There are some reading experiences that make me gasp with horrified recognition on every page. Mary Beard’s new book, Women & Power, is one of them. Composed of two lectures that the Cambridge classicist gave at the British Museum, it contains her thoughts on women in public and in politics, from Medusa to Merkel.

I met up with her in D.C. while she was in town to give a lecture at the Embassy of Italy. We sat in overstuffed armchairs next to a massive fireplace in the lobby of her hotel. While two little boys chased each other around the lobby, shrieking in French, we talked for over an hour about what it takes to fight misogyny and the future of women in the public sphere.

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In California, my mom worked an entry-level job at what now might be called a Silicon Valley tech business. It made audiocassettes. My dad made peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and popcorn. He picked me up from preschool, strapping me into the yellow child seat mounted at the back of his bike. He had a mustache and sideburns and not much more hair than that, and on his bike I toured the campus of the university where he was studying and went to swimming class and the grocery store, and at his side on our sofa I watched cartoons on our small black-and-white TV, a TV in which I always saw colors, though I was told by friends that this wasn’t possible.

My dad never told me that it wasn’t possible. He was my buddy, and we made model planes and ant terrariums, and went hiking in the hills and swimming in Lake Lagunita, which in those days was sometimes dry and sometimes not. We fed butterflies sugar water and watched them unfurl what we called their tongues and drink.

My mom drove to work every weekday morning in our secondhand blue Datsun and drove back every evening in time to make us dinner. She brought home the bacon, in my mind. (Of the non-pork variety, I ought to add, given that we were a Muslim family, though I’m not sure I was aware that there was such a thing as religious identity, back then.)

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