Now, before Yahdon details why he chose this month’s pick, book club member Jake gives a recap on July’s meeting.

Yahdon kicked off the July meeting for Natalie Diaz’ poetry collection Postcolonial Love Poem by acknowledging his own struggles reading poetry, only recently did a poet explain to him that poetry collections are often times small as they are meant to be returned to multiple times.

With the prompt asking which poem the group found them coming back to more than once, many were drawn to Diaz’ relationship with her brother, specifically the stanzas of harm he caused, leading to a discussion of how to interpret what is literal and not. When it was Randy’s turn, he dropped some wisdom in describing his relationship with poetry being like swimming, sometimes being above water, sometimes being below water, but for this one being in the deep end of the pool hanging onto the side.

It wouldn’t be right to recap the meeting without highlighting the contributions of first time attendee Jumi, who dropped bars from beginning to end, with Yahdon even having to state that no one should feel intimidated because “Jumi is a writer, she really does this.”

The core of the conversation around Diaz’ work tied back to last month’s book Braiding Sweetgrass, the relationship of Native Americans to the land they have lived on and cared for being directly opposed to colonialism and it’s desire to create structures of “ownership” over something that cannot be owned.

While the conversation on colonialism and land took up much of the meeting, Diaz’ skill for writing about love and desire was not lost on the group, exploring the intimate and passionate moments of the poetry, full of tension and depth.

The August pick for 2021 is Deesha Philyaw's short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies.

As last month's conversation about Natalie Diaz's poetry collection ventured early and often into the territory of desire, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies is a collection of stories that will allow us to continue the discourse about desire, which, in many ways, is a way to talk about our bodies--and how we experience desire inside of them.

Though the nine stories Deesha wrote in this collection are not linked in any way directly, what connects these stories is how Christianity informs how the Black women and girls in these stories reconcile what they think they should believe with what they feel they should have.

When I read these stories, I was immediately reminded of something James Baldwin (his birthday was August 2nd) said in a 1969 documentary entitled, Baldwin's Nigger:

"I think the European personality--and this is [really] a very severe indictment of Christianity--is terribly worried about the flesh and the senses, which are really very pathological and you see this in America because [here], Black people are the flesh which the Christians mortify. [But] the flesh is all you have. If you mortify that there's no hope for you.

Everything you find out is through your senses. Everything awful that happens to you and everything marvelous that happens to you in this frame, this tenement, this moral envelope should be--instead of beating it with chains, hammering nails through it and hanging it on crosses--the celebration: your life; your body."

The singular triumph of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies is its ability to celebrate the bodies of Black women, and their desires as an asset, rather than a liability. We got another one.

This meeting takes place via Zoom, Wednesday, August 25th, 7pm [EST].

Members, be on the look out for the email with your link to access the meeting.

See you there!

Now, before Yahdon details why he chose this month’s pick, book club member Jake gives a recap on June’s meeting.

When Yahdon kicked off the June’s meeting discussing Robin Wall Kimmerer’s “Braiding Sweetgrass” with the prompt of “what is some of the language you got from the book that helped you see the natural world in a new way?” No one in the (virtual) room expected to hear the author’s prose about nature compared to Jay Z and DMX bars, but that’s exactly what the human highlight reel Eggie did. Only at Literaryswag Book Club. 

In the midst of a heat wave hitting both the east and west coasts, the conversation centered around personal relationships with the environment, especially when living in a capitalist society, the recognition that humans are not the only living beings with worth. We spoke on the ways in which each of us can practice the idea of “honorable harvest,” never taking more than you need. We wrapped up with Yahdon posing the question, “how do we put what we’ve learned from the book into practice while balancing out our daily needs in life with a desire to do right by the natural world?” 

The July pick for 2021 is Natalie Diaz's 2021 Pulitzer Prize winning poetry collection, Postcolonial Love Poem.
As poetry collections are less dense than other genres, like novels and memoirs, I typically pick them towards the end of the year where the demands of the holidays, along with everything else, can make completing a book with more words and pages difficult. 

This year I wanted to see what kind of conversation would occur if we read a poetry collection in the middle of the year. What language and ways of seeing could this collection provide us on the month of the founding of this country?

For those of you who may have seen this word, figured they knew what it meant in context, but never were sure about a working definition, Postcolonial is the period in which we reckon with the consequences of the control and exploitation of colonized people and the land they lived on. Think of it like an existential debrief. Instead of just moving into some arbitrary "future" that suggests time as linear, a postcolonial framework challenges us to understand and interrogate how we internalize the power structures that impose their wills on us. 

Diaz's collection does more than reify the notion of what was taken from the victims of colonization but subverts, in language and in line, the idea that colonization is an irreversible process, or that power is static:

“I’ve been taught bloodstones can cure a snakebite, 

can stop the bleeding—most people forgot this

when the war ended. The war ended

depending on which war you mean: those we started, 

before those, millennia ago and onward,

those which started me, which I lost and won— 

these ever-blooming wounds.

These are only the first few lines in the first poem, so you can imagine the collection is like a Stevie Wonder album, Hotter than July.”

A note on reading poetry: if this is your first poetry collection, or you're someone who finds poetry "difficult", or "intimidating", you are not alone. I'll share some insight from Gregory Pardlo, another poet, who provided perspective that enabled me to understand that which I previously couldn't. Unlike fiction and non-fiction which you can choose to read more than once, if you enjoyed it, poetry is designed for us to read it more than once. That's why the books are so thin. You're supposed to spin the block more than once. Reading a poem more than once is not a defect of poetry; it's the feature.

Think of poetry like your favorite album whose words you're trying to memorize. You listen to it over and over to remember what your favorite artist said, and also to learn about all the ways saying something is possible. 

I'm hyped to see what you catch, what poems you find yourselves reading more than once and what you see on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th trip around the block.

This meeting takes place via Zoom, Wednesday, July 28th, 7pm [EST].

Members, be on the look out for the email with your link to access the meeting.

See you there!

This month, we have a special promotion.

The first three people to sign up and join Literaryswag Book Club will get a complimentary copy of this month’s book. Now, before Yahdon details why he chose this month’s pick, book club member Jake gives a recap on May’s meeting.

“May’s book choice was Brazilian reporter Eliane Brum’s The Collector of Leftover Souls, a collection of stories about the people who make up the many parts of Brazil. This was not only the first translated work we’ve read in the book club, but this meeting carried a different air than others with near unanimous praise. There was admiration and respect both for Brum’s virtuous use of the written language, as well as the manner in which Diane Grosklaus Whitty had seamlessly translated the work from Portuguese to English. The translation process sparked a spirited conversation with several thoughtful questions. Which parts of one language can truly be matched in another? What is the role of a reporter in translating a subject’s story without inserting their own perspective? The group gained perspective on the many different parts of Brazil, the stories of the people and new ways to appreciate how the words we read make it to the page.”

The June pick for 2021 is Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants.

“If there's anything that informs my curation for this year's Book Club picks it's the fact that I've made a concerted effort to pick books that allow us to have conversations about topics that we, as a Book Club, have never had before. While we've read works by indigenous writers, we have yet to read a book about nature. Braiding Sweetgrass is a brilliant intersection and reconciliation of indigenuous people's knowledge with nature, western science, told through the personal journey of Kimmerer's life. Though she grew up with the knowledge of the land, the violence this U.S. government and its institutions visited upon Indigenous folk with the fatal policies they created dislodged her from this knowledge, a knowledge that took her longer to relearn than it did to lose.”

This meeting takes place via Zoom, Wednesday, June 30th, 7pm [EST].

Members, be on the look out for the email with your link to access the meeting.

See you there!

Literaryswag Book Club celebrates its 4-year anniversary with a discussion about Dapper Dan's bestselling memoir, Made in Harlem (RandomHouse), featuring the fashion and cultural icon, himself, Dapper Dan!

This meeting is EXCLUSIVE for subscribed members of the Literaryswag Book Club.

[IMPORTANT: If you’re NOT a subscribed member of the book club, but would like to attend this month’s meeting, please join the Literaryswag Book Club by clicking here.]

Literaryswag Book Club returns this month with a discussion about Jess Row's critical essay collection, White Flights: Race, Fiction, and the American Imagination (Graywolf Press). The critically-acclaimed writer, Jess Row will be joining the discussion! This meeting is exclusively for subscribed members of the Literarswag Book Club.

Literaryswag Book Club returns for the month of July with a discussion about Nicole Dennis-Benn's Patsy (Liveright). The critically-acclaimed writer, Nicole Dennis-Benn will be joining the discussion! This meeting is free and open to the public. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO READ THE BOOK TO ATTEND THE EVENT. If you appreciate good conversation and great community: you're welcomed. Seating is first come, first served basis so get there early!

Literaryswag Book Club returns for the month of June with a discussion about Nelson A. Denis' War Against All Puerto Ricans: Revolution and Terror In American's Colony (Bold Type Books). This meeting is free and open to the public. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO READ THE BOOK TO ATTEND THE EVENT. If you appreciate good conversation and great community: you're welcomed. Seating is first come, first served basis so get there early!

Literaryswag Book Club returns for the month of May with a discussion on a memoir in conversations A Good Talk by author and illustrator Mira Jacob.The critically-acclaimed writer, Mira Jacob, will be joining the discussion! 

This meeting is free and open to the public. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO READ THE BOOK TO ATTEND THE EVENT. If you appreciate good conversation and great community: you're welcomed. Seating is first come, first served basis so get there early!

This event is photographed and streamed on FB LIVE. By attending this event, you consent to interview(s), photography, audio recording, video recording and its/their release, publication, exhibition, or reproduction to be used for news, web casts, promotional purposes, telecasts, advertising, inclusion on websites, and social media.

Literaryswag Book Club returns for the month of February with a discussion about Tayari Jones' An American Marriage and the role duty, and sacrifce plays in our cultural understanding of love. This meeting is free and open to the public. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO READ THE BOOK TO ATTEND THE EVENT. If you appreciate good conversation and great community: you're welcomed. Seating is first come, first served basis so get there early!

This event is photographed and streamed on FB LIVE. By attending this event, you consent to interview(s), photography, audio recording, video recording and its/their release, publication, exhibition, or reproduction to be used for news, web casts, promotional purposes, telecasts, advertising, inclusion on websites, and social media.

Literaryswag Book Club kicks off the new year with a candid conversation about Rebecca Solnit's essay collection, Call Them By Their True Names, and the power that comes from calling things what they are.

This meeting is free and open to the public. This event is photographed and streamed on FB LIVE. By attending this event, you consent to interview(s), photography, audio recording, video recording and its/their release, publication, exhibition, or reproduction to be used for news, web casts, promotional purposes, telecasts, advertising, inclusion on websites, and social media.