Carla Kaplan on Jessica Mitford, with Diane McWhorter

Carla Kaplan on Jessica Mitford, with Diane McWhorter

Event Location: The Skylight Room: 9100

Join us for an enlightening discussion with Carla Kaplan as she delves into the life and work of Jessica Mitford, alongside Diane McWhorter. This in-person event promises to be a captivating exploration of Mitford's impact and legacy.

Jessica Mitford, fifth of the six famous “Mitford Girls,” was brought up to marry well and reproduce her wealth and privilege, not to advocate for the less advantaged. Her five beautiful sisters have been subjects of books and movies dedicated to their naughty, glamorous lives. Jessica—known as Decca—ran away to America to forge a wilder rebel’s life. As this richly researched book details, Decca broke the Mitford mold—fighting fascism in the Spanish Civil War, becoming an American Communist and pioneering witty, wildly popular journalism, including her blockbuster The American Way of Death, placing her at the heart of social justice battles. Decca relentlessly injected laughter into her politics, encouraging the activists she influenced to do likewise. From famed baby doctor Benjamin Spock to best friend Maya Angelou, her anti-authoritarian irreverence had a profound impact on American culture. Mining extensive, untapped sources, Kaplan’s passionate biography of an unlikely life demonstrates that Decca’s social empathy was hard-won and self-taught, a model with particular relevance today and a powerful, modern example of female adventure and freedom.

Carla Kaplan is the Stanton W. and Elisabeth K. Davis Distinguished Professorship in American Literature at Northeastern University. She has published seven previous books, including Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters and Miss Anne in Harlem: The White Women of the Black Renaissance, both New York Times Notable Books. A recipient of Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Humanities “Public Scholar” fellowships, Kaplan has also been a fellow in residence at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute. She is a fellow of the Society of American Historians, chairs the editorial board of the journal Signs, and serves on the board of Biographers International. She divides her time between Boston and Cape Cod.

Diane McWhorter is the author of Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama—The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution, which won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, and was named to Time Magazine’s list of the 100 best nonfiction books published since the magazine’s founding, in 1923. Jessica Mitford is among the book’s cast of thousands. (People called Carry Me Home “the War and Peace of the civil rights movement.) McWhorter has also published a young-adult history of the Movement, A Dream of Freedom, and is currently writing a two-volume work about Wernher von Braun and the Nazi missile pioneers who were brought to segregated Alabama after World War II—and built the rocket that put the first man on the moon. She lives in Washington, D.C.

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