In Know the Mother, author Desiree Cooper explores the complex archetype of the mother in all her incarnations. In a collage of meditative stories, women—both black and white—find themselves wedged between their own yearnings and their roles as daughters, sisters, grandmothers, and wives. A 2015 Kresge Artist Fellow, Desiree Cooper is a former attorney, Pulitzer Prize–nominated journalist, and Detroit community activist. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Callaloo, Detroit Noir, Best African American Fiction 2010, and Tidal Basin Review, among other online and print publications. Cooper is a fellow with Kimbilio, a national residency for African American fiction writers, and was a founding board member of Cave Canem, a national residency for emerging black poets. Jasmine Sanders is from the South Side of Chicago and writes about trauma and mental health. Her current project is a collection of Midwestern ghost stories. Her essays can be found at BuzzFeed and Catapult. Follow her on Twitter: @ToniAliceZora. For this event, the two authors will have a cross-generational conversation around choice. They were both pregnant at 19, and their choices profoundly affected their lives and views of reproductive justice. Desiree will also read selections from her book.
