Fall is officially here…
Reading materials
Coco Channel, unlike other designers, continues to hold a fascination decades of her death. Many books have been written about her life, and a new one has just been released. In Sleeping With the Enemy: Coco Channel’s Secret War, Hal Vaughan cites declassified documents in declaring that fashion designer Coco Chanel was a wartime spy for Germany. Another title, which includes newly discovered love letters and journals, is set for a November release under the title Coco Channel: An Intimate Life by Lisa Chaney.
Another amazing book, Might be their powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War, written by Leymah Gbowee, a Liberian activist discusses how she united Christian and Muslim women in a campaign to end the war in her country. The author writes:
As a child I had often wished for health. I was sick a lot — measles, malaria, cholera. I’d also wished for good grades, and for things to go well for my family. This year, I was seventeen, finishing high school and about to start at the university. I made a teenage good girl’s wish: for good grades, interesting professors and the right classes. And I asked that those I loved be kept safe from evil
Read more about the book here
Events
The new play, Trojan Women, adapted from the Greek playwright Euripides’ 2,400-year-old original, is currently performing at the Getty Villa in Los Angeles. The play tells the story of the end of the Trojan War, when the Trojan men have all been killed and Hecuba, former Queen of Troy, and her daughters are about to be taken back to Greece as sex slaves. Learn more about the playwright Jocelyn Clarke and his new play here.
Do not miss the Brooklyn Book Festival this Sunday. When it started back in 2006, it was focused on how Brooklyn had shaped the writing of Jonathan Lethem, Paula Fox and Emily Barton. Now, it is an international festival, which brings authors from all over the world. For more info about the festival, click here.
A film screening and a panel discussion for the documentary Women in War Zones: Sexual Violence in the Congo occurs this Monday, September 20th in Washington, DC. Women in War Zones is a documentary about the day-to-day lives of the women in Bukavu, Congo. For more information and to RSVP, click here
