Thank you to DeWolf Fulton and folks in Bristol, Rhode Island, who invited me to give this year's Bosworth Lecture about Anne Hutchinson, to InkWood Books for selling copies of American Jezebel and Who Needs a Statue? and to Dave Weed for videotaping and posting the lecture on YouTube: https://youtu.be/-0iDXbUu4Ds 

WHO NEEDS A STATUE?
BY EVE LAPLANTE & MARGY BURNS KNIGHT; ILLUSTRATED BY ALIX DELINOIS ‧ OCT. 15, 2024
A gallery of intrepid American groundbreakers, pathfinders, and activists who have earned commemorative statues. 
Starting at the U.S. Capitol and ranging as far afield as an airport in Austin, Texas, and a park in Napa, California, the book covers more than a dozen figures—all either women, people of color, or both—who have been immortalized in stone or bronze. Many of the names will likely be unfamiliar to young readers. Beginning with Thocmetony Sarah Winnemucca, the first published Native American woman author, and continuing on past the inspirational likes of Anne Hutchinson (who was banished from colonial Massachusetts for illegally teaching men), comet discoverer Maria Mitchell, and Olympians and activists Tommie Smith and John Carlos, each entry features a brief but sonorous initial annotation and a more detailed one in the backmatter that identifies the statues’ sculptors. Delinois’ painterly images don’t always capture the individual style or character of the monuments the way photos would have, but he does take advantage of his medium to add homey or historical flourishes, such as a view of Deborah Sampson—who dressed in men’s clothes in order to fight in the American Revolution—blasting away at a group of redcoats and an image of a child in a wheelchair seated next to a chatty effigy of Everglades advocate Marjory Stoneman Douglas in a garden near Miami. An oblique closing reference to commemorative statues being removed or replaced in many localities ends this powerful recitation on a cogent note. 
Deserving but less prominent luminaries shine more brightly here. (Informational picture book. 7-10)

Announcing my first book for children,

Who Needs A Statue?

coauthored by Margy Burns Knight with
full-color illustrations by Alix Delinois!


Did you know the U.S. Capitol Building features one hundred statues, two from each state?  
Whom did states choose, and why? How well do they represent our multifaceted country?


Who Needs A Statue? takes readers from the Capitol Building on a tour of the country in search of statues of brave women and people of color.

The American Jezebel ebook is Amazon's #70 bestseller overall and the #1 bestseller in:
           History of the U.S./United States History
              Women in History
                 History of LGBTQ+ & Gender Studies/Women's Studies    
                    Biographies & Memoirs of  Women
                       Historical U.S. Biographies

Go, Anne!

          

Seized is being published in Korea, 28 years after it came out in the United States. The Korean publisher asked me to write a new preface, to Korean readers, which enabled me to consider again the controversy I encountered after publishing my first book.

TO KOREAN READERS
     I am pleased to share with you my book about temporal lobe epilepsy, a common neurological disorder that affects an estimated 200,000 Koreans. Despite being the most common form of epilepsy among adults, TLE has a history of being kept secret.
     Seized, the first book for a general audience ever written about TLE, came out in the United States in 1993 and received excellent reviews. Yet it was met with silence by the Epilepsy Foundation of America. It turned out that the EFA, in its mission to maintain a positive image and remove the stigma from epilepsy, avoided discussing anything considered controversial. The advocacy group actively suppressed information about TLE because of the disorder’s links with mental illness and personality change. In the words of Jeffrey Cummings, professor of neurology and psychiatry at UCLA, epilepsy associations “oppose the general idea of relating psychopathology and epilepsy,” a relationship that “has been repeatedly demonstrated.”
     The price of this secrecy is high. Preventing the flow of information about TLE curtails public awareness and hinders patient care. People with TLE are denied basic information about their disorder. Many people with the disorder wait years, even decades, for a correct diagnosis. In the meantime, they may be prescribed psychiatric medications, even institutionalized. Doctors suspect that some so-called “chronic schizophrenics” languishing in mental hospitals may in fact have this treatable form of epilepsy.  
     TLE should not be hidden. The public deserves to know about it, people with TLE agree, as attested to in hundreds of letters I’ve received from readers of Seized. I hope the arrival of Seized in Korea increases public awareness of this fascinating and revelatory disorder, and provides helpful information to TLE patients and their families and friends. 

Sarah Blackwood has a fascinating article about Abigail May Alcott, Louisa's Marmee, in The New Yorker. For more about Abigail's writings, please read My Heart Is Boundless, which Laura Dern used in preparing to play Marmee in the new film.

In the November issue of Vanity  Fair, Laura Dern describes reading Marmee & Louisa and My Heart Is Boundless in preparing to play “Marmee” in the new Little Women film, due out at Christmas.

Laura Dern calls Marmee & Louisa “a massive influence. You feel it as like a cord of the film, and that was an incredible experience...."

Dern explains, “Greta [Gerwig, the director] was determined for us to really spend time doing the research to find out who really was Marmee being Abigail, Louisa’s real mother. And so we really allowed a beautiful book of letters, called Marmee & Me, between Louisa and her mother, to be a massive influence. You feel it as like a cord of the film, and that was an incredible experience.... Marmee was an abolitionist, was one of America’s first feminists, was considered America’s first social worker and was a badass. And she was angry and frustrated and generous and an empath. And yes, feeding the hungry. And literally their home was on the underground railroad and she was hiding slaves in their kitchen...”

Note: Dern slightly confused the title but a google search of Marmee & Me leads right to Marmee & Louisa!
Here’ s the link to the Vanity Fair interview:
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/10/little-gold-men-laura-dern-interview