Scavenger Hunt & Public Reading

May 19, 2016, 6pm @ the Minneapolis Central Library

ROOM N-202

Join us for this free, public event. Participants will wind their way through the history of Western storytelling and Minneapolis Central Library's holdings in search of the literary missing girl. Registration requested.

Why talk about missing girls? Once you know to look for her, you'll find her everywhere. The girl whose absence (through disappearance, death) serves as the catalyst for the protagonist's journey into the underbelly of reality. The girl whose outline serves as boundary for the stories of everyone she's left behind. She's Eurydice, whose death draws Orpheus to the underground. She's the murder victim in the opening of the Law & Order: SVU episode whose death becomes a journey for police officers, family members, politicians -- everyone but her. She's Fox Mulder's little sister and she's Gone Girl. The missing girl's story is virtually never told. She's just the instigating event. She's the rabbit hole, the trailhead, the moment of truth for somebody else. 

She's bait.

What does it mean for a literary or narrative tradition to be built on the disposability of women? What does this tell us about women's worth, their perspectives, their bodies? And how often, when a woman walks onto a page or onto the screen, do we wonder how soon she'll be gone?

This event is sponsored by the Minnesota State Arts Board and a Minnesota Artist's Initiative Grant.