I’m in the middle of watching the PBS Makers documentary on the women’s movement. To state the obvious, I like feminism. I am a feminist. It is, to me, not a scary word.
In that spirit, a quick share this morning that through my Berkshires peeps, I’ve connected with the very lovely and generous-spirited Suzi Banks Baum. Her anthology—An Anthology of Babes: Thirty-six Women Give Motherhood A Voice—is being published today. I have a teeny-tiny essay in the collection and am honored to take my place amongst some very stellar company. If you’re in the Berkshires this evening, there’s a reading to celebrate at Dewey Hall, 91 Main Street, Sheffield, MA from 7-9:30 PM. This is part of the Berkshire Festival of Women Writers, in honor of Women’s History Month. It’s just March first today; there’s more to come.
In teaser mode now, my friend and fellow feminist writer-mother-thinker-doer Avital Nathman Norman has an anthology forthcoming this fall from Seal Press—The Good Mother Myth: Tearing it Down One Story at a Time. I’ll be in stellar company there (!).
Before that anthology becomes a physical read, you could come to the CLPP conference next month where we’ll be running a workshop about bringing politics to the family dinner table. I think the subtitle (unapproved) could be what happens when feminists have babies.
We planned the session via Google Hangout, which meant the four women—two in a room together, another in Boston, another in Minneapolis—could share a screen with our Google Doc between us to be communally edited from the snowy, sleety comfort of my dining room table. My dumb phone and my paper calendar notwithstanding, the 21st century so wins.
There was a two-hour delay for the elementary school boy that day so he floated in and out of the room and listened in. I loved his takeaways: that you should talk to kids about the real world, that NPR is very cool, and that pinkeye is awful. That last observation came because one of the speakers had just been in quarantine with eight and two-year-old due to pinkeye. She was giddy with relief that they could be returned to other habitats than home.
PS: Marissa Mayer, we all worked that morning from home, although then we had a little video chat with another feminist writer mother pal Deborah Siegel and she was working from a café.
While I’m at it with the feminist shout-outs I should say that I contribute some to a new online magazine called The Broad Side, which I’d say is about women and politics and life. Bookmark it—lots there well worth reading.
