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A literary-historical open mic night: This is an event idea we haven't heard before, and it sounds amazing. The Radical Women, an activist (and, it must be said, party-throwing) organization, offers the Black History Month Open Mic: Voices of Resistance. So you go and get some words of an ass-kicker, and you read them. Take Shirley Chisholm: You could just get up and say “Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on Earth.” And the audience goes nuts! Our current favorite figure in black women's history is Mary Ellen Pleasant, a woman born into slavery in Georgia who went on to finance John Brown's Harper's Ferry raid and change San Francisco's segregationist trolley car laws — back in 1868. She wasn't much of a writer, though; too busy. Maybe you could read something about her, since original work is welcome too. As long as it celebrates strong, brave, or otherwise interesting black women of the past, you can spit it out, amplified.
Thu., Feb. 10, 7 p.m., 2011