Two highly distinguished memoirists and essayists discuss how they parent through painful, unexpected complications with Kate Tuttle, a leading book critic.
The event is free and no registration is required. It will take place at the First Congregational Church of Montclair. This event is part of Succeed2gether's Montclair Literary Festival.
Open Book / Open Mind is sponsored by Montclair Public Library Foundation, Watchung Booksellers, the New Jersey Council on Humanities, Rosemary Iversen, and an anonymous donor. We are also grateful for the generous support of our in-kind sponsors, First Congregational Church of Montclair, The George, and Amanti Vino. To support Open Book / Open Mind and other library programs, click here to donate.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Leslie Jamison is the author of the New York Times bestsellers "The Recovering" and "The Empathy Exams"; the collection of essays "Make It Scream, Make It Burn," a finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award; and the novel "The Gin Closet," a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She writes for numerous publications including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, the New York Times, Harper’s, and the New York Review of Books. She teaches at Columbia University and lives in Brooklyn.
Emily Raboteau writes at the intersection of social and environmental justice, race, climate change, and parenthood. Her previous books are "Searching for Zion," winner of an American Book Award and finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the cult classic novel, "The Professor’s Daughter." Since the release of the 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, she has focused on writing about the climate crisis. A contributing editor at Orion Magazine and a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books, Raboteau’s essays have recently appeared and been anthologized in the New Yorker, the New York Times, New York Magazine, The Nation, Best American Science Writing, Best American Travel Writing, and elsewhere. She serves regularly as nonfiction faculty at the Bread Loaf Environmental Writing Conference and is a full professor at the City College of New York (CUNY) in Harlem. She lives in the Bronx with her husband, the novelist Victor LaValle, and their two children.
“In different variations of her signature, beautifully frank language, Jamison writes about her fantasy of stability and her uncertainty as to whether it’s a dream she actually wants fulfilled. . . . In caring for her daughter, she finds — at least on the page — a way to live with it all, the sleeplessness and the joy, the rapture and the frustration, the immense love and the wish to have a single moment alone . . . She's a master at closing nearly every paragraph with what lands as an epiphany.” —NPR
ABOUT "SPLINTERS: ANOTHER KIND OF LOVE STORY"
A New York Times bestseller. In her first memoir, Jamison turns her unrivaled powers of perception on some of the most intimate relationships of her life: her consuming love for her young daughter, a ruptured marriage once swollen with hope, and the shaping legacy of her own parents’ complicated bond. In examining what it means for a woman to be many things at once—a mother, an artist, a teacher, a lover—Jamison places the magical and the mundane side by side in surprising ways. The result is a work of nonfiction like no other, an almost impossibly deep reckoning with the muchness of life and art, and a book that grieves the departure of one love even as it celebrates the arrival of another.
ABOUT "LESSONS FOR SURVIVAL: MOTHERING AGAINST 'THE APOCALYPSE'"
"'Lessons for Survival' is a probing series of pilgrimages from the perspective of a mother struggling to raise her children to thrive without coming undone in an era of turbulent intersecting crises. With camera in hand, Raboteau goes in search of birds, fluttering in the air or painted on buildings, and city parks where her children may safely play while avoiding pollution, pandemics, and the police. She ventures abroad to learn from Indigenous peoples, and in her own family and community, she discovers the most intimate examples of resilience. Raboteau bears witness to the inner life of Black womanhood, motherhood, the brutalities and possibilities of cities, while celebrating the beauty and fragility of nature. This innovative work of reportage and autobiography stitches together multiple stories of protection, offering a profound sense of hope."—Macmillan
“Emily Raboteau dedicates her considerable intellectual gifts, clarity and moral courage to confront the catastrophes of our era. She traverses generations and geographies, all the while caring for her children, and in so doing, teaches us that to ‘mother; is to tend, to study, to nurture, and to hand over our most precious inheritances.”—Imani Perry, author of South to America
ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER
Kate Tuttle is an editor, writer and book critic. She is a former executive at People magazine, covering books and also previously edited the books pages at the Boston Globe. A past president of the National Book Critics Circle, her reviews and essays have appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and elsewhere. Tuttle serves as the co-chair of Open Book / Open Mind’s advisory committee.
Mon, Apr 29 | 10:00AM to 6:00PM |
Tue, Apr 30 | 10:00AM to 8:00PM |
Wed, May 01 | 10:00AM to 8:00PM |
Thu, May 02 | 10:00AM to 8:00PM |
Fri, May 03 | 10:00AM to 6:00PM |
Sat, May 04 | 10:00AM to 6:00PM |
Sun, May 05 | 1:00PM to 6:00PM |
50 South Fullerton Avenue
Montclair, NJ 07042
Tel: 973-744-0500
Email: reference@montclairlibrary.org
185 Bellevue Avenue
Montclair, NJ 07043
Tel: 973-744-0500 ext. 2283
Email: reference@montclairlibrary.org