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Sunday, December 18th, 2011 at 6 pm

This is what it's like to be a high-school-age girl. To forsake the boyfriend you once adored. To meet the love of your life, who just happens to be your teacher. To discover for the first time the power of your body and mind. This is what it's like to be a college-age woman. To live through heartbreak. To suffer the consequences of your choices. To depend on others for survival but to have no one to trust but yourself. This is "Anthropology of an American Girl." A literary sensation, this extraordinarily candid novel about the experience of growing up female in America will strike a nerve in readers of all ages.

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Sunday, October 16th, 2011 at 6 pm

World-renowned activist Angela Davis discusses how mass incarceration has had little or no effect on crime, how disproportionate numbers of the poor and minorities end up in prison, and the obscene profits the system generates.

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Sunday, July 17th, 2011 at 6 pm

 There's no denying that men's involvement and interest in feminism is key to its continuing relevance and importance. Addressing the question of why men should care about feminism in the first place, "Men and Feminism" lays the foundation for a larger discussion about feminism as a human issue, not simply a women's issue. Men are crucial to the movement -- as fathers, brothers, husbands, boyfriends, and friends. From "why" to "how" to "what can men do," "Men and Feminism" answers all the questions men have about how and why they should get behind feminism.

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Sunday, May 15th, 2011 at 6 pm

From Terry Castle, the brilliant cultural commentator whom Susan Sontag called "the most expressive, most enlightening literary critic at large today," comes a long-awaited collection of captivating personal essays. The title piece at the heart of the anthology--Castle's candid, wry, and rueful retelling of her romantic involvement with a female professor during graduate school--is a pitch-perfect recollection of the fiascoes of youth. Here, also, are classic Castle short works, including "Desperately Seeking Susan," a droll and bittersweet account of her friendship with Sontag; "My Heroin Christmas," a darkly humorous examination of addiction, her family and stepsiblings, and the late, great saxophonist Art Pepper; and the picaresque "Travels with My Mother," a rollicking tour through lesbianism, art, and the difficult yet transcendent paintings of Agnes Martin.

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Sunday, March 20th, 2011 at 6 pm

In "Gender Outlaws," Bornstein, together with writer, raconteur, and theater artist S. Bear Bergman, collects and contextualizes the work of this generation's trans and genderqueer forward thinkers -- new voices from the stage, on the streets, in the workplace, in the bedroom, and on the pages and websites of the world's most respected mainstream news sources. "Gender Outlaws" includes essays, commentary, comic art, and conversations from a diverse group of trans-spectrum people who live and believe in barrier-breaking lives.

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Sunday, December 19, 2010 at 6 pm

In 1959, the year Terry Galloway turned nine, the voices of everyone she loved began to disappear. No one yet knew that an experimental antibiotic given to her mother had wreaked havoc on her fetal nervous system, eventually causing her to go deaf. As a self-proclaimed "child freak," she acted out her fury with her boxy hearing aids and Coke-bottle glasses by faking her own drowning at a camp for crippled children. Ever since that first real-life performance, Galloway has used theater, whether onstage or off, to defy and transcend her reality. With disarming candor, she writes about her mental breakdowns, her queer identity, and living in a silent, quirky world populated by unforgettable characters. What could have been a bitter litany of complaint is instead an unexpectedly hilarious and affecting take on life.

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Sunday, October 17, 2010 at 7 pm

The United States is obsessed with virginity -- from the media to schools to government agencies. In "The Purity Myth, " Jessica Valenti argues that the country's intense focus on chastity is damaging to young women. Through in-depth cultural and social analysis, Valenti reveals that powerful messaging on both extremes -- ranging from abstinence-only curriculum to "Girls Gone Wild" infomercials -- place a young woman's worth entirely on her sexuality. Morals are therefore linked purely to sexual behavior, rather than values like honesty, kindness, and altruism. Valenti sheds light on the value -- and hypocrisy -- around the notion that girls remain virgins until they're married by putting into context the historical question of purity, modern abstinence-only education, pornography, and public punishments for those who dare to have sex. "The Purity Myth" presents a revolutionary argument that girls and women are overly valued for their sexuality, as well as solutions for a future without a damaging emphasis on virginity.

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Sunday, August 15th, 2010 6pm

Genly Ai is an emissary from the human galaxy to Winter, a lost, stray world. His mission is to bring the planet back into the fold of an evolving galactic civilization, but to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own culture and prejudices and those that he encounters. On a planet where people are of no gender--or both--this is a broad gulf indeed. The inventiveness and delicacy with which Le Guin portrays her alien world are not only unusual and inspiring, they are fundamental to almost all decent science fiction that has been written since. In fact, reading Le Guin again may cause the eye to narrow somewhat disapprovingly at the younger generation: what new ground are they breaking that is not already explored here with greater skill and acumen? It cannot be said, however, that this is a rollicking good story. Le Guin takes a lot of time to explore her characters, the world of her creation, and the philosophical themes that arise.