The next meeting will be on Saturday the 27th of June. If the previous sessions can be trusted for comparison, it’s going to be a blast. Excitement is already building inside me as I’m writing this. I can’t wait to see many of you again, but will also hope to see new attendees, as always.
If you’d like to vote for one of the two themes, you can join the mailing or Signal group by contacting me.
Option 1: Revisiting Colonial History
The stories written by the empires that colonised large parts of the words often reduced the humanity of the people they subjected, erased the cultures they destroyed and ravaged the landscapes they exploited. Postcolonial literature is the field of studying these narratives and the counter-narratives that appeared to rectify the image of colonised people. Without understanding the crimes and cruelty of these systems, modern conflicts cannot be fully understood.
Required reading: none!
Short read: The Ultra-Black Fish by Victoria Adukwei Bulley (found here and here)
Longer read: The Rabbits by Shaun Tan.
Extra Reading: Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, Notebook of a Return to My Native Land by Aimé Césaire, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, The Black Lake / Oeroeg by Hella Haasse.
Option 2: The Shapes of Love
Love comes in many forms in many contexts, ranging from the deeply intimate and personal to the ritualised, psycho-analysed or widely displayed. Feelings of love and thoughts about love are shaped by their environment. People model the romantic ideals of media and understand love through the relationships they see around them, but ultimately, feeling, communicating and acting on love occurs between individuals. For this book club, let’s explore how different representations of love inform, challenge and broaden the shape of love.
Required reading: none.
Short read: Kurt Vonnegut – Who Am I This Time?
Long read: Virginia Woolf – Mrs. Dalloway.
Additional reading: James Baldwin – Giovanni’s Room. E. M Forster – A Room with a View, William Shakespeare – Romeo and Juliet.