The ARTful Book Club: In the Country of Women by Susan Straight
Event Information
- Riverside Art Museum, 3425 Mission Inn Avenue, Riverside, CA 92501
- 2019-09-28 11:00:00
- Varies
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Event Flyer
Book lovers unite! Indulge your passion for art and reading by joining us for a curated selection of art-related books. From September–November, we’ll be reading about the economics of contemporary art, a memoir from Susan Straight about her family filled with a history of badass women, and absorb answers to questions we didn’t know to ask by the brilliant John Berger.
11 a.m.–noon (unless otherwise noted)
Cost: $5/meeting (unless otherwise noted). Click the link to RSVP and pay, or bring at start of discussion meeting. No refunds. Readers will be sent discussion questions prior to each meeting if they RSVP. Readers must read the book in advance. We encourage you to bring your copy for the discussion.
*** Saturday, September 28, $15, includes light refreshments
In the Country of Women by Susan Straight | Memoir
*** A special treat, author Susan Straight will join us for our discussion. Be sure to bring your copy to get signed!
Author Susan Straight's memoir, In the Country of Women, is the inspiration behind our Badass Women and the Road to the Promised Land exhibition.
In Inland Southern California, near the desert and the Mexican border, Susan Straight, a self-proclaimed book nerd, and Dwayne Sims, an African American basketball player, started dating in high school. After college, they married and drove to Amherst, Massachusetts, where Straight met her teacher and mentor, James Baldwin, who encouraged her to write. Once back in Riverside, at driveway barbecues and fish fries with the large, close-knit Sims family, Straight—and eventually her three daughters—heard for decades the stories of Dwayne’s female ancestors. Some women escaped violence in post-slavery Tennessee, some escaped murder in Jim Crow Mississippi, and some fled abusive men. Straight’s mother-in-law, Alberta Sims, is the descendant at the heart of this memoir. Susan’s family, too, reflects the hardship and resilience of women pushing onward—from Switzerland, Canada, and the Colorado Rockies to California.
A Pakistani word, biraderi, is one Straight uses to define a complex system of kinship and clan—those who become your family. An entire community helped raise her daughters. Of her three girls, now grown and working in museums and the entertainment industry, Straight writes, “The daughters of our ancestors carry in their blood at least three continents. We are not about borders. We are about love and survival.” In the Country of Women is a valuable social history and a personal narrative that reads like a love song to America and indomitable women.