The inaugural meeting of The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World… reading group with Dyan Neary

On September 2nd, we will meet to discuss David Graeber’s essay I Didn’t Understand How Widespread Rape Was. Then the Penny Dropped. We will be joined by Dyan Neary, a writer, journalist, academic, and documentary filmmaker.

Though the focus of this essay is the power structures that shape patriarchal society and sanction male violence, this text also offers a very personal insight into David’s life, or, more precisely, the life of his mother, Ruth Rubinstein. Dyan Neary was a close friend of David’s for more than 20 years, and she and her daughter used to share David’s family apartment in Chelsea and knew his mom. On this day, the anniversary of David Graeber’s death, we want to come together to remember his life and work.

The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World… reading group will be meeting throughout 2024-2025. The first three meetings will revolve around the opening essay in this collection, There Was Never a West. We will be joined by curators of the Museum of Care and guest speakers. Each of the following meetings will be dedicated to one of David’s essays featured in the collection.

Register here.

Dyan Neary is a writer, journalist, academic, and documentary filmmaker whose feature stories and essays appeared in New York Magazine, Elle, The New York Times, the New York Review of Books, Writer’s Digest, The Nation, the Florida Trident, and elsewhere. Dyan is also a professor of journalism at West Chester University of Pennsylvania.

Cover image: The finale of the first act of “Pins & Needles,” at the Labor Stage in New York