Author • Educator • Presenter
Commitment to human rights
Janet has a life long commitment to human rights. She is a teacher—in the broadest sense of the word—in all she undertakes. She enjoyed her time in the classroom with her students, and continues her work supporting activist causes. The third part of her life’s passion is writing. Currently she is contemplating two new book projects. She loves writing her blog and connecting with hundreds of people whom comment on the blog.
Books by Janet Levine
Know Your Parenting Personality
Parenting Book
How To Use the Enneagram To Become The Best Parent You Can Be. Filled with practical advice taken from interviews with scores of parents and uses the e-model as a tool to improve family dynamics.
The Enneagram Intelligences: Understanding Personality for Effective Teaching and Learning
Educational Book
This book has helped thousands of educators to understand their motivations for how they teach and how their students learn. In 2000 it was nominated for the 2001 Grawemeyer Education Award. Translated into several languages it is now regarded as a “classic” work in Enneagram studies. Both these books are available in e-book formats
Inside Apartheid
Political Memoir
Bears witness to the horrors of living within the apartheid system from the perspective of a white activist. Levine, a crusading freelance journalist, was an elected public official, and she held office in many anti-apartheid organizations. She shares her love for the country as she fights against the tyranny of racism that tears at the lives of all South Africans. Inside Apartheid was reviewed in the New York Times Book Review, The New York Review of Books, Kirkus Review, et al.
Kirkus review: “A grim account by a white liberal South African expatriate of life “”in the belly of the beast”” that is apartheid. . . A compelling, chastening work.”
Leela’s Gift
Fiction
Janet’s latest book, a novel, “Leela’s Gift” (2009) is available at www.amazon.com and other online and brick bookstores. It describes a luminous inner journey that uncovers archetypal and highly relevant spiritual teachings including some of the secret teachings of Buddhism and the Enneagram. Among these are meditation and yoga practices, practical paths to freedom from the often dispiriting quality of our contemporary lives. “Leela’s Gift” intertwines modern philosophy and primal wisdom in telling a story as old as the human heart. You can read more about the novel and Janet’s work at www.leelasgift.com.
Updates & Writer’s Blog
Janet Levine Blog: NYJB REVIEW: Paper Chains: A Novel
Paper Chains, despite its subject matter, is a well told tale of two young women who serendipitously meet in a jewelry shop in London, England. They soon discover they are Australians abroad, one from Sydney, the other Perth. India, from Perth, is bombastic, almost frenetically upbeat and energetic, while Hannah is reserved with a hang-dog affect. She rarely lifts her head other than to talk briefly with someone. She is a long-distance runner who is trying to outrun her guilt and shame.
Janet Levine Blog: NYJB REVIEW: The Resurrection of Joan Ashby
In Wolas’ pages, Joan’s fully embodied motherhood, despite her ambiguous doubts about her role, are brilliantly accurate. Every mother who has sacrificed her ambition and talents for motherhood will find she is reading about herself. Every husband and wife whose marriage is torn apart will gain new perspectives from reading this novel. Every adult child who wonders about their parents’ relationship to one another and to themselves and their siblings will find a mirror shard here.
JANET LEVINE BLOG: NYJB REVIEW: In the Midst of Winter
In the Midst of Winter: A Novel Reviewed by: Janet Levine Well known and adored by millions of readers worldwide, Chilean-American author, Isabel Allende with her 21st novel In the Midst of Winter will please multitudes of her fans and also leave them uneasy. Uneasy...
JANET LEVINE BLOG: NYJB REVIEW: Sacrificed
In Sacrificed the arcs of many storylines merge and part and ultimately leave several threads hanging. This in itself is satisfying and realistic, an intelligent way to conclude the book. Intimate family trajectories, as well as those of grandiose political schemas cannot be neatly packaged simply because they have become more transparent to the characters and the reader. Ultimately, we are left with some answers but also more questions.
JANET LEVINE BLOG: NYJB REVIEW: Stolen Girls
Over that decade, thousands of other women, men, and boys have been abducted by Boko Haram and taken to hideouts in swampy rain forests in western Nigeria called Sambisa. Inevitably the world’s attention left Nigeria and the abducted girls. However, German journalist Wolfgang Bauer and his brilliant photographer, Andy Spira, with this book fill the gap.
jlevinegrp Better late than never, Pompeo first, then Barr https://t.co/Iq1j1ar2Yd
jlevinegrp Gorgeous https://t.co/t86wT72ZeF
jlevinegrp Just saw Downtown Abbey. It is engaging, emotional, beautifully designed and acted, pitch perfect, hopelessly escap… https://t.co/op1whmf6l5
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jlevinegrp Why don’t the Dems have all the people they’ve subpoenaed, arrested when they don’t appear. They have the right to… https://t.co/2ELfeFNB40
jlevinegrp Well, here we have it, our own little Hitler, he owns this genocide if the Turks slaughter millions of Kurds...of c… https://t.co/t35MTf18yA
Janet's work with the Enneagram:
What is Janet currently writing?
Non-fiction: READING MATTERS: How Literature Influences Life
By examining prominent texts, throughout history and from all parts of the world, readers will become more aware of how worldviews are created, developed, dissolved, and sometimes decimated…including their own.
(Work in Progress) Olivia's Ghosts
What is Janet currently reading?
Winter 2019
The Overstory by Richard Powers. I want to shout out loud from the roof tops , “Please read this novel.” Powerful! Compelling! Articulate! Engaging! Clearly, Richard Powers is firmly in the ranks of our foremost fiction writers in the English language—every book he’s written thus far is masterly. But, The Overstory is a masterpiece with the power to change one’s ideas forever on the current state of the world. This book is far more than about trees and forests and people; it is about the very essence of how we each conduct ourselves in the world. Five star recommendation. It has already won many Fiction Awards for 2018.
Summer 2019
Parisian Lives by Deidre Blair is a memoir by the best-selling author who won a National Book Award for her biography of playwright Samuel Beckett, among her many other biographies. The book chronicles ten years in Bair’s life when she moved from part time journalist and part time university lecturer to becoming one of America’s most able biographers and an Ivy League professor. The book has a distinct feminist flavor detailing Bair’s struggles in the patronizing and paternalistic worlds of publishing and academe. Extremely readable, you feel you know areas of Paris as well as she does and touching. See her description of Simone de Beauvoir’ funeral. Available in November 2019
Speaking Engagement Bookings
Janet Levine is a popular speaker in the areas of her expertise, among them, how reading great literature influences life, the Enneagram personality model, and the politics of past and present day South Africa that shape that country’s future. She also presents talks on writing and the writing process while sharing her experiences. In her presentations she uses her books, videos and additional material where necessary. Janet has presented these materials internationally at conferences and workshops across North America and beyond. She can shape her presentation to fit your needs. For an extensive listing of past speaking references CLICK HERE.
From Inspirational Faculty video, Milton Academy, 2018
Copyright © Janet Levine, All Rights Reserved, 2019