Five Weeks of Feminism
Five Weeks of Feminism
(Scroll Down for More Information. Click on the Link to Register.)
In August and September, we'll be presenting unique events focusing on Women and Women's Rights.
Wednesday, August 12 at 7pm
Lisa Levenstein & Laurie Stone
Lisa Levenstein's They Didn't See Us Coming: The Hidden History of Feminism in the Nineties is a book Nancy MacLean, author of Democracy in Chains, calls "The smartest work I've read on how social movements have changed since the sixties. This is a vital backstory to the massive Women's March of 2017, the #MeToo movement, and the capacious yet unsung organizing that is changing the world for the better."
Laurie Stone's Everything Is Personal, Notes On Now is a book Emily Nussbaum, author of I Like to Watch, calls"A galvanic account of our era, a trumpet blare aimed at sleepwalkers...A voice unlike any other, she's a fearless thinker in an age submerged in fear."
Thursday, August 13 at 7pm
This event was recorded. Watch the video here.
This event is presented in cooperation with SIBA's Reader meet Writer Program.
The Yellow House by Sarah Broom is the winner of the 2019 National Book Award in Nonfiction.
“[A] forceful, rolling and many-chambered new memoir… [Broom’s] memoir isn’t just a Katrina story — it has a lot more on its mind. But the storm and the way it scattered her large family across America give this book both its grease and its gravitas… This book is dense with characters and stories. It’s a big, simmering pot that comes to a boil at the right times… This is a major book that I suspect will come to be considered among the essential memoirs of this vexing decade. There are a lot of complicated emotions coursing through its veins. It throws the image of an exceptional American city into dark relief.”—New York Times
Breathe: A Letter to My Sons by Imani Perry
“Breathe is what is says it is, a letter from a mother to her sons, but it is more than that. It’s a meditation on child-rearing, world-building, fire-starting, and peace-building. Imani Perry combines rigor and heart, and the result is a magic mirror showing us who we are, how we got here, and who we may become.”
—Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage
Wednesday, August 19 at 7pm
This event was recorded. Watch the video here.
Everything Is Personal, Notes On Now by Laurie Stone
The title of the book references on of the central arguments of nineteen-sixties feminism, from which Stone hails intellectually: “The personal is political.” It also describes our current predicament—everything that is not personal has vanished—and suggests a way of thinking sharply, imaginatively, beautifully, from right here." Masha Gessen, The New Yorker
100 Times: A Memoir of Sexism by Chavisa Woods
"Brilliant and simple, this is sure to advance understanding of a topic of intense national reckoning. Much of the sexism Woods experienced took place before her twenty-first birthday; teen readers will find validation and solidarity." --Courtney Eathorne, Booklist (starred review)
Valerie, or The Faculty of Dreams: Ammendment to the Theory of Sexuality by Sara Stridsberg
"Valerie is one of the most genuinely insubordinate books I have read, and one of the most beautiful...Stridsberg infuses her protagonist with epic, tragic brilliance...her anarchism is humanized, without losing its teeth...One finishes this novel feeling taken by Valerie, but, even more, moved by the author’s love for her, the generosity that allows a potentially pathetic figure to become heroic, a guardian spirit."—Katy Waldman, The New Yorker
Wednesday, August 26 at 7pm
Mackenzie Filson & Shannon Jones
This event was recorded. Watch the video here.
Scuppernong's Mackenzie Filson and Shannon Jones have had enough of women characters in contemporary fiction that don't make any sense to them, and they point their finger at both male and female writers. Join them as they talk about what annoys and offends them in female fictional characters and bring your own list of grievances. Also, if you're a writer and you're writing female characters, maybe you should give this conversation a listen.
Wednesday, September 2 at 7pm
“Sara Stridsberg’s fantasy about the life of Valerie Solanas has attained the status of myth. We can finally read that novel—a cross between Franz Kafka’s Amerika and Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis—in this powerful, poetic translation. Stridsberg conjures up the loneliness and desire of Valerie, our Valerie—shit-stirrer, tormented genius, cast-off misfit—as well as the vertigo, passion, and complexity of a whole life beyond and through the sensationalized headlines, the caricature. Stridsberg’s intensity and love in writing Valerie’s life is something of its own manifesto.”
—Kate Zambreno, author of Heroines
Monday, September 21 at 7pm
Wicked Enchantment collects the best work of legendary Los Angeles poet Wanda Coleman. In passionate tribute to the master, Terrance Hayes has chosen more than 130 poems that span nearly four decades, poems that reveal Coleman's immense courage, charisma, and unerring social conscience. Hayes writes in the introduction: "Wanda Coleman denounced boredom, cowardice, the staus quo. Few poets of any stripe write with as much forthrightness about poverty, about literary ambition, about depression, about our violent, fragile passions. Her poems combine manifesto and confession, inner and outer indictment, violence and tenderness, satire and sincerity."