2006 Pat Farren Event: Marge Piercy
Reserve your seat by calling 617.661.6130
The American Friends Service Committee invites you to an evening of readings and discussion with Marge Piercy.
Wednesday, Nov. 8th
6pm Reception, 7pm Talk
Cambridge Friends Meetinghouse
5 Longfellow Park
(across from Longfellow House on Brattle St.)
Marge Piercy' s novels, poems, and nonfiction explore the possibilities, and tragedies, involved in striving for utopian social change. Marge Piercy is the author of some 40 books, including the feminist science fiction classics Woman on the Edge of Time (1976), and the prototypical robot-golem-futuristic-feminist indictment of corporate power, He, She, and It (1991).
Her 'realistic' novels, including Small Changes (1973), Braided Lives (1982), and Gone to Soldiers (1987), create, in aggregate, an alternative social history of women and men in the 20th century United States. Her celebration of the protests of the New Left and her incisive critique of its sexism and glorification of oppositional violence in such novels as Dance the Eagle to Sleep (1970) and Vida (1980) ring with the vividness of her own deep involvement in Students for a Democractic Society (she worked in the New York regional office).
Her poetry (volumes include Breaking Camp, To Be of Use, Circles on the Water, Early Grrrl, and Colors Passing Through Us) combines a political edge with a dry wit and an appreciation for the natural world (and of cats, as also highlighted in her memoir, Sleeping with Cats (2003)).
Piercy' s most recent novel, Sex Wars (2005), focuses on the struggles of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Victoria Woodhull, and Anthony Comstock in post-Civil War New York.
Benefit for the Pat Farren Fund for Peacework Magazine. Suggested donation: $50 - $10, sliding scale. $5 high school students.
Reserve your seat by calling 617.661.6130