In the follow-up to their acclaimed and beloved children’s “What Is Punk?” author Eric Morse and artist Anny Yi reunite for “What Is Hip-Hop?” Join author Eric Morse for a book discussion and signing of this beautifully illustrated children’s history of hip-hop from a progressive/idealistic perspective that features Run-DMC, LL Cool J, Beastie Boys, Salt-N-Pepa, Biggie and Tupac, Eminem, even Nicki Minaj and Kendrick Lamar, as you’ve never seen them!

M. Evelina Galang discusses her first non-fiction book that took her 20 years to write as she got to know the Filipina survivors of World II who were forced to be “comfort women.” Giving them a voice they never thought they’d have, Galang’s journey with them is by turns heartbreaking and heartwarming.

Our intention is to create a regular group of queer-anarko-feminists , interested in meeting to read, write, and create texts and criticism about issues relevant to the anarchx-queer-feministx community. In each three month process, we will choose a topic we are interested in and through studying, analyzing, and writing using a collective creation process (text or zine, for instance). The group will then choose another salient topic and begin again. The group is open to all trans, queer, or femme identifying persons.

Death Cafe is a place to wonder together about the mystery and meaning of life and to discuss death comfortably and openly, a free-wheeling, self-facilitated conversation around death and dying, inevitably touching upon life and living. Death Cafe is not a bereavement group. Snacks will be provided and as a thank you to Bluestockings participants are encouraged to enjoy a beverage from the Bluestockings Cafe. The first Death Cafe was held in London in 2011. Depending on the number of people that participate, you will meet in groups of 3-4 and talk about whatever compels you about death and dying. It is asked that people participate with an open mind and spirit, respect all points of view, and speak and listen with no agenda, objective, or themes.

Kundalini Yoga is also called the Yoga of Awareness. It combines the physical practice of Asanas with Pranayama (breathing) and Meditation/Chanting – it targets the whole body system (nervous system, glands, mental faculties, chakras) to develop awareness and consciousness, strength and flexibility.

Everybody is welcome, no previous knowledge of Yoga is necessary. Please bring a Yoga mat and possibly a blanket and a shawl.

Shortly after she moved to New York, from her native Switzerland in 1988, Ursula Scherrer started exploring different styles of Yoga for her own spiritual and physical well being before she did her first teacher training in 2002 and has been teaching ever since. In addition to her skills and expertise as a Yoga teacher (Hatha and Kundalini Yoga) she is also a Pranayama Healer and certified Qi Gong instructor.

For more information please contact Ursula Scherrer: ursula.scherrer@gmail.com

NOTE: This event does not take place at Bluestockings!

Within the midtown area we are able to get the full spectrum of the trump story and his rise to power. The tour will focus on three main things: the first is looking into the man himself and his history. He is well connected with organized crime, illicit activity and corrupt dealings, and looking into his history in New York gives us a window into that. The second is how he, as a symbol for real estate at large, has massively changed New York’s built environment to cater to a billionaire class. The third is looking at the systemic nature of trump’s rise in New York. What trump has done is about a lot more than the single individual, and by looking at the agencies, actors and government institutions that have supported his rise, we can come away with a larger societal understanding of justice in our country. Sign up at http://socialjusticetours.com/

Join Kevin Czap as they present their new graphic novel Fütchi Perf. Fütchi Perf is a visual album set in and around a happier, brighter Cleveland, OH sometime in the future. This is an idealized future of tight-knit romantic friendship, uber-chic culture tastemakers and magical solutions of real problems. Each section of the book is a separate look at life in this city of tomorrow, the first of which, “Theme,” portrays a queer lefty utopia where the government works for the people and your best friends are never further than a block away.

WOMEN’S/TRANS’ POETRY JAM & OPEN MIKE Hosted by Vittoria Repetto—the hardest working guinea butch dyke poet on the Lower East Side—the jam has showcased the famous, the infamous, the unknown for over a decade. Come out and deliver (up to) 8 minutes of your poetry, prose, songs and spoken word. Visit vittoriarepetto.wordpress.com for more information.

Open mike ( for women & trans only) – sign-up at 7 pm
Bring your poetry, your prose, your songs, and your spoken word.

Lords of the Schoolyard, the new novel by Ed Hamilton, is an unflinching depiction of bullying in Suburban America as seen through the eyes of the bullies themselves.

Join us every 2nd and 4th Saturday of the month to learn ukulele! All skill levels are welcome. We will teach folks how to play songs from different historic cultural and social movements. We will try to focus on music which is consistent with a vision of collective liberation and solidarity. The bookstore has one communal ukulele that anyone can use, but folks are encouraged to bring their own ukulele to the workshop. We will provide some supplementary materiel for practicing the music and studying its social significance. Some of the music we will look at includes the blues of Bessie Smith, Brazilian bossa nova, French goguettes, the nueva cancíon of Víctor Jara, and others. We do not know everything, but we will try to pass on what we do know, and to help you flourish as a musician and human.

Written by Mark Travis Rivera, Drafts is a collection of poems, diary entries and personal essays that reveal Rivera’s journey from youth to adulthood and his evolution through pain and heartache to self-discovery. Despite discrimination, homophobia, and ableism, Rivera never lost hope.

NYC Black & Pink & the Queer Detainee Empowerment Project would like to invite you to our afternoon letter writing. What can you bring? Writing materials, stamps if you want! We can always use more postage.
Help us in alleviating the isolation of prison!

NOTE: This event does not take place at Bluestockings!

This two and a half hour long tour of Williamsburg highlights two main themes: Gentrification and Environmental Justice. Williamsburg offers an extreme example of both of these broader themes, and thus makes a very interesting case-study neighborhood in which to delve into these issues. The roots of gentrification and the detailed history of the cause of such rapid change will be covered in depth. This tour gives participants detailed information that will enable them to understand the topic of gentrification, why it is happening, its history, who benefits, and what is driving it. The same is true of the backstory of the environmental justice movement in the area. Sign up at http://socialjusticetours.com/

The Feminist Book Club reads and discusses feminism. We make no claims to any particular feminist platform. We read theoretical texts, literature and primary works. All are welcome inclusive of gender, political persuasion, and familiarity.

For more information, email feministbookclubnyc@gmail.com.

October book: Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

NOTE: This event does not take place at Bluestockings!

Lower Manhattan is the foundation of western society in New York. Yet, the vast majority of New York history is non western. We start the tour with an overview of Indigenous history in NYC. We then move on to walk through slave history of New York, checking out a former slave market, the burial ground, and a stop on the underground railroad. We then move on to discuss wall street corruption, with a particular emphasis on what happened in the 2008 financial crisis. Sign up at http://socialjusticetours.com/

Writer Sarah Perry will discuss her debut memoir, AFTER THE ECLIPSE, with Facts of a Body author Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevitch. While AFTER THE ECLIPSE revisits Perry’s mother’s murder, it also explores the public’s fascination with violence and trauma towards women, and the psychic and social damage that results from the overuse of convenient and simplistic narratives in these cases. Perry gives the book a queer and feminist lens by redirecting the conversation to be about the town and media’s mishandling of a murder. Perry also explores the consequences of casual misogyny, and how every day catcalls open the door to overt and explicit violence towards women. An audience Q&A and signing will follow.

Kundalini Yoga is also called the Yoga of Awareness. It combines the physical practice of Asanas with Pranayama (breathing) and Meditation/Chanting – it targets the whole body system (nervous system, glands, mental faculties, chakras) to develop awareness and consciousness, strength and flexibility.

Everybody is welcome, no previous knowledge of Yoga is necessary. Please bring a Yoga mat and possibly a blanket and a shawl.

Shortly after she moved to New York, from her native Switzerland in 1988, Ursula Scherrer started exploring different styles of Yoga for her own spiritual and physical well being before she did her first teacher training in 2002 and has been teaching ever since. In addition to her skills and expertise as a Yoga teacher (Hatha and Kundalini Yoga) she is also a Pranayama Healer and certified Qi Gong instructor.

For more information please contact Ursula Scherrer: ursula.scherrer@gmail.com

Stephanie Elizondo Griest relays her experience of going home to South Texas to discover the steel wall that now divides her ancestral land, then finds a similar situation on the New York/Canada border. In All the Agents and Saints, she weaves these stories together into a meditation on the existential impact of international borderlines and the people who live there.

The Icarus Project NYC is a local chapter of http://theicarusproject.net, a radical mental health a support network and media project by and for people who experience the world in ways that are often diagnosed as mental illness. We envision a new culture that allows the space and freedom for exploring different states of being, and recognizes that breakdown can be the entrance to breakthrough. We aim to create a language that is so vast and rich that it expresses the infinite diversity of human experiences. Our monthly workshops explore these themes through peer-based discussion, guest presentations, art, forum theater and more. For more information about this month’s event see: http://nycicarus.org

Join us for an evening of disability culture poetry, new perspectives on space and desire, queer perspectives on love, pain and difference.

Stephanie Heit will read and perform from her poetry collection, The Color She Gave Gravity (The Operating System, 2017), which takes us inside a dance inside an imaginary city inside sculpted spaces inside the insomniac body inside sister grief inside she. The poems emerge from a landscape of somatic engagement and from experiences of psychiatric systems and multiple hospitalizations.

Petra Kuppers will read and perform from her poetry collection, PearlStitch (Spuyten Duyvil, 2016), on disability culture activism, feminist poetics history, love and transformation. The poems emerge from encounters in tango dances, activist camps, concert halls, and healing hot spring visits.

Lynne DeSilva-Johnson will read and perform poetry and sound experimentation, from recent hybrid zine Progeny Restoration Corporation and forthcoming collaborative chapbook, Body Oddy Oddy, among other works. The poems emerge from the bioprecarious landscape of C-PTSD in the non binary body c.2017 in these fractured states.