WATERTOWN, Mass., May 21, 2004 (PRIMEZONE) -- How does a child from a single-parent home in Australia, whose mother has only a sixth grade education, manage to work her way to a professorship at Harvard? In Down Under / Up Top: Creating a Life (available through AuthorHouse), Wilga Rivers chronicles a remarkable life in extraordinary times (the Great Depression and World War II).
Without funding or mentors, Rivers makes her own way from Australia to Europe, and later, to North America. The book begins with her intriguing family roots, including her 24 siblings. Her adventurous forebears were all free spirits who contributed to the building of a new nation: on the goldfields, in the sheep and cattle industries, and in the building of the public school system. Her own story begins just after World War I. During her early education various educational traumas nearly bring her career to an abrupt end. During the Depression, without a father, she battles on. She struggles to complete her master's degree in the early hours of the morning while teaching in small country towns. Despite the outbreak of World War II, she never relinquishes her dream of living and studying in distant France, some thirteen thousand miles away.
After much scrimping and saving Rivers reaches devastated post-war England and France. In a series of educational experiences, ranging from the experimental to the Dickensian, she meets many memorable characters. Finally she makes it to France, where she begins teaching and studying. A serious illness interrupts her studies, confining her for six months to medical institutions, where she meets extraordinary characters and learns the French that is not taught in schools. She works at whatever job comes her way (hotel receptionist, nanny, and cleaning woman). She hitchhikes all over northern Europe and the United Kingdom. Rivers gives vivid insights into life in the various countries she visits. The cycle is completed with her return to Australia, by way of post-independence India. Volume 2, Memoirs of a Lifelong Learner-Teacher (in progress) continues the story of her innovative career.
Wilga Rivers is professor emerita of romance languages at Harvard University, where she directed the romance language program for 17 years. The author of 14 books and 90 articles, which have been translated into eleven languages, Rivers has lectured in 44 countries. She has learned seven languages.
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