Author Kim McLarin explores identity in the modern day in her latest work _Womanish_. Born in 1964 and growing up as the first generation post the Civil Rights Movement, McLarin's collection of essays explores topics ranging from Divorce to the Obamas as she defines in rolls that make her American. McLarin's wit and power over her words brings her essays to life as she shares with the reader her life in the "Brown vs. Board" generation of Generation X. In thirteen essays, McLarin forms of a crossroad of her many identities in society as a black middle-aged woman. Image: [book cover](http://www.harvard.com/event/kim_mclarin/ "Book Cover")
Boston-based Kim McLarin is the author of the critically-acclaimed novels *Taming it Down*, *Meeting of the Waters* and *Jump at the Sun*, all published by William Morrow. She is a former staff writer for *The New York Times*, *The Philadelphia Inquirer*, *The Greensboro News & Record* and the Associated Press. Her latest novel, *Jump at the Sun*, was nominated for a 2007 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in fiction, chosen by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association as a 2007 Fiction Honor Book, and chosen by the Massachusetts Center for the Book as a 2007 Massachusetts Book Awards Honor Book. She is writer-in-residence at Emerson College in Boston, and host of *Basic Black*, Boston's longest-running weekly television program devoted exclusively to African American themes, shown on WGBH.