Suzanne Lacy, _______________ (Los Angeles, 1983)
An amalgam of small, invisible performances--a series of localized pot luck dinners throughout Los Angeles—culminated in a 150-woman event with food provided by each guest that reflected her ethnic heritage or country of origin. The event was a mixture of home cooking, artifacts of women’s culture, and testimonials, to frame and nurture the notion of women’s community across difference. An amazing array of women from diverse backgrounds, ages, and social circumstance ate together that night. As they ate they wrote messages and recipes on tablecloths.

After dinner the performance continued with women sharing stories of survival on an open microphone. Elderly activists, recent immigrants from Japan, India, and Mexico, Native Americans, youth from group homes, disabled women, friends of the first woman in space (scheduled to depart the next day), and several elderly black residents of Guy Miller Homes in Watts (previous Lacy collaborators) took the microphone that night, provoking tears, laughter, and an experience of common humanity. In one of the most moving presentations, a woman who as a child had been labeled retarded because of speech and physical impediments told a story about how her grandmother rescued her from a lifetime of institutionalization.