Unforgettable Friendships

Are women’s friendships perilously toxic, as several popular books declaim? Or instead, as recent research offers, are they the necessary — and sometime sufficient — armature to our happiness and successful functioning? Here are four high-octane friendship stories, wildly different: one elegiac, one bitter, one grateful, one celebratory.

Unforgettable Friendships

The articles in this special section:

Balm in Gilead

Marcia Falk on Beth Uval

Click: Ignore

by Alice Sparberg Alexiou

Folks, This is What a Feminist Looks Like

by Florence Howe

Florence Howe on Grace Paley

An Ode to 40 Years: The Power of Women’s Friendship

by Rabbi Naamah Kelman and Nessa Rapoport