Joan Wehlen Morrison

Joan Wehlen Morrison (1922-2010) was born in Chicago to a Swedish immigrant father and a mother of Ukrainian-Jewish heritage. Poor and working class, Joan received a scholarship to study at the University of Chicago. A resident of Morristown, NJ, Joan was the co-author of American Mosaic: The Immigrant Experience in the Words of Those Who Lived It (1980), recognized as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Dramatic readings from the book have been performed on Ellis Island, at the Mark...See more

Joan Wehlen Morrison (1922-2010) was born in Chicago to a Swedish immigrant father and a mother of Ukrainian-Jewish heritage. Poor and working class, Joan received a scholarship to study at the University of Chicago. A resident of Morristown, NJ, Joan was the co-author of American Mosaic: The Immigrant Experience in the Words of Those Who Lived It (1980), recognized as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Dramatic readings from the book have been performed on Ellis Island, at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, and in an "In Performance at the White House" program broadcast nationally on PBS. Her second book, From Camelot to Kent State: The Sixties Experience in the Words of Those Who Lived It (1987), became the basis for her popular course on the 1960s at the New School in New York City. Joan's wartime diaries have been published as Home Front Girl: A Diary of Love, Literature, and Growing Up in Wartime America (2013). See less