Hybrid Event: Allyson McCabe, Why Sinéad O'Connor Matters, with Lauren Onkey

Date and Time for this Past Event

Thursday, Aug 15, 2024 7pm - 8pm

Location

Also via Zoom.

Details

East City Bookshop welcomes Allyson McCabe to discuss her book, Why Sinéad O'Connor Matters, in conversation with Lauren Onkey.

Note on Format: This hybrid event will have both an in-person component with limited seating as well as a virtual broadcast via Zoom Webinar. Both in-person and virtual attendees will be able to pose questions to the authors during audience Q&A.

COVID-19 Information: Please note that East City Bookshop continuously monitors public health guidance to ensure the safety of customers, authors, and our staff and reserves the right to adjust in-person events. Masks are encouraged for all in-person attendees.

ABOUT WHY SINÉAD O'CONNOR MATTERS

A stirring defense of Sinéad O’Connor’s music and activism, and an indictment of the culture that cancelled her.

In 1990, Sinéad O’Connor’s video for “Nothing Compares 2 U” turned her into a superstar. Two years later, an appearance on Saturday Night Live turned her into a scandal. For many people—including, for years, the author—what they knew of O’Connor stopped there. Allyson McCabe believes it’s time to reassess our old judgments about Sinéad O’Connor and to expose the machinery that built her up and knocked her down.

Addressing triumph and struggle, sound and story, Why Sinéad O’Connor Matters argues that its subject has been repeatedly manipulated and misunderstood by a culture that is often hostile to women who speak their minds (in O’Connor’s case, by shaving her head, championing rappers, and tearing up a picture of the pope on live television). McCabe details O’Connor’s childhood abuse, her initial success, and the backlash against her radical politics without shying away from the difficult issues her career raises. She compares O’Connor to Madonna, another superstar who challenged the Catholic Church, and Prince, who wrote her biggest hit and allegedly assaulted her. A journalist herself, McCabe exposes how the media distorts not only how we see O’Connor but how we see ourselves, and she weighs the risks of telling a story that hits close to home.

In an era when popular understanding of mental health has improved and the public eagerly celebrates feminist struggles of the past, it can be easy to forget how O’Connor suffered for being herself. This is the book her admirers and defenders have been waiting for.

Allyson McCabe is a writer, reporter, and producer whose work is often broadcast on NPR, and her byline appears in the New York Times, BBC Culture, Wired, and other publications.

Lauren Onkey is the director of the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design and Professor of Music at the George Washington University. Onkey is a longtime educator, scholar, producer and museum professional. Prior to joining GW, she served as senior director at NPR Music, including Tiny Desk Concerts. Prior to that, she served as Vice President of Education and Public Programming at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, developing and managing the museum's award-winning education and community programs. Onkey’s academic work includes serving as the inaugural Dean and Chair of the Mandel Humanities Center at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland. Onkey spent fourteen years teaching literature and cultural studies at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, specializing in postcolonial literature and popular music studies. She is the author of Blackness and Transatlantic Irish Identity: Celtic Soul Brothers, an interdisciplinary study of the relationship between Irish and African-American heritage.”