Morris, Monica B. 1928-

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Morris, Monica B. 1928-

PERSONAL:

Born 1928, in London, England; immigrated to the United States; married (husband deceased); children: three. Education: Sonoma State College (now University), B.A., 1968; University of Southern California, M.A., 1970, Ph.D., 1972. Hobbies and other interests: Chamber and orchestral music, studying piano, crossword puzzles.

ADDRESSES:

E-mail—MonicaBMorris@aol.com.

CAREER:

Educator and author. California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, assistant professor of sociology, 1971-73; Pomona College, Claremont, CA, assistant professor of sociology, beginning 1973. Also taught at California State University, Los Angeles. Docent for the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra; spokesman for the American Red Cross Workplace Training program.

MEMBER:

American Sociological Association.

WRITINGS:

The Demystification of Ethno-Methodology, General Learning Co., 1973.

An Excursion into Creative Sociology, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1977.

Last-Chance Children: Growing up with Older Parents, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1988.

Looking for Love in Later Life: A Woman's Guide to Finding Joy and Romantic Fulfillment, Avery (Garden City Park, NY), 1997, also published as Falling in Love Again: The Mature Woman's Guide to Finding Romantic Fulfillment, Square One Publishers (Garden City Park, NY), 2005.

That Ridiculous Blue Sky (novel), iUniverse, 2006.

Also writer and narrator of the documentary Goodnight Children, Everywhere, for KCRW (public radio). Contributor to periodicals, including the Los Angeles Times, Herald Examiner, L.A. Parent, Internal Affairs, Journalism Quarterly, and Sociology and Social Research.

SIDELIGHTS:

Monica B. Morris is a former professor who naturally began her writing career with books on sociology, her topic of expertise. Later, after her writing career was established, Morris published a self-help book and a novel. Of Morris's earlier work, An Excursion into Creative Sociology, was the most widely reviewed. The book explains some of lesser-known aspects of sociology, including ethnomethodology, which is the study of how people make sense of their social world. Katherine O'Doherty Jensen, reviewing the book for Acta Sociologica, commented that Morris draws "extensively" upon her research and teaching materials. Based on this, Jensen noted the book's "pedagogical character" and felt that the book is well-suited for "the reader who is unfamiliar with the concerns of ethnomethodologists." Likewise, Social Forces critic Howard L. Sacks called An Excursion into Creative Sociology "an intriguing volume" and also noted its "lack of jargon."

After she was widowed, Morris's wrote the self-help book Looking for Love in Later Life: A Woman's Guide to Finding Joy and Romantic Fulfillment, which was later published as Falling in Love Again: The Mature Woman's Guide to Finding Romantic Fulfillment. The book lists some of the benefits and drawbacks of online dating as it applies to middle-aged women, and also discusses various relationship issues. Given the topic of this book, the topic of Morris' next effort seems quite logical. That Ridiculous Blue Sky is a novel about three middle-aged single women. Indeed, though Carolyn Howard-Johnson, writing on the Review-Books Web site, noted that the story has "has a whiff of aging chicklit," she also stated that it "refuses to be neatly packaged up and stuffed into a knothole."