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Washington Women’s Heritage Project records, 1900-2000 
University of Washington Libraries Special Collections 
Jody Aliesan 
April 18 & 24, 1996  
Cassette 3, Side 1 
 
 
Julie O'Grady  00:17 
The date is April 18. I am Julie O'Grady, a student at the University of Washington, working on 
the Washington Women's Heritage Project. Today, I will be conducting an oral history interview 
with Jody Aliesan. Jody is presently residing in Seattle, Washington, and this interview is taking 
place in her home there. This is tape number three. Jody, please continue-- [Cross-talk.] 
 
Jody Aliesan  00:45 
Well-- 
 
Jody Aliesan  00:45 
And when I went to sing at the Women's Center in Washington, DC, after I finished, a woman 
came up to me and said, "How is it, singing your own stuff?" She said, "I've been thinking about 
doing it myself." And that woman end up being [?Meg Christian?]. And the rest is history. But 
when I recorded my album and it sold out its first pressing, and the people who had done the 
pressing in Los Angeles had destroyed the master. And there wasn't that many copies that were 
pressed, I can't remember how many now. But once again, I just sort of looked at it and said, 
"That's that." Once again, I'm not meant to be the leader or, uh, achieve the-the gold ring. 
Somehow, my part is to--play the [inaudible]. So--I won't. I'm sure I won't be found in any of the 
histories of women's music, because they mostly start [inaudible] between the lines.  
 
Julie O'Grady  00:47 
From-- 
 
Jody Aliesan  00:47 
I was just at the end where I was talking about the work with the YWCA. Another thing I was 
doing at the time was, uh, singing. And this overlaps with what I'll talk about later, life as a 
writer. But one of the things I found out was that songs that I sang as part of an expression of 
how I felt about things turned out to speak for other women, too, and that I could be useful 
singing, um, in concert situations and smaller groups, partly to raise our spirits for solidarity, but 
also in an educational way to schools and agencies, and at fundraisers, different kinds of benefits. 
So I was--I was singing one or two nights a week someplace, and ended up traveling to different 
parts of the country doing it. It's kind of amusing. I find myself, at times, to be sort of the 
anonymous precursor, and maybe like running for student body president, made it really easier 
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for some woman later. Or writing [inaudible]. It made it easier for [inaudible] now. [Inaudible] 
go on so quickly, she didn't know there was a precedent or precursor. So I also feel like I'm 
something like a precursor for what came to be called women's music, because at the time, I was 
the only one writing and singing songs about life as a woman from a feminist perspective.  
 
Jody Aliesan  01:06 
Well, that's-that's all I have to say in that whole area of discussion, but there are a lot of things 
that have kind of come up that are related to these other sort of columns of notes that I've made, 
one of the things [inaudible] between [inaudible]. One thing I learned to mention before we, uh, 
close this session tonight is that I spoke of the time when my father got up from the table and 
yelled at me when I was home, um--gee, I don't call it home--of their home [chuckles] where I 
spent two years of my life, but I had come back to return--some kind, I guess it must have been, 
was related to the time when I was, um, in Alabama. And my brother asked me to [inaudible] for 
books that I had read and was reading. And there were two that I mentioned, there were 
[inaudible], and those two books were what enraged my father, and he stood and said, 
"[Inaudible, possibly offensive language]." And as I said, off the recording here, when I look 
back on that, I feel that certainly there was racism, but there was something else happening, too, 
it wasn't just racism. And now I can look back on published paper and say that, um, "You have a 
point." So life is like [inaudible], and you have to play the instruments.  
 
Jody Aliesan  03:42 
Okay, we are going to bring the interview to a close for tonight and pick up next week. 
[Recording ends.] 
 
Jody Aliesan  05:44 
[Recording begins again.] The date is April 24, 1996. I am Julie O'Grady, a student at the 
University of Washington, working on the Washington Women's Heritage Project. Today, I will 
be conducting an oral history interview with Jody Aliesan. Jody is presently residing in Seattle, 
Washington, and this interview is taking place in her home there. This is tape number three. 
 
Jody Aliesan  06:18 
Well, this time, as I remember, we were going to continue by talking about, uh, political 
involvement, involvement in kinds of political and social issues. And I would say that my 
motivation over my life to participate in things like this is--has been, um... has had a foundation 
of a concern about justice. Because I have been politically active out of a sense of responsibility, 
rather than any kind of natural aptitude. Um, I have been moved to a point where I felt that I 
needed to do something basically in order to live with myself out of the sense of responsibility. 
And I-I can trace that back to, uh, my family.  
 
Jody Aliesan  07:25 
I have to watch out when I'm talking about my family, because, uh, there's a certain amount of 
internalized classism that I come up against. There were certainly serious limitations in the 
family and in the, um, life that I grew up in, but there were also important strengths, and one of 
them was a family and a small community sense of cooperation and teamwork, and, um, 
contribution, voluntary contribution to the community. A sense of the naturalness and the 
inevitability and just the acceptance of the fact that everyone's going to be of-of service in some 
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way, and that also, the generational sort of responsibility—and this is going to be a place where I 
didn't fulfill the expectations--where if young people go out of the community for education or 
whatever, that they'll come back and take their place in the generations. So I have that as a 
[clears throat] foundation by the-the air that I breathe, [inaudible] assumption. And so I think, as 
I remember mentioning, the first time I can recall actually taking independent actions, setting up 
a lemonade stand to raise money for victims of uh, an earthquake. I must have been-- I suppose 
this can be traced back to the time of the earthquake to get the date. I guess I must have been 
about eight or nine years old. And then in-in growing up in school, there was an assumption that 
part of what we did was service organizations, [inaudible] they were required at school.  
 
Jody Aliesan  09:33 
Um, and then, certainly another important thing about my early-early life was when I was an 
American Field Service student--exchange student--to Germany. That gave me a perspective on 
the United States--not to mention, of course, knowledge about Germany--but looking back at my 
own country from a distance and through the eyes and the newspapers of people who weren't 
part of my dominant culture was really an important piece of training for critical insight and the 
ability to see beyond certain assumptions of [inaudible], for example, beyond which one not 
supposed to analyze the behavior of one's [inaudible]. So that wa--that was really liberating to-to 
get that. Of course, that sort of perspective was not appreciated in the program, as part of the 
schooling itself was not necessarily appreciated. My parents were very ambivalent about it. On 
the one hand, my going to college--there weren't that many people in my family on both sides 
that had gone to college, so that was a good thing, but to learn something and to change because 
of what we learned--that was uncomfortable, and there are ways to attempt to put you into place 
if you began to try to apply what you learned. It was assumed that you were, you know, what 
could be considered class treason or heresy or unpatriotic, treasonous sorts of points of view. Or 
trying to be better than other people, if we used the words that we were learning. We had to be 
careful, or [inaudible] the consequences, of, um, being scolded or opposed. And begin to 
experience that, um, biculturalism [inaudible], to be loyal to your [inaudible]--not to deny it, but 
also to be loyal to yourself and your [inaudible]. 
 
Jody Aliesan  11:59 
So the next important part of the early education was the observation of the Civil Rights 
movement. And then those terribly powerful years of assassination. John F. Kennedy. Dr. King. 
Malcom X. Bobby. The upheavals and the questioning in the way that the upheavals would crack 
the surface of what was supposed to be true, so that you could see underneath, then understand 
deeper, how our culture, politics and economy moved and how they worked and who suffered 
because of it. Then the whole build-up of the war in Vietnam, and watching the doublespeak 
begin in our family. That's that--the unconsciousness of it all at the beginning, but even in the 
mid-60s, you were able to see what was going on in the media. So I guess having accumulation, 
understanding of hypocrisy and just understanding the quote, unquote, national mind about what 
you were supposed to believe about your country, and what was underneath, what was really 
going on. Um, and becoming aware of what some people were standing up and being, because of 
it, trying to change what [inaudible] expose what was happening. It moved me, uh, after college, 
to involvement in pretty much college [inaudible] organizations and in graduate school, self-
education, but not any participation beyond that, beyond showing up for--showing up for a rally 
or something like that. Or discussion groups, things that were not active, [inaudible]. 
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Jody Aliesan  14:32 
Finally, as I mentioned before, I took the--the-- Martin Luther King was murdered and Bobby's 
death, too, to really devote my life as it had been going to change and participation, for better or 
for worse. And it's hard to know [inaudible] whether what we were doing really is going to help, 
but um... You can't do anything else, not when what you were doing wasn't helping at all.  
 
Jody Aliesan  15:08 
And then, of course, the whole question of what helping means, and whether those you might 
want to make yourself available to need it or want it and all of that, which is another question. I 
would say that it begins for me at the moment when I decided to walk away from graduate 
school. But there's a story there that needs to be told, too, that pertains more to what happens, I 
don't know, to learning? I don't know. Grad students? Whatever. I'm gonna tell this story. Um, 
when I-- Let's see, when I left that year in Alabama, that's what I'm talking about, it was 1969, 
the summer of 1969--which was possi-quite possibly the toughest year of my life--when I left 
Alabama, and left my marriage, and moved to Cambridge, I was writing my dissertation. I put 
together a proposal.  
 
Jody Aliesan  16:16 
The proposal was for a study of the use of the [?choral?] figures in Shakespeare, these figures 
who stand up before or after or in between the acts [inaudible] and make sure everybody in the 
audience knows what's going on. Unlike what happened after the death of Shakespeare, [?and 
definitely this group?], when James the First came to the throne after being in exile in France, he 
brought with him a tradition that the audience would be tricked, and that was part of the [?best of 
the life?]. Not [inaudible], but this tradition as a [?court?] figure started way back in the origins 
of when [inaudible] was staged like of off moving wagons in the small, rural, English 
countryside. And so I wanted to show what happened to these plays, using this very [inaudible]. 
And my proposal had to do with that, which ran the risk of being a lot more sociological, rather 
than literary.  
 
Jody Aliesan  17:31 
And they--there in-in Brandeis, there was the dissertation advisor, and there was a first reader. 
The dissertation advisor, asked me to change the topic. He didn't think--and I don't know if this 
was sexism or what--He didn't think that a graduate, graduate student or whatever, um, should 
write on something that was prepared or seasoned enough, or paid their dues or knew enough to 
write about Shakespeare. So he convinced me that I should change it to a [?call of honor?] that 
was tracing this [inaudible] anywhere from the very first portrayal of drama, which happened 
within a church service in the Middle Ages, and it went all the way up to Shakespeare's first 
play. And I agreed to do that. This was at a graduate school which was fairly progressive and 
very progressive, where at one point I was also told, when I first started, that my interest in 
Anglo-Saxon literature was-- One of my peers, another graduate student, asked me about that, 
because [inaudible] didn't understand why I was interested in it, because it was so masculine. At 
any rate, I wrote this dissertation all summer long, just like a job, really driving myself to get it 
done. And-and then turned it in and went on to Washington, DC, to work against the war.  
 
Jody Aliesan  18:11 
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And what I got in the mail a couple of months after [inaudible] was the carbon copy of the letter 
that the first reader on [inaudible] from England sent the dissertation advisor saying that my 
dissertation was rejected by him because, first of all, I had changed my topic, and then, and my 
dissertation advisor didn't stand up for me and explain that he had asked me to change it. And 
secondly, he said that [inaudible] all, almost all of my sources were pre-[inaudible], which is to 
say that anything before that year couldn't be valid [inaudible] for-for [laughs] medieval 
literature. Well, I wrote back and I said, well, in effect, I said, "I've got a lot of gold stars at this 
university, and I've been aware of a lot of mistreatment of graduate students in the class, and I 
feel that I'm caught in a political situation, basically, between two members of the faculty, seeing 
how my first reader outranked my dissertation advisor, and I request a hearing on this subject, 
and if I don't get any reconsideration and a hearing on this, I will expose what's going on, 
because, um, I think that people will realize this is not [inaudible] on my part. I've moved 
through this university and, um, have a great deal of accomplishment." Um, something to that 
effect. And they wrote back right away, communication [inaudible] right away, setting up a 
meeting for that Thanksgiving.  
 
Jody Aliesan  18:45 
So I went from DC up to Waltham, to the University for that meeting. And I remember--I 
remember very vividly--I walked into the office, and the dissertation advisor was sitting behind 
his desk, looking very sheepish and apologetic, and-and making small talk, um, with me, asking, 
what would be in the future for me. And the first reader, sitting in a trench coat off to the side of 
the chair with his body all closed--his arms folded, he hadn't even taken off his coat--and he 
interrupted, then, this sort of conversation by pounding his very rigid index finger on the 
dissertation. He didn't even say a word [laughs]! But that was to tell us that we were to stop 
talking in this friendly way and get down to business. So, um, I had looked all the way through 
my footnotes at that point, and found, and I may be misremembering these proportions, but at 
least the majority, if not more, I think it was more than that of the footnotes were post-1960--not 
that that seemed like such an important thing to me. Um, and there were a few other things that 
were said that I refuted and pointed out that I was asked to change the topic. And at that point, 
the two of them got into an argument [laughs], and I'm afraid I don't recall what I said exactly, 
but at some point, I got up and said--and excused myself.  
 
Jody Aliesan  22:34 
And then I wrote back sometime later to tell them that finishing the degree was not important to 
me--that I felt as I remember, that I felt that I had-- Oh, I know what it was. The first reader 
wrote me a letter. Aha, yes. The first reader wrote me a letter, and the closest he could get to an 
apology was to say that everything would be fine and the dissertation would be accepted if I 
rearranged it thematically instead of chronologically. And at that point in my life, I really felt 
that that was a bunch of busy book to-to cover--to save his face. So I wrote back and said that I 
felt that I had completed the dissertation as it was, that-that it was complete as it was, and I had 
no intention of rewriting. And it was years later that they wrote and told me that, um, I don't 
know what it was, but the years that I was allowed to compete the degree with them were 
running out, and the same first reader said in a very flattering letter that-that they encouraged me 
to complete everything. I had done everything, I'd done even the final oral exams, everything and 
[inaudible] dissertation that they encouraged me to complete it. I wrote back and said that I had 
no need. I felt no need to complete the degree, that what I was doing with my life was 
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meaningful. And that I wrote was some ironic, semi-sarcastic comment that would not, would 
not seem sarcastic to anybody else--something about, I hoped that they were living their lives in 
a way that was meaningful to them. [The laugh.] And that was the end of my PhD. [Laughs.] 
 
Jody Aliesan  24:30 
So by that time--Oh, and what I heard after the fact, from other graduate students was that, as a 
result of what happened to me, a lot of my peers became very concerned for themselves, with 
good reason. A lot of strange things happened to graduate students in those days, not that they 
don't still happen. But they, uh, I guess, put together a petition or protested in some way, I was 
unaware of, to the point where an ombudsperson was established for the graduate school. The 
graduate students could go to for [inaudible] some kind of mediator or separate voice. So, um, 
[inaudible] important. [Inaudible.] 
 
Jody Aliesan  25:23 
I feel--there've been times my life when people have commiserated or felt-- Uh, you know, like 
myself was concerned about the fact that women were cut--often charged with not completing 
their dissertation, and here I was not completing. I had to get over that. But basically, I feel, 
looking back that, it was more courageous not to complete it than it would have been to finish, 
because I had my self-worth. I guess it's the same. There's a triad here, the uh, valedictorian, the 
summa cum laude, and then PhD, all three of those right up to the wire and then not over it.  
 
Jody Aliesan  26:08 
So then the--I've-I've spoken about the experience in Alabama to some degree... I'll just move 
beyond that, rather than getting into more detail so that I can speak about work against the war. I 
started out in Washington, DC. I did congressional research, and then media work. That was in, 
um... October and November and December of '69. The idea behind Moratorium Committee was 
that one day of the month, starting in September of that year, would be set aside as a moratorium 
on different [inaudible]. And then each month, an additional day would be added, so there would 
be a grassroots sort of impetus, people in their own communities deciding what to do with that 
day. But the Committee in DC coordinated--coordinating all of these, um, which for the most 
part, was mostly just letting everybody know what everyone else was doing and letting the media 
know what was going on. And then it turned out that the new mobilization people decided to 
create a march on Washington, a very centralized thing, in November, and they were full of a lot 
of energy and rhetoric, but very short on organization, and compared to us at the DC Moratorium 
Committee to some other organizations, too, that this could fall flat on its face if we didn't help 
them, and even sort of take over where it was needed, national communications in the 
organization required to make it successful. I think it's still considered to be the largest march on 
Washington in national history, but I don't know, the Gay March last year may have been more. 
At any rate, it was a powerful experience.  
 
Jody Aliesan  28:32 
And it wasn't long after that that I was asked to go to Chicago. So I left DC in March, early 
March. Went to Chicago because the peace organization, the local organization, was really in 
shambles. Morale was down, people had left, and they didn't have what it took to put together a 
rally in time for Anti-War Tax Day on April 15th. So I sort of walked into that along with, I 
think I mentioned before, um, think the team was--it was two other women, [inaudible], and then 
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[inaudible] that man, who was a nice guy, but [inaudible], and knew it. Um. And it was--it was, 
we were-- Our offices were in the second or third floor of a warehouse. The police, the Chicago 
Police, would look through our garbage cans. It was really very, um, actually amusing to see 
Chicago's finest, um, armpit deep in our garbage cans. It was tempting, the temptation to say, 
"Oh, I see. These are the pigs." You know, that was really [they laugh] hard to, uh, um, 
withstand. And then we also had to deal with the--some sort of militia organization waiting on 
[inaudible, tape ends]. 
 