February Events

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February 9^th:

after-words will be CLOSED for inventory.

 

February 10^th

after-words will resume buying books for store credit.

 

February 25^th

In celebration of the release of Hood Feminism (Viking, $26.00) by Mikki Kendall,

after-words bookstore invites you to re-consider the Feminist Movement. 

 

Panelists include Linda Tirado, author of Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America

Berkley, $16.00

 

Reserve your spot at this free event: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/a-feminism-for-everyone-tickets-93191918537

Today’s feminist movement has a glaring blind spot, and paradoxically, it is women.

Mainstream feminists rarely talk about meeting basic needs as a feminist issue, argues Mikki Kendall. Food insecurity, access to quality education, safe neighborhoods, a living wage, and medical care are all feminist issues. All too often the focus is not on basic survival for the many, but on increasing privilege for the few.

How can we stand in solidarity as a movement, Kendall asks, when there is the distinct likelihood that some women are oppressing others?

In her searing collection of essays, Mikki Kendall takes aim at the legitimacy of the modern feminist movement arguing that it has chronically failed to address the needs of all but a few women. Drawing on her own experiences with hunger, violence, and hypersexualization, Hood Feminism delivers an irrefutable indictment of a movement in flux. Kendall has written a ferocious clarion call to all would-be feminists to live out the true mandate of the movement in thought and in deed.

 

Mikki Kendall lives and works in Chicago where she wields words and raises a family. She has a couple of degrees, a couple of kids, and one patient husbeast. A graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and DePaul, Mikki Kendall has been blogging since 2003 under the pen name Karnythia.  She has written for NBC Think, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Ebony, Essence, Publishers Weekly, Global Comment, Salon – and many other online and print forums.  An accomplished public speaker, she has discussed race, feminism, violence in Chicago, tech, pop culture and social media on NPR, the BBC, and universities across the country.  She is the author of Amazons, Abolitionists and Activists: a Graphic History of Women’s Fight for Their Rights (Ten Speed Press $19.99). 

She is also a friend, sister-at-arms, colleague, and customer of this bookstore for over two decades. 

 

Linda Tirado was a completely average American with two kids and, until her essay “Why I Make Terrible Decisions, or, Poverty Thoughts” was picked up by The Huffington Post, The Nation, and countless other publications. Since then, the story has been read by more than six million people. Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America is her first book.

As the haves and have-nots grow more separate and unequal in America, the working poor don’t get heard from much. Now they have a voice - and it’s forthright, funny, and just a little bit furious.

Here, Linda Tirado tells what it’s like, day after day, to work, eat, shop, raise kids, and keep a roof over your head without enough money. She also answers questions often asked about those who live on or near minimum wage: Why don’t they get better jobs? Why don’t they make better choices? Why do they smoke cigarettes and have ugly lawns? Why don’t they borrow from their parents?

Enlightening and entertaining, Hand to Mouth opens up a new and much-needed dialogue between the people who just don’t have it and the people who just don’t get it.

Food and drink provided.