Join us as we welcome Morgan Jerkins for a reading, conversation, and book-signing for her essay collection, This Will Be My Undoing, named one of the "Most Anticipated Books of 2018" by Esquire, Elle, Vogue, Nylon, Refinery29, the Huffington Post, Book Riot, Bitch Media, Electric Literature, and many others. For this event, Morgan will be in conversation with Britt Julious.
To register for free for this event, click HERE.
From one of the fiercest critics writing today, Morgan Jerkins' highly-anticipated collection of linked essays interweaves her incisive commentary on pop culture, feminism, black history, misogyny, and racism with her own experiences to confront the very real challenges of being a black woman today.
In This Will Be My Undoing, Jerkins takes on perhaps one of the most provocative contemporary topics: What does it mean to "be"--to live as, to exist as--a black woman today? This is a book about black women, but it's necessary reading for all Americans. Doubly disenfranchised by race and gender, often deprived of a place within the mostly white mainstream feminist movement, black women are objectified, silenced, and marginalized with devastating consequences, in ways both obvious and subtle, that are rarely acknowledged in our country's larger discussion about inequality. In This Will Be My Undoing, Jerkins becomes both narrator and subject to expose the social, cultural, and historical story of black female oppression that influences the black community as well as the white, male-dominated world at large.
Whether she's writing about Sailor Moon; Rachel Dolezal; the stigma of therapy; her complex relationship with her own physical body; the pain of dating when men say they don't "see color"; being a black visitor in Russia; the specter of "the fast-tailed girl" and the paradox of black female sexuality; or disabled black women in the context of the "Black Girl Magic" movement, Jerkins is compelling and revelatory.
Morgan Jerkins is a 25-year-old writer living in New York. She graduated from Princeton University with an AB in comparative literature, specializing in nineteenth-century Russian literature and postwar modern Japanese literature, and she has an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars. She has written for The New Yorker, Vogue, New York Times, The Atlantic, ELLE, Rolling Stone, Lenny Letter, The New Republic, and BuzzFeed, among many others. She's also a Contributing Editor at Catapult.
Britt Julious is a journalist and essayist. She currently writes a weekly column for the Chicago Tribune and regularly contributes pieces about art, music, race, feminism and culture to publications including the New York Times, Esquire, ELLE, GQ, Rolling Stone, and Vice. Britt hosts "The Back Talk," a podcast featuring stories from young women of color.
This event is free and open to the public, but registration through Eventbrite is required. Click HERE to register. Books will be available for purchase at the event. Proof of purchase of This Will Be My Undoing from Women & Children First will be required to enter the signing line.
