Mama Takes the Mic: Magic and Madness from Storytellers at MUTHA and Hip Mama Magazine
Alternative Parenting Mags Hip Mama and MUTHA, and the Feminist Press, team up to bring you a radical night of readings from mothers who speak their mind. Join them for a night of fiction, poetry, memoir, and live-reading of projected comics from new graphic novels, headlined by Hip Mama founder Ariel Gore (We Were Witches). With Aya de Leon (The Boss), Elisa Albert (After Birth), Katherine Arnoldi (The Amazing True Story of a Teenage Single Mom), Thi Bui (The Best We Could Do), and Samantha Barrow (Jelly), emcee'd by MUTHA's editor-in-chief, Meg Lemke. Mixing up genre, format, and feminist voices for an unforgettable event. An official Brooklyn Book Festival Bookend Event.
ABOUT WE WERE WITCHES
"Gore's magic-infused narrative. . . .is a moving account of a young writer and mother striving to claim her own agency and find her voice." —Publishers Weekly
"This book mimics the messy, discursive texture of memory—of life. . . . Inventive and affecting." —Kirkus Reviews
Cashing into the dream that education is the road out of poverty, a teen mom takes a chance on bettering herself, gets on welfare rolls, and talks her way into college. But once she’s there, the phallocratic story of “overcoming” permeates every subject. Creative writing professors depend heavily on Freytag’s pyramid to analyze life. So Ariel turns to a rich subcultural canon of resistance and failure, populated by writers like Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, Gloria Anzaldúa, Tillie Olsen, and Kathy Acker.
Wryly riffing on feminist literary tropes, We Were Witches documents the survival of a demonized single mother. She’s beset by custody disputes, homophobia, and America’s ever-present obsession with shaming odd women into passive citizenship. But even as the narrator struggles to graduate—often the triumphant climax of a dramatic narrative—the question lingers uncomfortably. If you’re dealing with precarious parenthood, queer identity, and debt: What is the true narrative shape of your experience?
Ariel Gore
Magick spells and inverted fairy tales combat queer scapegoating, domestic violence, and high-interest student loans.