second-wave feminist organizing in Denmark."

—Birgitte Søland, author of Becoming Modern: Young Women and the Reconstruction of Womanhood in the 1920s

My Seven Mothers: Making a Family in the Danish Women’s Movement by Pernille Ipsen is available from University of Minnesota Press. Thank you for listening.

Episode Transcript

Adriane Lentz-Smith (00:05):
What was it like for you to have seven moms?

Pernille Ipsen (00:09):
I do get that question quite a lot, and I get
it because not everybody hasseven mothers.

Adriane Lentz-Smith (00:15):
I love that as an understatement, by the
way.

Pernille Ipsen (00:21):
Hey. My name is Pernille Ipsen. We're here today
to talk about my book, My Makinga Family in the Danish Women's
Movement, which I am superexcited about. I am a historian
and writer. And in the book, Itell my own personal and
collective story of my sevenmothers who met in the Danish
women's movement in the earlyseventies and formed a commune

(00:44):
in a squatted house downtownCopenhagen, Denmark, where I was
born in 1972.
The book is about my mother'slives in and with a social
movement. It's about how mymother's created a new
alternative family. And it issimultaneously about how

(01:04):
challenging and life giving,devastating and wonderful it was
for my mothers to live a socialrevolution and create a life
radically different from the onethat their parents had presented
to them. It's about feministalliance across difference. In
my mother's case, differences inclass and sexuality, which in

(01:26):
the beginning started out beinga motivating driver for them and
for their activist work andended up splitting our commune
apart.
I originally wrote the book inDanish, my first language. It
came out exactly five years agoin the 2020, the first COVID
summer. And I've been talkingabout it ever since in Danish.

(01:49):
But now with this edited andtranslated edition and a new
prologue that I wrote for theAmerican edition, I'm super
excited to get to talk about itin English. And I'm just
thrilled to start theconversation here today with
you, Adrienne.

Adriane Lentz-Smith (02:06):
Hey, I'm thrilled to be here. And I, for
all of y'all listening, amAdrienne Lint Smith. I'm an
associate professor of history,Af Am, and gender, sexuality,
and feminist studies at DukeUniversity. And I have the great

(02:26):
pleasure and honor of talking tomy friend, Pernille Ibsen, about
her book, My Seven Mothers. Andso I am, I mostly work on the
black freedom struggle in thelong twentieth century.
I study social movements to someextent, not solely, but that's a

(02:48):
big part of what I do. And soreading this book was, in some
ways as a scholar, about readinga lot of different kinds of
comparison, right? Thinkingabout the Danish women's
movement, thinking to someextent about The US women's
movement, but also reallythinking about the black freedom
movement more broadly. And thatwhat you said, sometimes

(03:12):
liberating at the same timedifficult, the kind of life
giving and hard work of living asocial revolution, is a story
that you hear over and overagain among veterans of groups
like the Student NonviolentCoordinating Committee, SNCC, or
any other thing. So parts ofthis felt very familiar to me.

(03:33):
And then parts of it also feltnew, right? Because I'm not a
historian of Denmark, and so Igot to learn a history through
your voice, which was reallydelightful. There's also this
thing, I mean, I love memoirs,and I feel like memoirs bring
one in to a history and kind oflike create a field of

(03:55):
connection and intimacy that akind of traditional historical
monograph doesn't necessarilyallow space for. So I found
myself reading My Seven Mothersboth as a fellow scholar, but
then also as someone who knowsyou, who got to learn you a
different way. And that feltremarkable.

(04:17):
Possibly artificial becausethere's a way where a reader
feels a connection to an authorthat an author doesn't
necessarily know about, but insome ways, just different from
what we would have throughconversation, even through this
conversation. So that was superneat. That's a long winded way
of saying I'm left with a lot ofquestions and things that I want

(04:39):
to talk about. And so maybe Iwill open with a big one and
then we can see where the restof it takes us. Does that sound
good?

Pernille Ipsen (04:48):
Sounds great.

Adriane Lentz-Smith (04:50):
All right. So this is a history that takes
place largely in the 1970s. AndI'm wondering what it is about
the 1970s that allows orencourages things to happen in
the way that they do. Is it aparticularly plastic juncture

(05:10):
for radical politicalpossibility?

Pernille Ipsen (05:14):
So the Danish version of the book is called An
Open Moment now in Danish. But Ichanged the title for the
American version, or we did. Butit is very much a story about an
open moment still. It's about amoment of radical possibility
that, in my story, starts in the1970. And that moment comes on

(05:37):
the back of or at the tail endof the 60s, right?
And the 60s in Denmark, as inThe US, was this moment of
social movement and activism onmany different fronts. And my
mothers were all coming toCopenhagen at a moment in the
late 60s, between '65 and 70,when they could get involved

(06:02):
with youth activism,environmental activism,
squatting with anti Vietnam Warprotests and with anti World
Bank protests. That part of thestory is very similar to the
American story actually, thatthe late 60s is this radically
open moment. The story of mymother's entry into the Danish

(06:26):
women's movement or them makingthe women's movement in 1970. So
the Danish women's movement istypically started in April 1970
when 12 women walk down awalking street and yell about
women's rights is a culminationof years of activism in these
other rounds of the youthmovement and versions of the

(06:49):
civil rights movement in Denmarkas well, where my mothers
learned their activist chopsalong men on different fronts.
But over those years and in thatwork realized that their issues
are not being fronted, theirvoices are not heard. And, you
know, the typical saying is thatthey were asked to make tea for
the revolution, right? That theywere asked to put their issues

(07:11):
on the back burner and wait tillthe revolution was over and then
they could start talking aboutwomen's rights. So that story is
very familiar to Americans, bet,or to many Americans who know
about the women's movement andabout the 60s. And what I then
want to show in my book or in mymother's story is that for
women, the real radically openmoment doesn't appear until the

(07:32):
late 60s, very late 60s, and inDenmark in the early 70s.
So in 70s, '71, '72, when highon all the possibilities of the
late 60s, women start formingactivist groups on their own and
centering their needs and theirinterests and building a social

(07:52):
movement around that. So that'swhat the 70s mean to me. So the
story starts in 1970 with thewomen's movement and then ends
in '76 when a commune breaks up.But it is very much a story
about the early seventies, youknow, the very, very early
seventies.

Adriane Lentz-Smith (08:12):
When you're describing your mothers and how
they end up taking an act.Right? Like, you know, like any
good book, or not like any goodbook, but like many good books,
this one opens with someonechoosing to do something, right,
that kicks off all of thisaction, at least for us, the

(08:32):
reader, and for her as one ofthe protagonists. But the thing
that moves her to act isexhaustion. And I circled that
word when I read it.
And I think for another one ofyour mothers, there's someone
talking about suffocation,right? The sense that if they

(08:53):
didn't do something, theywouldn't survive. And I found
that palpable and powerful, andagain, familiar from other
readings on people enteringsocial movements, that you act
when you can't stand, when youcan't stand in action, right? So

(09:13):
that life giving isn't actuallymetaphorical for them.

Pernille Ipsen (09:18):
And it's also not a positive choice
necessarily, right? Like thatyou circled the exhaustion is
right on. So all my sevenmothers had grown up in families
and in contexts that were notable to give them what they
needed to become themselves.Like they were stunted in
different ways because theycouldn't perform or couldn't

(09:39):
live the ways they were expectedto as good girls and because
they couldn't do what wasexpected of them when they
became young women. And so theykept banging their heads against
expectations that they couldn'tlive up to.
And they had had some prettyhard years behind them, several
of my mothers, of searching fora place that they could develop

(10:02):
as they needed to and become thepeople that they wanted and
should be. And so they werepretty exhausted. For some of
them, it was kind of the laststraw almost, or it feels like.
And the opening story is of oneof my mothers, my birth mother,
who happens to read in anewspaper an ad for a summer
camp for women only and decideto sign up for it and spend a

(10:27):
month on this tiny island Southof Copenhagen where she lived.
And that became the beginning ofa radically new life for her.
And that's where she meets myother mothers. And so the whole
first part of the book takesplace on this small island where
they all come with their verybeaten up lives. And especially
for my birth mother, it was aweird coincidence. And for years

(10:49):
I had to ask her again andagain, how did you do that?
Because she was socially awkwardand very introvert and not the
type of person who would justthrow herself into a super
intense summer camp with 200naked women who were changing
their lives.
But she needed to do somethingand she needed to do something

(11:09):
now. And she saw that ad and shedid it and that was the
beginning of her new self. Andit's been fascinating to me both
as a child and then as ahistorian how fragile these
moments were that they decidedto do something different in the
early 70s. Because my othermothers have similar moments
where they do something that inthe moment must have seemed

(11:30):
super random, but in hindsightis so meaningful because it puts
them on the path to meet eachother and then to form these new
lives.

Adriane Lentz-Smith (11:39):
I mean, again, as historians, we're big
on contingency. Aren't we? Yeah.And this is one of these
contingent acts. Also, just as adecide, I imagine that this is
not something that is asstriking in Danish, but in a
Latin derived or Latin adjacentlanguage, like English,

(12:04):
particularly when I am going tomangle the Danish, but for the
island to be called what I readas fem o, felt very like, oh, if
this were fiction, that would belike, as your editor, I would be
like, are we gonna give it thatname?
Because that's very on the nose,right, for an island of an all
women's camp. So I adored that.But so, I mean, they make many

(12:27):
things, right? This kind ofcontingent coming together of
these many women, but whatcoalesces as a group of seven
who end up forming part of, andthen eventually their own
commune. And you write that yourmothers called themselves a
commune instead of a family, butit amounted to the same thing.

(12:48):
Can you expand on that a littlebit? Like, what did they see
themselves as making in thisgroup that ended up coalescing
around you specifically? Andwhat did it matter?

Pernille Ipsen (13:01):
So my mothers were not very keen on the word
family when they entered thewomen's movement in the early
70s and when they later thenformed the lesbian movement,
because they had grown up with avery negatively loaded
understanding of family. Many ofthem had left their families

(13:21):
without looking back as much aswe might today and had grown up
with a sense that if they wereto form a family of their own,
they would be forced to behavelike and live as women in a way
that they weren't comfortablewith. So they were sort of
turning away from the wordfamily and from using that

(13:42):
concept when they first met eachother. And so they were looking
for other ways to create durablecommunity that were not called
family. They often called it acommune, right?
Like forming communes, which washuge on the Danish left in the
70s anyway. But they were sortof steering away from the family
idea, but they were alsosteering away from the word. And

(14:03):
then as they got me and or whenthey found out that my birth
mother was pregnant, theystarted leaning more into the
word. And they tell meinteresting stories of how they
first sort of, I don't thinkthat's in the book, but they had
these sort of moments when theystarted thinking about having a
baby where family all of asudden got a whole new glow and

(14:24):
became more interested inreviving the word family and or
putting new meaning into theword family. And so by the time
I was, you know, born and acouple of months old, they would
think of themselves more as afamily and make it sort of a
project to call themselves afamily and then do the work of
explaining to people that yes,you could be a family and be

(14:46):
seven women and one child.
And yes, we all call her ourchild. And yes, she thinks of us
all as our mother and so on. Sothat's why in the beginning they
might call themselves a commune,but the emotions that they put
into that commune are verysimilar to the things that we
would put into a family todayand or that they call it later.
Yeah.

Adriane Lentz-Smith (15:05):
I'm wondering about what some of
those differences are, right?Because literature, fictional,
nonfiction, is replete withstories of families organized
different than the nuclearfamily. We can see them in US
history and other histories andutopian stories as well. What
does your story bring to thatliterature or to conversations

(15:27):
about what people thought familymight mean?

Pernille Ipsen (15:30):
So as a historian, I've been very
interested in all kinds ofdifferent types of families
through time, right, and howpeople organize differently. I
think one of the angles that mystory sort of approaches that
question a little differently isthat my mothers were so
interested in making a familythat was radically different
than their parents' family. Youcan think of what family means

(15:53):
in societies where the nuclearfamily is not the most
important, right? Or whereextended family plays a bigger
role than it does in the typicalsort of nuclear family in the
Western world today. Or you canthink about how societies
historically have organizeddifferently around family.
But this shift that my mothersparticipated in where the unit

(16:16):
they were forming was somethingthey had never seen before was
very interesting to me. So theDanish book also has the sub
subtitle When My Mothers DidSomething New. And for me, this
book has been a sort of questinto thinking about how you do
something new. Like how do youtake everything that you got

(16:36):
through your upbringing and allthe ways of understanding the
world that you grew up with, theways that you were socialized,
and then you do something reallydifferent than that? So my
mothers knew of communes.
There were lots of communesforming in the sixties in
Denmark, and they were allthinking pretty early on in the
60s that they would like to livein a commune, but they knew of

(16:57):
no women's communes. Later inDenmark and later in the 70s,
becomes more common to havewomen's communes. But they had
no model for it, right? And sowhen they started talking about
having a child together, theywere just starting from scratch.
Like how do we do that?
And that I think is differentfrom some of the utopian fiction

(17:18):
from the 70s definitely aretoying with that question.
Right. And think about thatquestion. It's fiction. I think
that one of the cool thingsabout doing this project for me
was that I could sit with myseven mothers and ask them again
and again and again.
So like, how did you actuallychange your mind? Like how did

(17:39):
you actually make sure that youdon't fall back into the habits
of what you had been socializedto do? And how do you learn to
walk differently? How do youlearn to sit differently? How do
you learn to have differentrelationships with other people
and to think differently ofyourself?
Being so close to the story as Iam being their daughter allowed

(17:59):
me to ask them questions that Iwouldn't have been able to
otherwise. And then the enduringrelationship so I worked on the
interviews for ten years plusand would have conversations
again and again and again andcould always go back. And so,
like, I really don't understandhow you did this. We have to get
closer to it. And at the sametime, I was far enough removed

(18:23):
from their story that I could becurious about it and then open
to what's because a lot of thethings they sort of take for
granted as, well, of course, wejust did that.
We just wanted to do that. Wedid it. But that's, the
shorthand of the work that theyactually had to do.

Adriane Lentz-Smith (18:39):
So what did it look like in practice? Like,
what were the divisions oflabor? What were the hard
things?

Pernille Ipsen (18:46):
One of the things that they really
struggled with was allowingpeople to do the things they
were good at. So because theywere all learning things from
scratch, like speaking inpublic, right, or like writing
with an authoritative voice orpainting or cooking or whatever,
speaking to the press, they hadvery little sympathy for or

(19:10):
tolerance with people taking onleadership roles. They were
against leaders, as most manysocial movements are in the
early '70s. But in their case,it was from this sort of
understanding that we all haveto learn how to do this. And so
if the person who's really goodat speaking to the press always

(19:30):
speaks to the press, otherpeople are not going to learn
how to do it.
Or if the person who is reallygood at building a wall always
does that, other people are notgoing to build a wall. So there
was a lot of managing of who didwhat when and who were supposed
to do what when and a lot ofpolicing of that. And that was
pretty stifling, I think, attimes. And so the learning

(19:50):
process was hard work at times.And it was challenging to both
transform yourself intosomething you hadn't been
before, so you're in a constantpersonal development process
while not policing otherpeople's process.
So like, if you have this grandnew vision of what you think the

(20:11):
world is supposed to be and yourrole in it, it can be difficult
not to want to propose that rolefor other people as well, and to
start telling other people howthey should be living their
personal transformation. And Ithink that was really difficult.
The actual sort of division oflabor of who did what in the
household by the time we livedby ourselves, so we first lived

(20:33):
in a squattered house wherethere were lots and lots of
people in and out of thecommune, a much bigger commune
than the one we ended up with.And by the time I came around,
my seven mothers had sort ofcoalesced around me and had
become a more sort of solidunit. But before that, there was
a lot of people in and out.
And so it could be fairlystressful to live in the middle

(20:54):
of the social movement likethat. But I don't think they
ever had real arguments aboutsort of actual practical labor.
Like practical labor was justsomething everybody did all the
time because they lived in thisvery old house that was falling
apart. And so it was part oftheir daily lives to build walls
and repair things and paint andall that.

Adriane Lentz-Smith (21:15):
I mean, it's so interesting, right,
because they're creatingsomething. Right? They're
breaking with something thatthey've known before and making
something new. You arrive in it,right? You arrive in the middle
of the creation.
And so what you know as it'syour first norm, which is so

(21:36):
radically right? And I'mwondering, and you must get some
versions of this question a lot,which is both, what was it like
for you in general, but morespecifically, what was it like
for you to have seven moms?

Pernille Ipsen (21:51):
I do get that question quite a lot. And so
I've given a lot of talks on thebook in Danish, of course, over
the last couple of years. Andthat is a question that comes up
in some version every time. AndI get it because not everybody
has seven mothers.

Adriane Lentz-Smith (22:06):
I love that as an understatement by the way.

Pernille Ipsen (22:09):
I did meet a woman at one of my talks who had
nine mothers, a Norwegian woman.She was a couple of years
younger than me. Yeah, so thatquestion comes up a lot. And my
short answer to that is that Ithought it was really wonderful.
Like I think it's given me somany so I was their only child
and I got a lot of very positiveattention and I got a lot of

(22:31):
love.
And my mother still loved mevery much and I love them. I
think it was a real privilegeand a fantastic gift that I got
all these mothers. I also thinkI got super lucky that I didn't
go through puberty living withthem all and that I didn't grow
up living with them all. So mybirth mother and I moved out of

(22:52):
the commune when I was four. Andafter that I was a weekend
child.
So I would only spend everyWednesday and a weekend a month
with my other mothers, unlessthere were birthdays and
whatever, you know, otheroccasions. And this meant that I
didn't have to sort of form myadolescent self in relationship
to all seven mothers. I'm notquite sure how that would have

(23:15):
worked. People, friends I have,people I know who have grown up
in communes and who have livedin communes throughout their
adolescence have told me storiesof how challenging that could
be. By the time I was anadolescent, my mother's my other
mother's not my birth mom, butmy other mothers were more like
really doting aunts or like verywonderful older people in my

(23:39):
life or adults in my life whowere not trying to sort of rein
me in, which was difficult in myadolescence.
Having been listened to as muchas I was when I was very young,
so my mothers all agreed on the70s pedagogy that a child's
opinion is just as worthy as anadult's. And so I was asked my
opinion about what I wanted,what I liked, what I wanted to

(24:02):
do from very, very early on. Andwhen you have that many people
sort of helping you get what youwant, you did or I developed an
independence and a sense of selfworth that was maybe a little
challenging in my adolescentyears for the adults in my life.
But it has come in very handy asan adult. Anyway, this is to say

(24:23):
that I feel very lucky the waythat it played out in my
particular situation that I hadseven mothers.
I also find it reallyfascinating to think about why
people ask me that question orwhere that question comes from.
Because for some people, itcomes from like, wow, that is so
different from anything I'veever thought of. But for many

(24:45):
people, it comes from a place ofrecognizing what it's like to
have a family that's differentthan a nuclear family. So many
young people especially are veryused to having many adults, you
know, because in their lives,for many reasons, right? There
are many more queer familiesthan there used to be.
There are many more, you know,divorced families with many

(25:08):
adults. And it's much moretypical in the generation after
hours to to have families thatare bigger is my experience.
Maybe in particular in Denmark,but no, but also in The US. I
think that if you grow up with afamily that's just even just a
little bit off from a nuclearfamily and you hear my story, it
gives you a space to tell yourstory as well and to be

(25:30):
recognized in that your familydoes not have to be a nuclear
family. And that if you grow upwith just one parent, it's not a
lack.

Adriane Lentz-Smith (25:39):
I also am still back thinking about what
it would be like to be anadolescent. Even never mind
seven mothers, just sevenadults, where part of what
you're doing in adolescence isdifferentiating, right? Figuring
out who you are as differentfrom the people around you. So
if you have seven quitedifferent, and many of them

(26:01):
quite strong personalities,like, where do you go? People do
it.
You're right. But it seems likea very different kind of work
than the work that is familiarto me.

Pernille Ipsen (26:13):
I think so. Because like you, in
adolescence, there is thisprocess of both differentiation,
but also of breaking free insome sense, or making your own
needs separate from this otherperson, right? Or from two
people maybe. And sometimes it'schallenging even with two people
responding to a young personfinding themselves. And I know

(26:36):
that my mothers, even thoughthey in theory agreed on how
they wanted to approach pedagogyand how they wanted to approach
me, were such differentpersonalities.
So I probably would very quicklyhave found a way to sort of play
them out against each other, Icould imagine, or like always
make sure to ask the rightperson. I mean, I did that

(26:56):
already as it was. I always knewwho to call for one thing or
another. One mother would bevery lenient in one way and
another mother would be lenientin another, right?

Adriane Lentz-Smith (27:07):
Yeah. That is part of the savviness of
children learning to maneuverunequal relationships of power,
actually. So you said you andyour birth mom left the commune
when you were four. Why?

Pernille Ipsen (27:22):
So in part three of the book, I tell the story of
our last couple of yearstogether in the commune. And
part three is called NoLiberation Without Community, a
quote from Audre Lorde, theAmerican Black lesbian feminist
poet. And it's a story about howfeminist politics seep into, or

(27:47):
it's never been separate fromour commune. Our commune was
formed in the middle of thewomen's movement. And the
women's movement in Denmark, asthe women's movement in The
United States, had some bigcontroversies and some fights
over the role of lesbianfeminism in the women's
movement.
And my mothers ended up ondifferent sides in that fight,

(28:09):
in that political battle,meaning that all my mothers were
interested in lesbian politicsto some extent, but two of my
mothers were not interested ordid not think that lesbian
politics should play as big of arole as four of my other
mothers. If you count up,there's one missing, but it's
because there's one who wasgoing back and forth a little

(28:31):
bit between the positions. Fourof my mothers formed the
movement that became known asthe lesbian movement in Denmark
in 1974. And so my story is alsoa story of how lesbianism was
for the first several years inthe Danish women's movement made
almost impossible, or like itwas almost impossible to do

(28:54):
lesbian politics and or to beoutwardly fighting for lesbian
rights in the women's movement,in the broader women's movement,
not in our commune, but in thebroader women's movement. And so
for four of my mothers, itbecame increasingly impossible
to be who they wanted to be andalso to do the activism that
they wanted to do and to fightfor the causes that were very

(29:16):
close to their hearts in thewomen's movement.
And so they founded a differentmovement, which was a smaller
movement and a more theatricaland dramatic and outward facing
and very out and proud actionmovement in Copenhagen. And for
two of my other mothers, therewas a big sadness and it angered

(29:36):
them that they would form adifferent social movement. And
they would say draw energy andpower and excitement out of the
women's movement by organizingfor themselves as lesbians. That
became impossible for my mothersto live with. And so in part
three, I tell the story of howthat became impossible.

(29:58):
Now I have grown up with mymother's being close, close
friends. I didn't know why thewhy we moved out. I've heard
different stories about it allmy life. Like, there's been
different versions of it.Sometimes they've mentioned that
there was something aboutlesbian politics, but mostly
they would explain it with thisone woman who was one of my

(30:21):
mother's girlfriends who theydidn't like and something
something.

Adriane Lentz-Smith (30:25):
The bougie lady.

Pernille Ipsen (30:26):
The bougie lady. So the girlfriend who worked for
IBM and carried a briefcasearound and was not performing
the working class aesthetics asmy mothers all were living at
the time. So in my work with thebook or in my interviews for the
book, I have spent a lot of timegetting to the roots of this

(30:47):
problem and getting them to talkto me about what actually
happened at the time. And ittook a while to sort of unpack
what was going on because theyhad very different versions of
it. And because they're veryclose friends today, they were
protecting each other.
They were skirting around theissue in these very interesting
ways. And for me as a historian,was a fascinating problem. But

(31:09):
for me as a daughter of them,was a very important emotional
problem to solve because I havealways wondered like what
happened and not been able topiece their stories together
because they didn't fit thosepieces. And so it's not so
surprising I couldn't get it tofit. So that has been a really

(31:29):
important and productive processfor me to get to talk to them
about that larger politicalconflict and why it was that
they couldn't talk about it andto think through how that
generation who have always saidthat the personal was political
could not figure out that thetwo were completely enmeshed in

(31:51):
their issues has just beenfascinating.

Adriane Lentz-Smith (31:55):
And that part really felt like Black
freedom movements in the era. Itfelt particularly painful for me
to read because you understoodboth, or at least I understood
both, the women who started thelesbian movements need to do
something for themselves and bein a space where they didn't

(32:18):
have to, where they didn't haveto explain certain parts of
themselves. And the sense ofloss and betrayal for the women
who were like, but we just madethis thing together and yourself
seems like it's pulling you awayfrom me or us, right, because
they spoke in this language ofwe. And that, like, I could hit

(32:41):
it as a historian and I couldfeel it as a person who has
negotiated friendships andallyships and all of these
things. The difficulty ofintimate solidarity, I think,
was really beautifullyexpressed.
So as a writerly question well,so it's a question both from me
as a writer and as a member of afamily who has my own

(33:07):
disagreements with other membersof my family about family
narratives and how they'reremembered or what we mean. You
write in your book, you say, howdoes one write about one's
closest human relationships? AndI find that idea of doing so
terrifying, so I wanna hear howyou'd answer that question. And
then even more, how do you writeabout your mothers in a way that

(33:28):
allows them to be something morethan what you might need them to
be, and also something more thanwhat they might need to remember
themselves as having been?

Pernille Ipsen (33:38):
So the moment that I write about is the moment
in my mother's lives where theybecame the women that I knew,
right, and that I grew up with,and also who they became when
they became who they wanted tobe after much struggle. So it is
the most important moment in mymother's lives. Like maybe

(34:00):
having those of them who hadmore children will remember the
births of their children assuper important as well. But
this moment in their 20s whenthey were making themselves in
this movement was so formative,so important. And so picking at
that history, I knew that I wasgetting to the core of something

(34:24):
super important for them.
They live off that history. Theylive with that history. And of
course they were super excitedthat I would write that history,
but they also had not thoughtthrough what that would mean,
right? That I would actuallytake ownership over that
history. And when I firststarted working on the projects,

(34:44):
I describe in the book how Ifirst got the idea to write a
book when I was 16.
At a gathering, we were allsitting around a table and they
were telling their stories aboutthe women's movement. And they
are so fascinating, so many ofthose anecdotes. And at some
point I was like, I want towrite a book about you. This is
so cool. And they said, Oh, ofcourse, that's so wonderful.

(35:05):
And of course you should do it,you know, because you know us so
well, blah, blah, blah. There'sbeen other stories about them
since and before. Like they wereused to telling their stories,
but they loved telling me theirstories. As I got older and I
became a historian and when Ifinally started interviewing
them and thinking about writinga book for real, it was both so

(35:29):
meaningful to pick up that storythat I had carried around with
me forever and fairly terrifyingbecause how in the world was
They're pretty stubborn people,as many movement people are, and
they cling to and they adorethis story. So how would I ever
get the freedom to actually tella story?

(35:50):
So in the beginning I thought Imight write a collective
something where we would writeit together and I would write
something and then they wouldedit it and they would blah blah
blah. And the first time I didanything close to it where one
of them read some of my text, Irealized that was never gonna
work. Right? Like, I there wasno way I was gonna be able to

(36:11):
control that and or find myselfin it, and it wouldn't be it
just wouldn't work. So foryears, I sort of didn't share
text with them.
And even though I didn't sharethe text with them, we had all
these many, many, many, manyconversations also as a group.
And so I was fully aware thatthey would have many reactions
to this story. There was no waythey couldn't. And so I

(36:34):
developed these two principles.So I read some other books over
the years.
I've read books by journalistsabout social movements and about
communes. Journalists and somehistorians too will sort of pick
the biggest conflict and centeron that. And then they will
write people up against eachother. And they will say, Oh,
this person has this story, andthis person has that story.

(36:57):
Isn't it interesting howdifferently we remember the
past?
Right? And it is veryinteresting how differently we
remember the past. That scaredme pretty cold to think of that,
right? Like to pull my mother'sstories up and say, aren't they
different? And that thedifference should somehow be
what was interesting about it.
So instead, I developed thisprinciple that their stories all

(37:20):
had to be taken at face value.Like they all had to get the
space that they needed to havetheir stories represented and
told, that I wouldn't write themup against each other. So I
wouldn't, like in one paragraph,sort of place two different,
very different visions of howsomething played out next to

(37:42):
each other, which is a tool thatjournalists will use all the
time. Right? Because itheightens the conflict level.
And for me personally, but alsosort of politically, it was very
important to tell a story abouthow difference is productive and
how difference can be amotivator and how feminist

(38:02):
alliances across thosedifferences are super helpful
and interesting. And so writingthe conflict up too soon and too
early was not what I wanted tothat that that was not what I
was about, but also not what Iwas interested in. And so I
tried really hard not to writethem up against each other. And

(38:23):
then I just tried also to forgetthat they were ever gonna read
it. But there's no question thatall the way through, they were
the first readers on my mindleading up to the point where
they were actually gonna readthe manuscript before I
published it.
I thought of nothing else. Like,had not thought of, like, all
the other readers that wouldread it afterwards or and or the

(38:44):
life my own life after they readit for that matter. There was
just that that date in Decemberwhen they were going to read it,
and then there was no after. Andit was super intense when they
did read it. But I think thatthat's right to the core of that
problem of writing somebody'sstory, right, and writing a
person so close to you's storybecause you take ownership over

(39:08):
it in a very different way whenyou put it down.
Right? Like, when it's there onpaper, you're taking a piece of
their story away. Right? And youare made of the story of how
your mother treats you. Right?
And you are made of all thosestories that if you were born
four years earlier or four yearslater would be so different.
Right? I have a younger sisterwho was born after we moved out

(39:32):
of the commune who didn't haveall these extra mothers, she had
a very different life and shehas a very different life. And
we talk a lot about whatdifference that makes, but it
colors and it shapes everythingthat she can think about our
years together as well. Right?
Because the beginning was sodifferent. And as historians, we
know how important the beginningof a story is. And I think

(39:55):
that's why it was such a gamble,like taking my mother's seven
different perspectives and sevendifferent stories and trying to
weave them together. And then Idon't know that they had
understood how much I was gonnado with the conflict that they
had with each other. Especiallyfor one of my mothers, it was a
very it was very, very hard toread about the conflict.

(40:19):
And that took a lot of diplomacyand a lot of back and forth and
a lot of phone conversations,her and I, together to get to
the point where she could feelokay about the book by the time
it was published because it wastoo close. Some of what we
needed to do, her and I, was tounderstand the difference
between the story as it happenedback then and her hurt over that

(40:42):
and her therapeutic need to dealwith that and that I was the one
who told the story and toseparate the responsibilities
there. So the memoir writerDorothy Allison

Adriane Lentz-Smith (40:55):
Bastard Out of Carolina.

Pernille Ipsen (40:56):
Bastard Out of Carolina. Yeah, I was at a
writing workshop with her andMadison some years ago where
somebody asked in the audience,a young man, what do I do if I
break my mother's heart when Iwrite my memoir about her and
abuse and blah, blah, blah. Likewhat do I do if I break my
mother's heart? And she said,the best thing you can do, you

(41:17):
cannot write the story. She hadthis whole thing about stories
will find their way out into theworld and if you've been given
this story you're the one whoneeds to tell it and you can't
like you can't run away fromthat responsibility.
But then the thing you can do isto make sure you're in the room
when you break your mother'sheart. So when you've written
the story, you take it to her,like you don't send it in the

(41:38):
mail as she might have backthen. You go to her house and
you sit there while she reads itso that you can be there when
her heart breaks. This was in'14 or '15 or something like way
before the book was done. And Iwrote in my handwritten notes
from that workshop, I got to bein Denmark when they read my
book, you know, when they readthe manuscript.

(42:00):
And so when I had finished themanuscript, I did fly to Denmark
and I did, you know, make surethat they all got a physical
copy. And then I went around tomeet with them all individually
and to talk to them about thebook. That was an intense week.

Adriane Lentz-Smith (42:15):
Yeah. Tell me, how did they react?

Pernille Ipsen (42:18):
So they all cried, right? They also all
laughed. And most of the tearswere produced by either
happiness and or nostalgia orlike reliving things that they
hadn't thought about in years.They all had very strong
reactions to some things that Ihad no idea that they would

(42:40):
react to, like was super random,like, some of the things that
they reacted to. And otherthings were very, like, I could
have guessed that that was wherethey would have reacted most
strongly.
A couple of places I had brokenmy own principle about not
writing them up against eachother. So in the chapters about
my birth mother, there was ascene where at the feminist camp

(43:04):
that first summer called herboyfriend a lot on the very,
very intricate, very oldfashioned phone that they had at
this camp. She would talk to herex husband who she had left. And
so she wasn't proud of havinghad these phone conversations
with him that summer. And one ofmy other mothers had told me
that she was on the phone a lot.
And even, you know, then we hadsome at some recording I had

(43:26):
from a meeting where we were alltogether, they had had a sort of
a little back and forth about itwhere one of my mother said, you
were on that phone all the time.And my other mother said, no. I,
you know, I barely called him orsomething like that. They were
definitely disagreeing about it.And I had written that into the
text because it was too funny.
Like, it was just like I hadgotten carried away. And so I
had put a bit of their dialogueinto the text. And my birth

(43:50):
mother who didn't wanna have inwriting that she might have
called her ex husband more thanshe wanted to that summer, she
said, like, I really don't likethat. And I was like, of course
not. You don't like it.
I'm gonna take it out rightaway. As soon as she said it,
was like, what the heck was Idoing with that anyway? Except
that I had just gotten carriedaway. But like that did not,
that was exactly what I didn'twanna do. Right?

(44:11):
Like I didn't wanna question herauthority to remember that
summer. It was even in herchapter. So they each have a
chapter in the first part. Thereare seven chapters that you have
a chapter. And in that chapter,they get the authority to tell
their story.
Like I'm not interviewing oldboyfriends or old lovers or
friends or sisters or anybody.It's their boys, they get to

(44:31):
tell their story of how they getto the women's movement. And so
like, what was I thinkingbringing in this dialogue? And
so that was easy. I could justtake that out.
But in a different place where Ihad broken my principle was in
part three, where they werealready fighting about these
issues that were super importantfor them. I had an opinion, and
I tried really hard not to havean opinion. And I tried to keep

(44:54):
my opinion out of it because tomake room for these seven
different perspectives, I reallyhad to keep myself in check and
not pick sides on whether thelesbian movement should have
been founded or not. I do havean opinion and my mothers kind
of know and by now theydefinitely know, but they also
probably knew then. But thatwasn't supposed to be in the
text.
And I knew that I wasn'tsupposed to have that opinion in

(45:17):
the text, but I accidentallytook one of my other mother's
opinion and put placed it in aplace where they were sort of
written up against each other.And that took me a while to
understand that I had done thatand that that had triggered that
one of my mothers justcompletely collapsed. Like, just
she cried and cried and criedand wrote me an 18 page single
spaced letter about all thethings that was wrong with part

(45:41):
three and how she wanted me tochange it. And she said, here,
read this. I'm just gonna go sitin the other room, and when
you're done, we can talk abouthow you can rewrite your book.
And that was the hardest momentof this whole process. And that
was what then took all thisdiplomatic back and forth and
conversations. And I didn'trewrite the part, but I found

(46:01):
these places that had triggeredher. And then I had to roll it
back from there because once shehad been triggered like that, it
was hard for her not to disagreewith everything. Right?
Like, once you heard, like, I'mnot seen, I'm not represented.
You didn't hear me. You listenedto the others more. You're
closer to the others. You didn'tsee me.
You didn't hear me. Once thatmode has sort of entered the

(46:23):
conversation, then it getsreally hard to roll it back. So
delicate. So that I learned alot from the hard way.

Adriane Lentz-Smith: Excruciatingly. And again, where (46:31):
undefined
the, in this case, the personaland the historical, her
relation, like that her responsewould be, you're closer to the
others than to me, tells youshe's not a reader responding to
a writer's misrepresentation.She's not a source mad at a
journalist. Like, again, itfeels like a betrayal that

(46:55):
echoes earlier betrayals. Yoursaying this also highlights
something for me, which is thatin reading this book, after
eighteen, nineteen years ofknowing you, I still felt like I
was like, wow, I know Pinaudbetter right now than I did.

(47:15):
But it's not because I mean, ofcourse it's about you. All
writing is autobiographical insome certain way, but you're not
you are an important presence,but not a big presence. I mean,
literally, you're like a weething. But I know you better
because of the strength of theportraits of the seven people
who began to raise you. And thepart of me that is very much a

(47:37):
black southerner, that questionof like, who are your people?
I'm like, oh, these are yourpeople. And through learning
them and learning about theworld from which they emerged
that they sent on newtrajectories, I see you more
clearly. I mean, in some wayswe've already talked about this,

(47:57):
but I'm wondering what writingthis book gave you, especially
whether it was different fromwhat you anticipated writing the
book would give you. You saidyou've been planning to write it
since you were a teenager.

Pernille Ipsen (48:11):
So it's given me so many things. It has, first
and foremost, brought my mothersback together for me in a way
that was very powerful. So Istarted interviewing them in
2009 when I had just gotten ajob at University of Wisconsin
and had moved to Madison. And Iwas really homesick. And I was

(48:34):
wondering what I was doing sofar away from my many family
members.
And I also was realizing that ifI was starting a ten year track
job, I might as well just startthis project too because there
was never gonna be a bettermoment. Before that, I had
always sort of put it aside. Iwas getting a degree in history.
I was having children. I wasdoing, you know, I was doing
other things.

(48:55):
And I couldn't wait any longer.And so I started interviewing
them every summer. So it was asummertime project. All of my
recordings have all these birdsand warm weather in the
background of Danish summers. Soit became a very personal
project for me in that momentwhen I was longing for Denmark.
So it gave me a lot. And at themoment when I started writing

(49:17):
it, I think in 15 when I firstwrote a book proposal and was
going to send it out, I startedwriting it in English and it did
not feel right. And so I endedup writing it in Danish. Writing
that book in Danish was soimportant for me because it also
kept my Danish alive and mywhole life on the Danish side of

(49:39):
the ocean while I was teachingin English and having that busy
professor teaching life. It dida lot of emotional, practical,
psychological work for me allthe way through.
But then getting to dive intothis conflict that they had and
figuring out what to do withthat was also very important for
me. And lastly, and this isespecially something that I

(50:00):
realized after it's come out andmy birth mother has been so, so
happy with the book and with thereception. And like none of them
had foreseen it would be read bythat many people in Denmark and
that that many people would haveopinions about it and want to
talk to them about it and allthat. These five years have been
very busy that way. But sincethen, I've also come to think a

(50:23):
little deeper about what kind ofemotional work it's been doing
for me.
And I think one of the things ithas done is that my mother, as I
said early in this conversation,was really an introvert. She
passed two years ago, and shenever one to have many close
relationships with other people.And she has not really had a
life partner that worked wellfor her. She's had a handful of

(50:46):
close friends, but the communewas definitely the closest she
ever got to a durable family,like a real safe and productive
place for her emotions. And sobringing them back together
around her, with her, with mewas also a way for me to show my
mother that that's what sheneeded.

(51:07):
You know, it was not acoincidence that those were some
of her happiest years. This issomething that I think I haven't
been able to think through ascarefully as I can now because
she was still alive. But nowthat she's not here, I can sort
of see that in a differentlight.

Adriane Lentz-Smith (51:24):
That's lovely. Yeah. So the book, as
you said, it hit hard inDenmark, right? My older sister
was very excited to see it, orwhen I sent her the still of it
on a bookshelf in that TV showthat she's addicted to, Borgen,
I hope it's

Pernille Ipsen (51:40):
called. Yeah.

Adriane Lentz-Smith (51:42):
What kind of conversations has the book
sparked among Danish readers?And were those different kind of
in you said it came out in themidst of the pandemic. Was were
those different in 2020? Whatkind of work is it still doing
in 2025?

Pernille Ipsen (51:55):
I think that that one of the things I wanted
to do with the book from thebeginning on, and, like, the
reason one of the motivatingfactors when I started the book,
As I was growing up and, youknow, both as a young younger
person and then as an adult, wedidn't have any very many
stories about communes or socialmovement lives that took those

(52:16):
lives seriously and or thattried to lean into them and
really understand what was goingon and what work it did and what
it meant for us who came after.So both in Denmark, but also in
The States, many stories aboutthe 70s are kind of mocking and
make these social movement livesvery laughable or

Adriane Lentz-Smith (52:39):
like Privilege.

Pernille Ipsen (52:41):
Ridiculous almost. And there are stories
out there of children growing upin the movement that are very
negative. And I do not want totake anything away from those
stories. I'm sure that there wasa lot of really complicated
situations to grow up in as achild in these social movements.
No question about it.
But that was not my story. Mystory was that it was a real

(53:05):
privilege and very amazing tohave all these mothers. So I
wanted to have that story outthere. And that has really
resonated with a lot of peoplefrom my generation, but also
younger people who want to livedifferent lives. Just the sense
that other lives are possible,right?
And that even if you don't makethe perfect utopia on the first

(53:25):
try, the process of trying to doit is going to give you a lot in
and of itself, and you're goingto learn so much that you can
take to your other projectslater and not be so afraid to
lean into the moretransformative and different
ways of living. And a lot ofyoung people in Denmark are
trying to live differently now.Now often because of dread over

(53:49):
the climate catastrophe we'reheading towards, but also
because they understand thatthey need to organize society
differently and that that startswith them and their communities
and the ways that they organize.And I think many Americans too,
many of the students who I'vespoken to are just happy, are
interested in hearing a storyabout how that might look like

(54:10):
in practice. And for my mother'sown generation, it was just the
sense of recognition thatsomebody from their children's
generation was interested intheir story, wanted to hear it.
Yeah, and then I think the waythat I wrote it as a memoir and
because I wrote it as a memoir,people identified with different
characters. So like everybodyhas a favorite or two that they

(54:32):
follow into the movement andinto their transformation. And I
think that worked well. I gotlucky that I had seven mothers.
It's also a very lucky number,but it was also a very useful
way to tell a story about asocial movement, it turned out.
Yeah.

Adriane Lentz-Smith (54:48):
I had one character that I followed in,
and that was sort of my entry,and another person who was my
exit.

Pernille Ipsen (54:56):
Do you wanna say a little bit about who and
where?

Adriane Lentz-Smith (54:59):
Well, so I think that like, I wrote in my
notes at some point, Vivica is aboss. Like, you know, she's I
mean, I imagine she was manypeople's interests. Right? She's
got this presence and dynamism,and I remained attached to her
through the book. But I thinkit's is it Inge, the one who, as
the commune breaks up, a lot ofpeople have something to go to.

(55:22):
If you're in the lesbianmovement, you're choosing
something else. If you're deepin the red stocking, you know,
if you're Hannah and you'veorganized everything, then you
have that. Inga really felt likeshe had given herself to this.
And so the breakup wasextraordinarily painful for

(55:43):
everyone, but in some ways theyall left her. Like, literally,
like, watch and that for me,like, I almost cried.
Like, I was like, you what areyou doing to like, I was mad at
your mothers in that moment onher behalf. Because part of me,
again, it's like, learn theAudrey Lord lesson. Like, this

(56:03):
is not something to break upover. This is something to fight
through, to, like, learn how togive each other more space to do
something, but you don't need tobe over.

Pernille Ipsen (56:16):
That's a beautiful that's a beautiful
thing to say, Adrienne. Youdon't need to be over.

Adriane Lentz-Smith (56:22):
And I think one of the gifts of the way that
you wrote it is, I know, like,as painful as that moment is,
because you write about processas you're writing, because I
know that they're going to betalking to each other, I know
that that particular beautifulthing won't come back, but
something will come back. Andthat's how you're able to kind

(56:43):
of bear that moment. One finalquestion. You mentioned that you
started writing this book inMadison, Wisconsin, that for the
past twenty years or so, you'vedivided your time between The US
and Denmark. Do you think thatthis is a different book because
of the time that you've spent inThe United States?

Pernille Ipsen (57:02):
I definitely think that living in Madison and
teaching gender and women'sstudies in in Madison shaped how
I wrote the story, for sure.Both on the sort of emotional
personal side, as I mentionedbefore, but also in my growing
interest in telling the story toyounger people about how the

(57:23):
second wave was not just leaderson the front cover of Ms.
Magazine who wanted to andclaimed the leadership and sort
of became the face of a verywhite and very upper middle
class women's movement. And solike telling a story of the very
different people my mothers wereand the very different

(57:45):
backgrounds they came from was away for me to sort of open it up
and say, but so many thingshappened in the second wave and
also in The US, right? And soteaching Gender and Women's
Studies 01/2001 and teaching thehistory of feminism in medicine,
I became more and more aware ofall the different things that
happened in the 70s, right?

(58:05):
The disability movement and allthe different types of women's
movements and the differentracial organizations of women's
movements and all like there wasso much stuff happening that I
didn't know of when I startedteaching in The US because I was
more familiar with the Europeanversion of the history of
feminism. But also that many ofour students had no idea about

(58:26):
because they sort of written offthe second wave as too white,
too upper class, too cisgender,too boring also. And that if
anything, it was definitely notboring. But also familiarizing
myself with the American versionof the story was super helpful
because it made me think a lotabout what it is that is worth

(58:46):
taking with us from the secondwave. And also what hurt it does
and or the problems we run intoby just writing all of it off as
not productive.
Now, I think that that haschanged since I started
teaching. So I started teachingin 2010 at UW. And in the years
that I've been there, studentshave been more and more

(59:08):
interested in the second wave.So I think it actually it's
loosening up. And I think thatthat's great.
And I think historians aregetting really good at writing
about the second wave as well. Ithink it's a generational thing
too. Our generation, when wewere younger, had a very stark
need to separate ourselves fromour parents' generation, right?
And the grandchildren do nothave the same need, it turns

(59:29):
out, which is often the case.And so it has shaped how I think
of the story.
I am really excited to get totalk to people about it in
English because all of theseyears I have told versions of
the story and participated inthings academically that had
something to do with it. And mycolleagues, my friends, my

(59:49):
family, you know, they know bitsof the story just like you did,
right? But that you now can readthe whole thing and we can talk
about it in-depth is just sowonderful for me and meaningful.

Adriane Lentz-Smith (01:00:02):
Thank you so much for writing it. It was a
joy. It was a pleasure to read.I learned so much and then went
around, as is my want, tellingother people I became very
pedantic within about the spanof twenty four hours about the
Danish women's movement. I'mlike, southern historian.

(01:00:22):
Why don't you dial it back alittle bit? Also, as a final
note, say I think this would bea really neat book to teach
alongside Octavia Butler'sparable trilogy. Just thinking
about this, you said all of themany movements that are
happening in the seventies, butalso all of the many things that
are on the mind of these womenwho are working for women's

(01:00:43):
liberation, but are alsothinking about the ways in which
the world might be changed. So

Pernille Ipsen (01:00:48):
that's a good idea. Yeah. Hey. Thank you so
much. I've so enjoyed thisconversation.
Thank you,

Adriane Lentz-Smith (01:00:55):
Adrienne. Absolutely.

Narrator (01:00:58):
This has been a University of Minnesota Press
production. The book My SevenMothers Making a Family in the
Danish Women's Movement byPernil Ibsen is available from
University of Minnesota Press.Thank you for listening.