June Levine

June Levine (31 December 1931 – 14 October 2008) was an Irish journalist, novelist and feminist, who played a central part in the Irish women's movement.

June Levine in 1994

Early life and family

Levine was born into a Jewish-Catholic family. Her parents Charles Solomon Levine, the son of Jewish parents who fled from Latvia and Muriel Ruth McMahon from Co Clare secretly got married at a Catholic church in Marlborough Street, Dublin at a young age. June, the eldest of five children, was baptised a Catholic and attended a Jewish school in Dublin. In 1947, the family decided to convert to Judaism.^[1]

At the age of 15, Levine began her career in journalism for The Irish Times as a teenager instead of pursuing further education.^[2] She met and married Canadian Jewish medical student, Kenneth Mesbur. In the 1950s, the married couple and their two children emigrated to Ontario, Canada, where they settled, and a third baby was born.^[3] The marriage ended and Levine returned to Dublin with her three children. In 1999, June Levine married her partner of thirty years, psychiatrist Professor Ivor Browne.^[1][4]

Career

In 1965, Levine returned to her career in journalism and was elected assistant editor of the Irish Woman’s Journal. She wrote two best selling books, Sisters, a personal history of the feminist movement, and, with Lyn Madden, Lyn: A Story of Prostitution.^[5]

She was also involved with the Irish women's movement, alongside figures such as Mary Kenny, Margaret Gaj and Mary Maher. In 1971 she travelled with other feminists, including Mary Kenny and Nell McCafferty, on the so-called "Contraceptive Train" when they travelled to Belfast to buy condoms.^[1][6][5][2]

Later life

In Levine’s later life, she became interested in India's women's movement. She only wrote one work of fiction, A Season of Weddings, which was published in 1992 and told the tale of a Dublin woman who went to New Delhi for a Jewish wedding.^[7]

Levine had a number of strokes in her last year, which impacted her speech. Having regained some ability to communicate, she experienced a second stroke in the first week of October, lost consciousness, and died on 14 October 2008 in Tallaght Hospital. In 2009 Attic Press reissued her book Sisters with a preface written by Levine's friend Nell McCafferty.^[1]

References

1. Kenny, Mary (18 October 2008). "My extraordinary, contradictory, beautiful friend June Levine". Retrieved 28 October 2022.
2. Tiernan, Sonja. "June Levine". Dictionary of Irish Biography. Retrieved 1 November 2022.
3. Cullen, Paul (15 October 2008). "Tributes paid to journalist and feminist author June Levine". The Irish Times. Retrieved 28 October 2022.
4. Obituary by Mary Kenny, Irish Independent, 18 October 2008
5. Levine, June (2009). Sisters: June Levine the Irish Feminist. Cork, Ireland: Cork University Press. Retrieved 1 November 2022.
6. "Writer central to the women's movement". The Irish Times. Retrieved 10 January 2022.
7. Katie Donovan, A. N. Jeffares & Brendan Kennelly, eds., Ireland’s Women (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1994), quotes Sisters: The Personal Story of an Irish Feminist (1982; Poolbeg 1985).