hattie gossett

Co-sponsored by the Simmons Institute for Leadership and Change

Writing from the upper west side of Manhattan, where Harlem intersects with waves of immigrants from the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Korea, Cambodia, Ivory Coast, India, Native America, and from all over the globe, hattie gossett vividly invokes her neighborhood experience. With wit and candor, she questions why so many people are forced from their home countries, only to be despised as interlopers in the United States; why older immigrants see younger ones as the enemy; who gets paid a living wage, who gentrifies their neighborhood, and who sends their money back home. From the grocery store to the cleaners to the tenement walk-up and everywhere in between, gossett captures the voices overheard and imagined in this breathless immigrant suite.

hattie gossett, author of presenting sister noblues and the pussy & cash suite, is a co-founding editor of Essence magazine and Kitchen Table Press. She lives in New York City.

“Sassy, ironic, hilarious, profound.”
—Essence

“Like Billie Holiday she taps into the vitality of the blues as a survival mechanism.”
—ArtForum

“Speaks to societal-political issues through satire and humor while remaining free of rhetoric and didacticism. Alternately bitingly caustic, zanily funny, poignantly sad.”
—Publishers Weekly

Click here for directions to Simmons College and here for a map of the campus.