Donna Brazzi Barnes is currently finishing a memoir entitled, Too Big for My Britches about creating her life while confronting cultural assumptions concerning women in work, marriage, and motherhood.
After teaching dental hygiene for over twenty years, Barnes earned a Ph. D. in sociology from the University of California, San Francisco. She began a career teaching women’s studies and continuing her research for women with HIV/AIDS in three U.S. cities. Barnes has given talks at numerous national social science conferences, the International AIDS Society Conference, Paris, and International AIDS Conferences, Toronto, and Barcelona. Her scholarship has been anthologized in Women, Motherhood and Living with HIV/AIDS (Springer, 2013), and two others, and in various academic journals.
The following is Chapter One of Too Big for My Britches:
Growing up the determined way – how Donna Brazzi Barnes longed for a life of independence through education:
