Paralleling the universal tales portrayed in the popular films Norma Rae and Julia, Solidarity’s Secret is the story of Polish women battling political oppression. A true human interest story, this is the first book to reveal a dramatic hidden history of women’s heroism against insurmountable odds.

Shana Penn assembles material from ten years of interviews with the women behind the Polish pro-democracy movement—women whose massive contributions were obscured by the more public successes of their male counterparts. Penn unravels the story of how these brave women ran Solidarity and the main opposition newspaper, Tygodnik Mazowsze, while prominent men like Lech Walesa were underground or in jail. These women activists then went on to play an influential role in post-revolutionary Poland. A richly detailed, important story, unknown not only in the West, but until recently even within Poland itself.

Shana Penn is an Open Society Institute fellow and visiting scholar at Mills College’s Women’s Leadership Institute, in Oakland, CA. She was formerly Director of Media Relations at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, and first Project Director of the International Museum of Women in San Francisco. At present, she directs a philanthropic program called the Jewish Heritage Initiative in Poland for the Taube Foundation for Jewish Life and Culture in San Francisco.

NOTE: There will be an exhibition touring in various cities throughout the U.S. starting in April of 2005 called Poland on the Front Page which is celebrating the anniversary of the birth of solidarity in Poland. Solidarity’s Secret is one very important piece of this story. If you need more information regarding this exhibition I will be pleased to put you in touch with the organizers. – Mary Bisbee-Beek

Publication Date: May 2005
Cloth: 0-472-11385-2 $34.95
6 x 9, 392 pages
Distribution: Chicago Distribution Center