Requiem for a Female Serial Killer
Facilitated by Phyllis Chesler
This event already happened:
Sunday, January 23, 2022
4:00PM - 5:00PM
Location: Virtual Event via Zoom
Aileen Wuornos is a damaged soul, a genuine American outlaw, a symbol of women’s rage, a symbol of what can happen to severely abused children, and of how our justice system fails women.
Chesler’s involvement with a serial killer has haunted her ever since. She speaks in Aileen Wuornos’ voice, as well as in her own, and delivers an incisive, original, and dramatic portrait of a cognitively impaired, traumatized, and alcoholic woman who had endured so much pain in her short life. When she’d had enough, the results were deadly.
This is a poignant, sometimes humorous, never-before-told behind-the-scenes tale. Wuornos’ story is handled with great sensitivity, but also with realistic detachment by Chesler as she probes the telling moment, the telling phrase. Was Wuornos suffering from post-traumatic stress after a life lived on a “killing field?” Was she also “born evil?” So many prostitutes have been torture-murdered by serial killers – how did Wuornos, once prey, become a predator?
Requiem for a Female Serial Killer will also haunt you. It won’t let you put it down.
Dr. Phyllis Chesler is an Emerita Professor of Psychology and the author of 20 books, one of which, An American Bride in Kabul (2013−2014), won a National Jewish Book Award. Her books include Women and Madness (1972), Mothers on Trial: The Battle for Children and Custody (1986), The New Anti-Semitism (2003) and her newest book, Requiem for a Female Serial Killer (2020).