Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

Harrison wrote little afterwards, as her illness progressed. She died on April 24, 2002, in a hospice in Manhattan.

In 1994, Harrison, who had been a heavy smoker for most of her adult life, was diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. During her illness she completed her last book, An Accidental Autobiography (1996). As the title implied, the book was less a straightforward memoir than a stream-of-consciousness collection of memories and reflections, loosely organised by theme. As The Washington Post's reviewer put it: "This is by no stretch an autobiography. For one thing, Barbara Grizzuti Harrison scarcely touches upon her professional life. ... But there is so much sex and food and high life and glittering prose in these loosely woven memoirs that she can be pardoned her presumptuous title."

Harrison also wrote numerous travel articles covering destinations all over the world. She published two books about her travels in Italy, Italian Days (1989) and The Islands of Italy: Sicily, Sardinia, and the Aeolian Islands (1991).

In 1984, Harrison published a novel, Foreign Bodies. She won an O. Henry Award for short fiction in 1989.

Harrison published two collections of her essays and interviews: Off Center (1980) and The Astonishing World (1992). Her 1992 Harper's essay "P.C. on the Grill", which lampooned the "philosophy" of popular TV chef The Frugal Gourmet, was included in the 1993 edition of Best American Essays.

She became nationally known in 1978 after the publication of Visions of Glory: A History and a Memory of Jehovah's Witnesses, which combined childhood memoirs with a history of the Jehovah's Witness movement. Although Harrison expressed admiration for individual Witnesses and wrote sympathetically of their persecution, she portrayed the faith itself as harsh and tyrannical, racist and sexist.

A precocious student, Harrison skipped several grades in school. As a teenager at New Utrecht High School in Brooklyn, she fell in love with Arnold Horowitz, an English teacher who was among the first to encourage her writing talent. He apparently returned her feelings, and although their relationship remained platonic, they continued to see each other and to correspond until Horowitz's death in the late 1960s.

In 1960, Barbara Grizzuti married W. Dale Harrison, an aid worker for Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE). The couple spent the eight years of their marriage living in Tripoli (Libya), Mumbai and Hyderabad (India), and Chichicastenango (Guatemala). The Harrisons had a son, Joshua, and a daughter, Anna. They divorced in 1968, and Barbara returned to New York with the children.

By the late 1960s, Harrison had become involved with the women's movement, and began writing on feminist themes for various publications. Her first book, Unlearning the Lie: Sexism in School, was published in 1969, a report on the Sex-roles Committee of Woodward School that was described as "a brief and readable account of a two-year effort to change sexist attitudes, beliefs, and practices, in and out of the curriculum, at a private, multiracial elementary school in Brooklyn, New York." Harrison was one of the first contributors to Ms. (magazine).

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (September 14, 1934 – April 24, 2002) was an American journalist, essayist and memoirist. She is best known for her autobiographical work, particularly her account of growing up as a Jehovah's Witness, and for her travel writing.

Barbara Grizzuti was born in Queens, New York City, on September 14, 1934. Her parents were first-generation Americans; her grandparents were immigrants from Calabria in southern Italy. She later described her childhood as deeply troubled. Her mother, who apparently suffered from mental illness, was emotionally distant and insisted on describing herself as "Barbara's relative", not her mother. Near the end of her life Harrison also claimed that her father had sexually abused her. The turmoil of her childhood would influence her writing.