Ladyparts — author Deborah Copaken in conversation with Ayelet Waldman

Please join us on Thursday, August 5, 2021 at 6 PM PDT for a discussion of LADYPARTS with author Deborah Copaken in conversation with Ayelet Waldman (author of A REALLY GOOD DAY: HOW MICRODOSING MADE A MEGA DIFFERENCE IN MY MOOD, MY MARRIAGE, AND MY LIFE).

Our discussion will be webcast on Zoom at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85308181680 and on Facebook Live at https://www.facebook.com/ggpbooks/live/.

Order your copy of LADYPARTS, at http://bit.ly/ggpLadyparts, or in audiobook from Libro.fm at http://bit.ly/LadypartsAB. Order your copy of A REALLY GOOD DAY in print from GGP at http://bit.ly/ggpReallyGoodDay or in #audiobook from Libro.fm at http://bit.ly/ReallyGoodDayAB.

Description

A frank, witty, and dazzlingly written memoir of one woman trying to keep it together while her body falls apart–from the “brilliant mind” (Michaela Coel, creator of I May Destroy You) behind Shutterbabe

“The most laugh-out-loud story of resilience you’ll ever read and an essential road map for the importance of narrative as a tool of healing.”–Lori Gottlieb, bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

I’m crawling around on the bathroom floor, picking up pieces of myself. These pieces are not a metaphor. They are actual pieces.

Twenty years after her iconic memoir Shutterbabe, Deborah Copaken is at her darkly comedic nadir: battered, broke, divorcing, dissected, and dying–literally–on sexism’s battlefield as she scoops up what she believes to be her internal organs into a glass container before heading off to the hospital . . . in an UberPool.

Ladyparts is her irreverent inventory of both the female body and the body politic of womanhood in America, the story of one woman brought to her knees by the one-two-twelve punch of divorce, solo motherhood, healthcare Frogger, unaffordable childcare, shady landlords, her father’s death, college tuitions, sexual harassment, corporate indifference, ageism, sexism, and plain old bad luck. Plus seven serious illnesses, one atop the other, which provide the book’s narrative skeleton: vagina, uterus, breast, heart, cervix, brain, and lungs. She bounces back from each bum body part, finds workarounds for every setback–she transforms her home into a commune to pay rent; sells her soul for health insurance; turns FBI informant when her sexual harasser is nominated to the White House–but in her slippery struggle to survive a steep plunge off the middle-class ladder, she is suddenly awoken to what it means to have no safety net.

Side-splittingly funny one minute, a freak horror show the next, quintessentially American, Ladyparts is an era-defining memoir for our time.

About the Panelists

Deborah Copaken is the bestselling author of Shutterbabe, The Red Book, and Between Here and April. An Emmy Award-winning news producer and award-winning photojournalist, she is also a columnist at The Atlantic and a screenwriter for the Netflix show Emily in Paris. Her New York Times Modern Love column, “When Cupid Is a Prying Journalist,” was adapted for this TV series, and she has performed on the New York City stage multiple times. Her essays have also appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Observer, Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Nation. She lives in Brooklyn.

Ayelet Waldman is the author of the novels Love and Treasure, Red Hook Road, Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, and Daughter’s Keeper, as well as of the essay collection Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace, and the Mommy-Track Mystery series. She was a federal public defender and taught at Loyola Law School and the UC Berkeley School of Law, where she developed and taught courses on the legal implications of the war on drugs. She lives in Berkeley, California, with her husband, Michael Chabon, and their four children.