Author Sarah Schulman to Discuss Her Book 'Conflict Is Not Abuse' at The Seattle Public Library Jan. 17
Release Date: January 3, 2017
The Seattle Public Library will host author Sarah Schulman for her first Seattle visit in over a decade. Schulman will be in conversation with author and activist Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore to discuss the cultural phenomena of blame, cruelty and scapegoating from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 17 at the Central Library, 1000 Fourth Ave., Level 1, Microsoft Auditorium, 206-386-4636.
Library events are free and open to the public. Registration is not required. Parking in the Central Library garage will be available for $6 after 5 p.m. Doors will open at 6:30 p.m.
"Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair" is Schulman's rejection of the cultural phenomena of blame, cruelty and scapegoating. Schulman examines the moment where discomfort leads to overreaction in personal relations, in group dynamics, between governments and civilians, and between nations. She addresses police brutality, the anti-violence movement, HIV criminalization, the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and many other hot-button issues, exposing the trajectory from oppressed to oppressor, in order to illuminate a path toward de-escalation of conflict.
While the book starts by scrutinizing the dynamics of intimate relationships, it is ultimately about saving lives.
Schulman is the author of 18 books, including "The Cosmopolitans," "The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination" and "My American History: Lesbian and Gay Life During the Reagan/Bush Years." Schulman is the co-director of the ACT UP oral history project. Her awards include the 2009 Kessler Award for "Sustained Contribution to LGBT Studies" from the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship, two American Library Association Book Awards, and she was a finalist for the Prix de Rome. She lives in New York, where she is Distinguished Professor of English at City University of New York (College of Staten Island) and a Fellow at the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU.
Sycamore is the author of a memoir and two novels, and the editor of five nonfiction anthologies. Her latest title, "The End of San Francisco," won a Lambda Literary Award, and her most recent anthology, "Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots? Flaming Challenges to Masculinity, Objectification, and the Desire to Conform," was an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book. She recently finished a third novel, "Sketchtasy," and is the host of Contagious Exchanges: Queer Writers in Conversation, a monthly reading series at Hugo House on first Wednesdays.