Litquake & MoAD present | Susan Straight: In the Country of Women

Susan Straight, a self-proclaimed book nerd, and Dwayne Sims, an African American basketball player, started dating in high school. After marriage, at driveway barbecues and fish fries with the large, close-knit Sims family, Straight (and eventually her three daughters) heard 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. Her new memoir 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. In conversation with Julie Lythcott-Haims.