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Cathy Wilkerson, an activist in the civil rights movement, Students for a Democratic Society, and the Weathermen, was one of two women to survive an explosion in the basement of her family's townhouse, which killed three Weathermen, forcing the group underground.

In her new memoir Flying Close to the Sun, Wilkerson wrestles with the legacy of the movement, at times finding contradictions that many others have avoided: the absence of women's voices then, and in the retelling; the incompetence and the egos; the hundreds of bombs detonated in protest which caused little loss of life, but which were also ineffective in fomenting revolution. In searching for new paradigms for change, Wilkerson asserts an assessment of her past, and somehow finds hope and faith in a world that at times seems to offer neither.

Co-sponsored by United South End Settlements (USES).