"The First House--A Memoir of Mom, Berkeley, and Beyond."
When: Thursday, April 21, 1:00 PM
Where: 73 Tremont St, Sawyer Library Poetry Center.
Light Refreshments will be served.
The memoir explores the author’s experiences growing up with love and secrets. What does a ten-year old do when her mom—the funnest, best mom in the world—goes from being an antiwar radical to being a closeted lesbian? How does a thirteen-year old girl cope when her mom is stricken with a terrifying illness that nobody, inside the family or out, can acknowledge? How does a fourteen-year old handle leaving her suburban home in Palo Alto to join her father in a hippie collective in 1970’s Berkeley?
The First House is a story of motherlove and motherloss that winds through decades of discovery. A young girl, then a teen, then an adult, seeks solace, sanity, and love in this collection of moving and surprisingly funny tales. The journey takes her through the unlikely worlds of astrology, academia, feminism, and queer family. Along the way she embraces a procession of surrogate mothers, teachers, lovers, friends, animals, and invisible beings. But how long can she keep the promises she made to the most important person in the world?
Amy Agigian, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Sociology at Suffolk University, where she is also the Founding Director of the Center for Women's Health and Human Rights. Trained in the sociology of women, gender, sexuality and health, she is the author of Baby Steps: How Lesbian Alternative Insemination is Changing the World. Dr. Agigian’s current research applies a feminist health and human rights perspective to the vexing, global issues of human fertility and infertility. A long time activist, Dr. Agigian lives in Somerville, Massachusetts and is the mother of a teen-aged son.
