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 BOOK REVIEW: BARKSKINS: A NOVEL
Barkskins: A Novel by Annie Proulx Reviewed by: Janet Levine “Over 300 years the forests are raped, eco-systems destroyed, wealth generated, and the insatiable international desire and greed for wood exploited.” Annie Proulx, the author of Barkskins is an accomplished...
read moreJANET LEVINE BLOG: NYJB BOOK REVIEW: RELATIVITY: A NOVEL
Ethan, a child on the cusp of adolescence, is the perfect vehicle through which the story unfolds. We learn at the same time he does the mysterious twists of family history, burial and reframing of tortured memories, a family constellation torn apart.
Gravity does not operate the same way in this family constellation as it does on a universal scale; the stars do not align, at least not on the surface. But at the quantum level gravity and relativity are present although to the untrained eye particles heave and bubble like chaos itself.
JANET LEVINE BLOG: NYJB BOOK REVIEW: THE ASTRONOMER & THE WITCH
In this worldview those who questioned Christendom were agents of demons and summarily victimized. Witches were the most unsavory manifestations of Satanic influence to undermine God’s divine creation.
read moreJANET LEVINE BLOG: NYJOURNALOFBOOKS: TERRIBLE VIRTUE
Reviewer: Janet Levine “The novel is a quick, compulsive read but leaves much untold; however, this is fiction and not comprehensive biography.” Terrible Virtue by Ellen Feldman is fictional autobiography (told almost exclusively in an imagined first-person narrative...
read moreJANET LEVINE BLOG: NYJB BOOK REVIEW: INNOCENTS AND OTHERS
In the novel the protagonists are professional filmmakers, women who know how to create illusions through a camera lens and peddle them as reality. Spiotti, perhaps, questions if fiction works the same way. Black marks on a white page or handheld reading device become an escapist reality as the neurons fire in our brains to link those black marks into an associative mélange of language, memory, and imagination.
read more
jlevinegrp Well said Janna https://t.co/OPGwae6tva
jlevinegrp Succinct and true https://t.co/JDzl4yZuU8
jlevinegrp So close to home, infuriating, thanks to Miami Herald for highlighting this travesty on Good Friday.. https://t.co/yWvncVPTQa
jlevinegrp Sarah Huckabee Sanders Accuses Media of Anti-Liar Bias https://t.co/te8XsyT1SA
jlevinegrp If true, this indeed, ominous https://t.co/eu26yke2S4
jlevinegrp This is where I live...beautiful https://t.co/fPoEFk6knW
jlevinegrp Such a clever analogy about truth.... https://t.co/rFKKN897T9
Janet's work with the Enneagram:
What is Janet currently writing?
Non-fiction: A Cultural Conundrum: The crossroads where culture and literature intersect-and sometimes collide
Contemplating fundamental ideas about the human condition. It is in its broadest scope a book of psychological and intellectual discovery. Discusses the interplay of culture and literature, an essential chicken and egg conundrum.
A Cultural Conundrum is about the crossroads where culture and literature intersect—and often collide. It poses the question: Does literature help to create culture, or does culture help to create literature? The book explores the underrepresented and often misunderstood interplay of ideas, attitudes, and beliefs that shape society. 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) Historical Fiction: Veld Fire–100 Years in Africa
What is Janet currently reading?
Winter
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.
Fall
The House of Gold by Natasha Solomons is an absorbing read. A family saga loosely based on the Rothschild dynasty, it takes place across Europe and from the mid-1880s to the end of the horrific First World War. The characters are absorbing and the situations well described. Highly recommend.
Speaking Engagement Bookings
Janet Levine is a popular speaker in the areas of her expertise, namely 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 this material 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