About this Event
Join us for a Feminist Reading Group to celebrate Women’s History Month in March!
A reading group is a little more structured than a book club but way more relaxed than a class. For this special three-week series we’ll be looking at the Women of Toni Morrison, discussing:
- Recitatif on Monday, March 3;
- Sula on Monday, March 10; and
- Beloved on Monday, March 17.
All sessions start at 7pm! You can attend just one or two sessions, but you’ll get the most out of attending all three so we can dive deep into the theme of feminism across these three incredible books.
Old Town Books' Feminist Reading Group is free and open to the public. While buying the book at OTB is not required to attend, we would greatly appreciate it to help keep our free literary programming sustainable! Buy your copy of Recitatif at the shop or online and note "reading group" to get 10% off.
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Old Town Books is committed to creating accessible events and spaces for the widest possible audience. Please reach out to us at [email protected] for reasonable accessibility accommodations.
About the book:
In this 1983 short story—the only short story Morrison ever wrote—we meet Twyla and Roberta, who have known each other since they were eight years old and spent four months together as roommates in St. Bonaventure shelter. Inseparable then, they lose touch as they grow older, only later to find each other again at a diner, a grocery store, and again at a protest. Seemingly at opposite ends of every problem, and at each other's throats each time they meet, the two women still cannot deny the deep bond their shared experience has forged between them.
Another work of genius by this masterly writer, Recitatif keeps Twyla's and Roberta's races ambiguous throughout the story. Morrison herself described Recitatif, a story which will keep readers thinking and discussing for years to come, as "an experiment in the removal of all racial codes from a narrative about two characters of different races for whom racial identity is crucial." We know that one is white and one is Black, but which is which? And who is right about the race of the woman the girls tormented at the orphanage?
A remarkable look into what keeps us together and what keeps us apart, and how perceptions are made tangible by reality, Recitatif is a gift to readers in these changing times.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Old Town Books, 130 South Royal Street, Alexandria, United States
USD 0.00
