The title of this article “Caroline Tompkins: Nationality, Class, and Age” brings to light a very interesting aspect of Ms. Tompkins’s life, her nationality and her marriage to her second husband, Edward Estlin. Ms. Tompkins was born in Gravesville, Georgia and was raised in New York City. Her father was a Chinese American, while her mother, Kitty Tompkins, was of French and German descent. She was the middle child of six children and the oldest of four girls.
After high school, Tompkins went to college at the University of Michigan, specializing in mathematics and French, but ultimately pursued a career in international relations, working for the State Department in Washington, D.C.. Following her graduation, Tompkins worked as an operations officer for the State Department in the Foreign Service, and then worked in Paris as a translator. From there she traveled extensively around the world, taking part in anti-apartheid activities in South Africa, organizing anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, and traveling to Beijing, where she was involved in the Spring Flower Movement. Tompkins later served as communications director for the Peace Research Institute in Washington, D.C., and later worked as an assistant professor at the University of Southern California. All of these experiences helped shape the woman who would become a distinguished journalist and writer, whose writing earned her numerous awards, including theta honors at the 1996 Nobel Prize for Literature.
In The Dictionary of American Nationality, the second volume of a seven-volume dictionary of American nationalities, defines Tompkins as “a woman who belongs to another nationality, often of French or German extraction.” The reference works cited go on to note that she “ran with an English accent,” that she spoke French to her husband and was fluent in that language, and that her two marriages, first to Edward Estlin and then to Richard Seligman, were of the American nationalities variety. From these facts it is possible to see that Tompkins was a woman who enjoyed a certain degree of distinction in the English language, even if that was not her natural default. She was a woman who enjoyed traveling, and who found her profession and other pursuits attractive and enjoyable.