EXCEPTIONAL LIFE
Anne Summers’ latest book reflects on an amazing career and extraordinary life to date
ANNE Summers has led an extraordinary life filled with myriad fascinating roles and in her latest book she hopes to encourage people, especially younger women, to have the courage and drive to achieve an extraordinary life. Policy maker, political adviser, board member, editor, journalist, publisher, bureaucrat, political advocate and author; Dr Anne Summers has fulfilled all of these roles, and embraced the challenges as well as the triumphs. Her latest book, Unfettered and Alive: A Memoir, is the exhilarating story of a life that has included everything from advising prime ministers and leading feminist debates to presiding over Greenpeace International and writing influencing books. She also frankly explores her own family story, personal anxieties and mistakes. “I have been very fortunate to have so many opportunities and to be able to do so many different jobs and to travel the world many times over,” Summers explains. “I sometimes pinch myself and think, ‘Did I really do that?’” Summers, who co-founded Elsie, the first women’s refuge in modern Australia, says by sharing her stories in Unfettered and Alive she hopes to encourage people, especially younger women, to have the courage and drive to achieve an extraordinary life. “As I write in the book, I have had my fair share of setbacks and I haven’t always succeeded, but I have taken the good with the not so good,” she says. “As it states on the back (of my book), ‘I was born into a world that expected very little of women like me. We were meant to tread lightly on the Earth, influencing events through our husbands and children, if at all’. “Well that is what I grew up with, that notion of treading lightly, but I managed to turn my life into something else –something I am very proud of.” Summers has had many accolades, but one she believes her late mother Eileen Cooper would be proud of is her image on a postage stamp. In 2011 Summers, along with three other women (Eva Cox, Germaine Greer and Elizabeth Evatt) who made their mark in advancing gender equality, joined the ranks of great Australians to appear on a stamp. “She would have loved that,” Summers says with a throaty laugh. Summers grew up as the eldest of six children in a strict Catholic household. She says her father’s alcoholism and violent moods taught her to be tough. It was that resilience that Summers says put her in good stead for life. Asked what had been her most fulfilling role to date, Summers replied: “I always take the view that whatever I am doing at the moment is my favourite thing. I don’t want to say one experience or role was better than the other. Everything has been interesting, everything has been different.”