First line of "Strange Fruit" by Billie Holiday Southern [California] trees bear a strange fruit... What happened to Malcolm Harsch on May 31, and Robert Fuller on June 10, 2020? There is a long, documented history of domestic terrorism in the United States. It started with the exploitation, subjugation, and annihilation of indigenous North Americans by invading missionaries and colonists who committed to a belief in their Manifest Destiny with violent dedication. The Trail of Tears, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Indian Schools, reservations, bombing Black Wall Street in Oklahoma; the internment of those survivors, lynchings, Rosewood in Florida, the internment of American citizens of Japanese descent during World War II, the Klu Klux Klan (and other Aryan Superiority Societies), unleashing police dogs and pressurized water hoses on American children of African descent during the Civil Rights Movement… These and other similar events are points along a continuum sour

Two Women in One by Nawal El Saadawi Translated from the Arabic by Osman Nusairi literary fiction Saqi  July 2020 First published in 1985 during waves of Egyptian political upheaval with friction between nationalist and opposition factions and an economic depression, then reissued in 2005 in the swell of contentious elections and their aftermath, and now being published again in the wake of the worldwide #MeToo movement and the recent global expansion of Black Lives Matter, Two Women in One taps into the continuum of generations of the anatomy of systemic oppression in a narrative voice with present-day resonance. Following a dedication that warns readers about the under-reported martial facets of love, the foreword by musician and singer Deeyah Khan refers to Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex and that author's rational laments regarding the gendered indoctrination of women into femininity as a restrictive force that smothers individuality, condemning each of them to

UPDATE:  We're going virtual!  Monday, September 21 - Saturday, September 26, 2020  A mix of live and prerecorded activities for a variety of interests, plus 100 free swag bags filled with T-shirts, books, and other bookish items for curbside pickup from Marietta House in Glenn Dale, Maryland on Saturday 9/26 to preselected and notified recipients. Distribution is on a first come, first served basis. Register here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1mY7DW96y6IbEYRXCG2SMmUoYE3yC2F4ZwlZ_2d0lS64/viewform?edit_requested=true While BEA successfully took their annual celebratory publishing industry extravaganza online last month, and the National Book Fest plans to do the same this September, a modified version of the second annual The Write Women Book Fest is still on for Saturday, September 26, 2020 at lovely historic Marietta House in Glenn Dale, Maryland. [6/23/2020 update] Prince George's County Parks and Planning has decided to suspend on-site activities until at lea