Grace Paley: Speaking Truth to Power
with Yvette Christiansë, Ynestra King, Nancy Kricorian, and Amy Swerdlow
A Panel Discussion: Friday, 12/11, 6:30 PM
James Room, 4th Floor Barnard Hall, Barnard College, 3009 Broadway, NYC
On Grace Paley's birthday, we present a conversation exploring how imagination, truthtelling, and courageous action flow out of Paley's life and work. A prolific writer, Paley's fiction highlights them everyday struggles of women, what she calls "a history of everyday life." In addition to her writing, Paley was also a committed activist, passionate about numerous issues, including women's rights, the Vietnam War, nuclear non-proliferation, and most recently, the war in Iraq. Her death in 2007 was a great loss, but her work continues to inspire.
Speakers, coming from a range of generations, will include politically engaged writers, artists, and activists in such causes as immigration rights, housing, human rights, gay and lesbian issues, foreclosure actions, anti-militarism and other important struggles. The speakers have all drawn inspiration from Paley's work and life and demonstrate various affinities to the amazing woman, artist and thinker who described herself as a "combative pacifist and cooperative anarchist."
Speakers will include:
Lucila Silva, a member of The Center for Immigrant Families Collective--The Center for Immigrant Families (CIF) is an inter-generational, collectively-run organization of low-income immigrant women of color
and community members in Manhattan Valley. CIF’s mission is to address the inter-connected challenges facing our communities by linking our personal/psychological well-being, health, and development to sustained organizing that transforms the root causes of the injustices we confront and their multi-layered impact on our lives and communities.
Yvette Christiansë, a poet, novelist and scholar, teaches African American, African and African Diasporic literatures at Fordham University. Her novel Unconfessed was a finalist in the 2007 Hemingway/PEN Prize and shortlisted for the 2008 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Her first book of poems Castaway (1999), was
nominated for the 2001 PEN International Prize and her latest book of poetry, Imprendehora was published in South Africa by Kwela Books/Snail Press in 2009.
Ynestra King, ecofeminist activist and educator, is the author of Ecofeminism: The Reenchantment of Nature (Boston: Beacon Press, 1991); and editor of Dangerous Intersections: Feminist Perspectives on
Population, Environment, and Development with Jael Miriam Silliman; and Rocking the Ship of State : Toward a Feminist Peace Politics with Adrienne Harris. Her classes in Ecofeminism at the Institute for Social Ecology in the late 70's were among the first in the country.
Nancy Kricorian is a New York-based writer and activist. Author of the novels Zabelle and Dreams of Bread and Fire, her poetry has been published in PARNASSUS, MISSISSIPPI REVIEW and ARARAT. She is
currently dividing her time between writing her third novel and working as the New York City coordinator for CODEPINK WOMEN FOR PEACE, a women-initiated grassroots peace & social movement known for its use of direct action and street theater.
Amy Swerdlow is Professor Emerita, Sarah Lawrence College where she directed the MA Program in Women's History and the Women's Studies Program. Swerdlow is a co-founding member of Women Strike for Peace and author of Women Strike for Peace: Traditional Motherhood and Radical Politics in the 1960s and numerous articles on radical reform movements from the abolitionists in the 19th century to the peace movements of the late 20th century.
contact:
Lucy Trainor
Program Manager
Barnard Center for Research on Women
p (212) 854-2067
f (212) 854-8294
http://www.barnard.edu/bcrw
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