A special book club focused on the work of Zora Neale Hurston, presented in partnership with the DC Public Library Black Studies Book Club and the National Women's History Museum.
When people read books, their identity plays a role in the way they interpret stories. How might we benefit from hearing the perspectives of others? What can we learn from readers and writers from a range of cultural experience? Join Dr. Sarah Trembath for a very special book club, where we create space to address cultural nuances revealed in great storytelling and use literature as a catalyst for deeper conversations surrounding bias and modern disparity. All are welcome.
This book club is presented in partnership with the DC Public Library Black Studies Book Club. It is sponsored by the National Women’s History Museum in connection with We Who Believe in Freedom: Black
Feminist DC, on view on the first floor through September 15th. Make sure to arrive early to learn the stories of other Harlem Renaissance writers in DC and more featured in the exhibition.
For this session of this book club, we will read Zora Neale Hurston’s short story compilation Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick: Stories from the Harlem Renaissance. Come learn how this legendary writer simultaneously affirms Disparity Trap notions of systemic dominance and flips them upside down!
The book discussion will be held in the reference area of The People's Archive, Floor 4, East, at the MLK Library.
Advance registration is encouraged.
Sarah Trembath is an editor, writer, and educator. She has been teaching since 1998 and joined the American University faculty in 2014. Her written work has appeared in Radical Teacher, the Santa Fe Writer’s Project Quarterly, the Rumpus, Everyday Feminism, Sally Hemings Dream zine, Azure literary journal, DCist, the Washington Independent Review of Books, 1455 Magazine, VoiceMale, and the Grace in Darkness anthology of DC women writers. She has written two books: It Was the Scarlet that Did It (poems, Moonstone Press, 2019) and This Past Was Waiting for Me (poetry and creative nonfiction, Lazuli Literary Group, in press). She was the 2019 recipient of the American Studies Association’s Gloria Anzaldúa Award for independent scholars for her social justice writing and teaching. Her dissertation research resulted in the design of a Critical Rhetoric and Composition Framework and Curriculum, soon to be released as an open-access resource.
