Kim McLarin

presents

Womanish:
A Grown Black Woman Speaks on Love and Life

This event includes a book signing

Date

Feb
6
Wednesday
February 6, 2019
7:00 PM ET

Location

Harvard Book Store
1256 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138

Tickets

This event is free; no tickets are required.

Harvard Book Store welcomes acclaimed local writer KIM MCLARIN—author of Meeting of the Waters and Jump at the Sun—for a discussion of her new essay collection, Womanish: A Grown Black Woman Speaks on Love and Life.

About Womanish

Womanish. (Opp. of “girlish,” i.e. frivolous, irresponsible, not serious.) A black feminist or feminist of color. From the black folk expression of mothers to female children, “you acting womanish,” i.e., like a woman. Usually referring to outrageous, audacious, courageous or willful behavior . . . Acting grown up. Being grown up . . . ―Alice Walker’s Definition of a “Womanist” from In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose

Born in 1964, the last year of the Boomers or the first year of Generation X, depending upon who's counting, Kim McLarin came of age as part of the first real "Brown vs. Board" generation, and that experience, of America first embracing and then rejecting a real and meaningful beloved racial community, has shaped everything in her life.

Searing in its emotional honesty, Womanish is an essay collection that explores what it means to be a black woman in today’s turbulent times. Writing with candor, wit and vulnerability on topics including dating after divorce, depression, parenting older children, the Obamas, and the often fraught relations between white and black women, McLarin unveils herself at the crossroads of being black, female and middle-aged, and, ultimately, American. Powerful and timely, Womanish draws upon a lifetime of experiences to paint a portrait of a black woman trying to come to terms with the world around her, and of a society trying to come to terms with black women.

Praise

"Kim McLarin's Womanish . . . confronts some of the most opaque and stubborn ideologies undergirding US culture in essays full of insights as precise as tactical strikes . . . McLarin's penetrating narrative voice is completely at home in itself." —Foreword Reviews, starred review

“Courage and outrage inform 13 essays about black womanhood. . . Bold, well-crafted essays on living, loving, and striving while black.” —Kirkus Reviews

Kim McLarin
Kim McLarin

Kim McLarin

Kim McLarin is the author of three critically-acclaimed novels, several essay collections and the bibilomemoir James Baldwin’s Another Country: Bookmarked. Her last essay collection, Womanish, was called “blisteringly honest, funny and vulnerable” by The New York Times, and was excerpted in The Washington Post. Her work has appeared in the New England Review, the Sewanee Review, The Sun Magazine, The Root, Slate, The Washington Post, The New York Times and many other publications. She is a former staff writer for The Associated Press, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The New York Times. She appears regularly on Basic Black, the longest running program on public television focusing on the interests of people of color, produced at WGBH. She holds a BA from Duke University and is a graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy. Kim is Professor of Creative Writing and Graduate Program Director of the MFA in Popular Fiction at Emerson College.

Harvard Book Store
1256 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138

Walking from the Harvard Square T station: 2 minutes

As you exit the station, reverse your direction and walk east along Mass. Ave. in front of the Cambridge Savings Bank. Cross Dunster St. and proceed along Mass. Ave for three more blocks. You will pass Au Bon Pain, JP Licks, and TD Bank. Harvard Book Store is located at the corner of Mass. Ave. and Plympton St.

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