This month's book is The Women's Room by Marilyn French

This month's book is The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

Sliding scale $7–$10 includes food and wine

For our January Salon, we are hosting our first-ever open mic, featuring the work of lesbian survivors. All lesbian and/or queer identified women who claim the mantle “survivor,” whether surviving addiction; sexual, physical or emotional abuse; homophobia; poverty; racism; ableism; or any other facet of survival is invited to bring two pages (double-spaced, please) of poetry, journal, short-short story, personal essay, or their instrument and a song, to share. Tonight’s featured performer is Second Story regular Deb R. Lewis. As usual, DJ SpinNikki will play an eclectic mix of music between sets. Open Mic sign-up begins at 7:30, performances start at 8. Also at tonight’s salon, we will be collecting canned and non-perishable food donations for Sarah’s Circle, an uptown shelter serving homeless and at-risk women. Proceeds benefit the featured performers and the Women’s Voices Fund.

This month's book is Trauma Stewardship by Laura van Dernoot Lipsky

This month's book is The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein

Kathleen Rooney

For You, for You I Am Trilling These Songs

In her acclaimed new collection about the life of twenty-somethings in the twenty-first century, Chicago author Rooney (Live Nude Girl, Reading with Oprah), writes with finesse and fresh insight, revealing a young woman trying to find her place in an America that rarely manages to live up to Walt Whitman’s dream and making discoveries about life at every turn.

Contributors and editors Miriam Ben-Yoseph and Deborah Nodler Rosen

Where We Find Ourselves: Jewish Women Around the World Write about Home

 Join editors Miriam Ben-Yoseph and Deborah Nodler Rosen, along with contributors Dina Elenbogen, Marcelle Levy, Julie Parson-Nesbitt, Eva Perkal, and Sara Schwarzbaum for this remarkable collection of essays, stories, and poems by writers from around the world, offering diverse perspectives of home; from the places where one is born; to the communities we create; to the culmination of memories, emotions, and rituals, combining historical and personal connections.

Breakups
- they're tough.  But in the Buffyverse they can be even more dramatic.
In this discussion we'll examine some of the most compelling breakups
throughout the series and how they affected the characters involved.
We'll discuss how did the breakups change the individuals in the
relationship?  Was the breakup fair?  Healthy? Destructive?  Did the
breakup make sense to the overarching character development of the
participants or was it just a plot device?  Specifically we'll deal with
Buffy and Angel's breakup in Season 3, Buffy and Riley's breakup in
Season 5, Xander and Anya's breakup in Season 6 and Willow and Tara's
breakup in Season 6.  

Required Viewing:

The Prom, S3, E20

Into the Woods S5, E10

All the Way S6, E6

Tabula Rasa S6, E8

Hell's Bells S6, E16

General Buffy: How BtVS Adopts the Language of War in Season 7
Season 4 sets up a clear opposition to the military industrial complex as the Scoobies take on the Adam and the Initiative. But Buffy's inspirational speeches during season 7 echo the language of the times as the US embarked on the war in Iraq. We'll compare episodes from both seasons, discuss the problems that arise in using military language and the metaphor of war in a feminist show, and consider how Buffy both uses and subverts the role of "general".

Eps to Watch:
Goodbye Iowa s4ep14
Primeval s4ep21
Bring on the Night s7ep10
Get It Done s7ep15
Dirty Girls s7ep18

Essays to Read:
Buffy Goes to War: Military Themes and Images in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, by
Dennis Showalter

Who's Afraid of Jessica Lynch? or One Girl in All the World? Gendered Heroism and the Iraq War, by Sara Buttsworth

Margaret Hawkins

A Year of Cats and Dogs

 In this dark, yet hopeful, unique and wholly original debut novel, Chicago writer Hawkins combines humor with desperation, the “real world” with the I-Ching, the conventions of fiction with food writing, lists, good and bad poetry, and the protagonist’s surprising discovery that she can communicate with animals, to tell a story of lost love, new love, and midlife re-invention unlike anything you’ve ever experienced. Hawkins writes for ARTnews, and her work has appeared on WBEZ and in the Chicago Sun-Times. She teaches writing at the Art Institute of Chicago. 

Louise Cainkar

Homeland Insecurity: The Arab American and Muslim American Experience After 9/11

In Homeland Insecurity, Marquette University professor Cainkar argues that 9/11 did not create anti-Arab or anti-Muslim suspicion, but rather that socially constructed images and social and political exclusion existed long before these attacks, creating an environment in which post 9/11 misunderstanding, hostility, and racial profiling could thrive. Focusing on the Chicago Metropolitan area, Cainkar bases her research on of interviews and in-depth oral histories with native-born and immigrant Palestinians, Egyptians, Lebanese, Iraqis, Yemenis, Sudanese, Jordanians, and others.