Dinners With Ruth

As the subtitle of her work suggests, in Dinners with Ruth, Totenberg develops a theme about The Importance of Friendship. While Totenberg describes how her friends helped her cope with personal hardships, she especially highlights how friendships transformed her experience of work and helped her to build a productive and enjoyable career. She recalls, “The other crucial aspect of friendships in that period […] is that they were different. For women of my generation, it was not natural to find an immediate group of friends at work […]. It was lonely at work. That’s the only way to describe it” (58). She contrasts these feelings of isolation at her early jobs, where she did not have female colleagues, to the close “sisterhood” of friendships she formed at the National Public Radio (88). Totenberg credits these close friendships with not only increasing her enjoyment of her job, but also providing her with the mentorship she craved and needed to develop her skills. Totenberg considers how the sexist discrimination that was so prevalent at the time made her and her colleagues “natural allies” for each other (59). The author credits her closest NPR friends, Cokie and Linda, with teaching her how to be a generous role model and pass on mentorship to other women, too.