Ti-Grace Atkinson

Who is Ti-Grace Atkinson?

Ti-Grace Atkinson is an American feminist author.

Atkinson was born into a prominent Louisiana family. The "Ti" in her name reflects the Cajun or French language petite, for little.

Atkinson earned her BFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania in 1964 . While still in Philadelphia, she helped found the Institute of Contemporary Art, acting as its first director, and was sculpture critic for the periodical ARTnews. She later moved to New York where, in 1967, she entered the Ph.D program in Philosophy at Columbia University.

It was as an undergraduate that Atkinson read Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, and struck up a correspondence with Beauvoir, who suggested that she contact Betty Friedan. Atkinson thus became an early member of the National Organization for Women, which Friedan had founded, serving on the national board, and becoming the New York chapter president in 1967. In 1968 she left the organization to found the October 17th Movement, which later morphed into The Feminists, a radical feminist group active until 1973. By 1971 she had written several pamphlets on feminism, was a member of the Daughters of Bilitis and was advocating specifically political lesbianism. Her most famous book, Amazon Odyssey, was published in 1974.