Feminist activist and poet Judith Arcana will read from her new book What if your Mother, on February 20, at 4:15 p.m., in the Balch Auditorium, Scripps College. A reception will follow the reading. Guests will have the opportunity to meet the speaker, Judith Arcana, as well as Minnie Bruce Pratt, the Intercollegiate Women’s Studies 2007 scholar-in-residence. The event is free and open to the public. For more information, please contact the Intercollegiate Women’s Studies of The Claremont Colleges (909) 621-8274 or email Eva Cerecerez.
In her collection of poems written between 1998 and 2004, Judith Arcana brings together her long-standing feminist activism, especially concerned with reproductive health and rights and her talents as a poet. The poems draw from “the lives of women and girls I know or have simply encountered,” says Arcana. The poems evoke the myriad of individual situations in which women of childbearing age become pregnant and the trajectories their lives may take as a result. The collection addresses the complexity of the issues surrounding pregnancy, parenthood, and abortion.