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
News Books Forthcoming 2022
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: Learning to Listen: A Life Caring for Children (Book review)
by T. Berry Brazelton Reviewed by Janet Levine | Released: April 29, 2013 Publisher: Da Capo Press (256 pages) Review published in New York Journal of Books www.nyjb.com “Such is the importance of Dr. Brazelton’s work that this sensitive memoir fills a gap as to...
Janet Levine Blog: Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard (Book Review)
“. . . the book is neither Dr. Bates’ memoir nor a disquisition on the transformative power of Shakespearean language and imagery; it actually centers on murderer and prisoner Larry Newton’s story.”
Janet Levine Blog: Short Review–The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund De Waal
But the Ephrussis family were Jews and the vast majority of their members perished in the 1940s along with their spectacular wealth. It is coldly shocking all over again to read evidence of the depth of Austrian, German and French anti-Semitism.
Janet Levine Blog: Short review–“Dreaming Water” by Gail Tsukiyama
Having read and thought so highly of Tsukiyama's 1996 book "The Samurai's Garden" I was excited to pick up "Dreaming Water" last week. It is well-reviewed and Tsukiyama is an esteemed American novelist but this one was obviously not for me. The subject matter of the...
Janet Levine Blog: Psychological Patterns of Avoidance, continued
The cause of stress is processed as a feeling that you are special. Stressful situations are to be avoided and they pull you into a messy emotional morass where you do not belong. You are ill because you thought of yourself as too special to take healthy precautions, those routines are for others. Your extended family is in turmoil because no-one realizes your uniqueness and they blame you for relationships not running smoothly. Your boss is rude and harassing because (s)he does not appreciate your creativity, and anyway (s)he should never have asked you to do those mundane tasks in the first place. The panacea for those avoiding ordinariness is to cultivate compassion and empathy and see the basic goodness of all life in every moment lived—whatever that may be.
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, 2022