Leonard Moss attended three state universities (Oklahoma, Indiana, and California), then taught American and European literature at a fourth (SUNY at Geneseo), where he directed a program in comparative studies until his retirement. The best part of teaching, he felt, was swapping ideas with his students; he learned as much as they did from the lively give-and-take of guided discussions.
As a Fulbright professor he chaired the English Department at the University of Athens in 1976-77, and taught graduate English majors at the Foreign Studies University in Beijing in 1985-87 and again in 1993-94. In Beijing he met and married, after surmounting formidable bureaucratic obstacles, Shaoping Wu, a spirited English teacher. Recalling their courtship, travels, and dealings with difficult officials, they co-authored a memoir entitled China Was Paradise! China Was Hell! They also co-authored a son, now works at a Silicon Valley biotech startup after completing his Ph.D. study in Stanford.
Professor Moss wrote books on Arthur Miller, Joseph Conrad, literature and evolution, and tragedy and philosophy. He edited the journal of the Rhode Island Jewish Historical Association in Providence from 1998 to 2004. During his over fifty years of research and writing he wrote books on Arthur Miller, Joseph Conrad, tragedy and philosophy, and Darwin and literature, completing these projects by the age of eighty-five. After that he continued to write several autobiographies.
Leonard had lived in happy retirement with his wife in Walnut Creek, California for 7 years until he passed away on May 28, 2020 at the age of 88. As an ardent scholar and a dedicated writer, Leonard had worked tirelessly on his writing projects, producing 8 books in his life. He never stopped writing until his last day. He even wrote his own tongue-in-cheek “Premature Obituary,” and included it at the end of his last book, Creating an Identity.
His grateful conclusion after a long, rewarding, sometimes arduous journey through life—“mission accomplished.”
****************************************************************** Shaoping Moss, whose Chinese name is 吴小平, was a college teacher in China in the 1980s. She met Leonard Moss, a Fulbright scholar in Beijing and they fell in love. After winning a bitter fight against the Chinese bureaucratic system she married Leonard Moss and immigrated to the United States with her husband. She and Leonard co-authored a book, China Was Paradise! China Was Hell! about their experiences in China. Later she attended the library school at Simmons College and became an academic librarian, working at three small library arts colleges with a brief stint at the UC Berkeley Ethnic Studies library.
After leaving the workplace she started a new career in writing. She wrote an article, "Management Microaggression at the Workplace," describing the unfair treatment she encountered at the workplace in America. She also wrote an article, "How to be a Parent," The third one "Our Life at Rossmoor," is about the happy life she and Leonard enjoyed in Rossmoor, an active senior community, and the issues she discovered in the community. In addition, she published a book on Raising a Dragon Son--A Chinese Mom's memoir, in which she talks about the dynamics of “East meet West” in bringing up a child. The second book Growing Up in Chinadescribes her 35 years of personal life in mainland China. The latter part of the book focuses on her experiences in trying to marry, Leonard Moss, then her American boyfriend. She is also the co-author of Leonard's last book Creating an Identity.
Now she lives at Rossmoor, in Walnut Creek, California ([email protected]).
******************************************************************* Eli Moss, the youngest member of the Moss family, graduated from Amherst Regional High School in 2007, Brown University in 2011 with a bachelor in computational biology, and finally Stanford University in 2019 with a PhD in genetics. After college he worked at Ginkgo Bioworks, a startup company in Boston, then at the Broad Research Institute in Cambridge. In the summer of 2014, Eli and Sara, then his fiancée, together with their beloved dog and cat Bear and Milo, made a 4,000-mile cross-country journey from Boston, Massachusetts to Walnut Creek, California. A year later, in the summer of 2015 Eli and Sara got married in the redwood forest of Northern California; they made their honeymoon trip to Europe, touring France, Switzerland and Italy. Now Eli works at a Silicon Valley biotech startup searching for drugs in fungal genomes, while Sara is a tutor, children's book illustrator and elementary school librarian. They live happily with their four pets, Bear, Milo, Monkey and Gary, in Newark, California.
******************************************************************* Sara Moss, the newest member of the family, graduated from the instrumental music program at New World School of the Arts in 2007 and Brown University in 2011 before completing her dual-degree master's in general and special education at Wheelock College in 2013. Since then, she has served a wide range of students in the Boston & San Jose areas as a pre-k, elementary, and middle school special education teacher. Sara currently works as both an educator and an illustrator. She is currently illustrating a children's book authored by her brother, David Hoffman, which tells the story of a boy learning to cope with anxiety. She is happy to be a part of the Moss family of fellow thinkers and writers.