Author Jennifer Weiner Writes a Radical Beach Read

The times, they are a’changin’. This week on Inflection Point, I talk to author Jennifer Weiner, about her newest bestselling book “Mrs. Everything”.

The story is loosely based on Jennifer’s own mother, Fran, who got married, had four children and ultimately came out as a gay woman after Jennifer and her siblings were out of the house. Spanning two sisters’ lives from the 1950s to the night of the 2016 political election, the story raises questions about who is really making women’s choices about our own lives...are we? Or our system? How did we get where we are, and how do we move on from here?

Jennifer shares the facts behind her fiction, what it takes to write a good sex scene, what hasn't changed since #metoo started and how the personal becomes political. We spoke at Women Lit, a program of the Bay Area Book Festival on June 22, 2019 in Berkeley, California.

Photo courtesy of Jennifer Weiner

Photo courtesy of Jennifer Weiner

The End of Human Trafficking May Begin with Radical Empathy - Julia Flynn Siler

In 19th Century San Francisco's Chinatown only 1 in 10 people were women, and most of them were forced into prostitution, trafficked by criminal tongs. In today’s episode, meet the Scottish sewing instructor Donaldina Cameron and the women she collaborated with and helped escape from sex slavery between 1870 and 1930. This week on Inflection Point: Julia Flynn Siler talks about her new book The White Devil’s Daughters: The Women Who Fought Slavery in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Prepare yourself for bomb scares and bubonic plague quarantines, court cases and crowdfunding efforts. Join us in what is, ultimately, a conversation about standing up to a broken society, and how women can help women rise up.

Recorded at the Bay Area Book Festival in May 2019 as part of their Women Lit programming.

Photo courtesy of Julia Flynn Siler

Photo courtesy of Julia Flynn Siler

How Radical Change Happens - Kate Schatz and Miriam Klein Stahl

Times like these call for radical ideas.

But is being a radical a positive thing? And if so, why are so many radicals seen as dangerous?

In the first episode of the new season of Inflection Point: RADICALS, we’ll define what it really means to be a radical, look at some of the lasting change radicals have made throughout our history, and examine how those ideas went from unthinkable to mainstream.

I invited RAD WOMEN series’ creators Kate Schatz and Miriam Klein Stahl to talk about how to spot a radical, because if anyone knows what a radical looks like and what it takes to be one, it’s them.

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Miriam Klein Stahl and Kate SchatzPhoto by: Casey Orr

Miriam Klein Stahl and Kate Schatz

Photo by: Casey Orr

“There is no peak fury”: Rebecca Traister, Author of Good And Mad: The Revolutionary Power Of Women’s Anger

There’s a reason that women are angry. Since the founding of this country, we have been faced with men in power who are set on shutting us down, and shutting us out. Revolutionary fury isn’t just for the founding fathers, and ladies, even though we’ve been stewing in our ever-growing anger for the past 242 years, we have just begun to fight. Find out how women have harnessed their anger throughout history and how when we listen to the stories behind each other's anger, we can all change the world today. Listen to my conversation with Rebecca Traister, the author of New York Times Bestseller, Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger.

This conversation was recorded live in Berkeley, CA on October 10th, 2018 as part of Women Lit, in collaboration with the Bay Area Book Festival.

Photo by: One World Journalist

Photo by: One World Journalist