Reading and Book Signing with Lynne Sachs
Hand Book: A Manual guides us through the making of a hybrid performance and film focused on laundromat workers -- those who are paid to wash and fold for others. This illuminating dialogue between cinema, documentary, theater, labor, and social engagement invites us to think about the intimacy of touching other people's clothes. The play at the book's center exposes how dirt, stains, money, identity, and desire converge in this charged work environment. Revealing archival material speaks to the significance of the Washing Society, a group of Black washerwomen who went on strike in Atlanta in 1881. Photographs, interviews, poetry, and essays by collaborators examine the laundromat as a microcosm of service work within our complex contemporary reality.
"This generously kaleidoscopic offering invites readers to think through the labor of laundry via an impressive collage of perspectives, histories, and bodies." - Christopher Harris, filmmaker
"A beautiful example of how art in tandem with other methods of revelation illuminates the everyday, at once celebrating a particular aspect of how people live, critiquing the power dynamic it contains, and seeking to intervene in bad 'business as usual'" - Jan Cohen-Cruz, author
“A poignant exploration of the value of labor within and outside capitalism's frame.” – Caridad Svich, playwright and editor of Toward a Future Theatre
Memphis native Lynne Sachs is an American experimental filmmaker and poet based in Brooklyn, New York. Lynne has produced over 40 films as well as numerous live performances, installations and web projects. In 2019, Tender Buttons Press published her first book “Year by Year Poems”.