Notorious RBG: APB’s Irin Carmon & Shana Knizhnik Reflect on Ruth Bader Ginsburg
21 Sep 2020
A “warrior for gender equality,” Supreme Court Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg died of cancer at the age of 87 this past Friday. APB speaker and journalist Irin Carmon and attorney and activist Shana Knizhnik co-authored the book, Notorious RBG, a New York Times bestseller after a Tumblr account made by Shana, which highlighted Ruth’s precise wit and fashion sense. The book shares the never-before-told story of a transformative woman who transcends generational divides.
With the country coming to terms with the feeling of loss, Irin recently wrote in New York magazine a piece she “never wanted to publish,” on what she learned while writing about Ruth: “Ruth Bader Ginsburg used to instruct her clerks to get it right and keep it tight, so I’ll try to do the same…Ginsburg was exacting but not joyless. She wept at the opera and went to the theater as often as nightly. The drink she ordered at the Kennedy Center openings was Campari-and-soda. She liked a good trip; the same year she broke her ribs and had cancer, she went to Lisbon…Her favorite companions were boisterous charmers, like her husband, like Scalia.” Irin goes on to say how Ruth was surprisingly introverted, and she rarely did anything or entertained anyone she didn’t want to see.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg had a brilliant legal mind and was the first Jewish woman to serve on Supreme Court. Her death came on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, six weeks before the presidential election and at a time of intense political polarization. The story of Justice Ginsburg's life and work has captured the imagination of the American public since 2013, and her legacy will forever live on.
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