An LGBTQ+ book club in SE London celebrating community, intersectionality and radical reading!
Queers for Books is a relaxed book club where each month we vote on a book to read as a group where we will then meet to discuss it at our in-person meets at Corner, New Cross!
Reading the book is not essential but it does help! We like to have disucssions that use the books themes and characters as useful jumping off points to explore big questions the queer community face more broadly. Anyone can contribute to our discussions, we are safe and inclusive space, no disrespect for the opinions of others will be tolerated.
Our book choice for March is You Exist Too Much - Zaina Arafat!
Description for this book by Storygraph:
"On a hot day in Bethlehem, a 12-year-old Palestinian-American girl is yelled at by a group of men outside the Church of the Nativity. She has exposed her legs in a biblical city, an act they deem forbidden, and their judgement will echo on through her adolescence. When our narrator finally admits to her mother that she is queer, her mother’s response only intensifies a sense of shame: “You exist too much,” she tells her daughter.
Told in vignettes that flash between the U.S. and the Middle East – from New York to Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine – Zaina Arafat’s debut novel traces her protagonist’s progress from blushing teen to sought-after DJ and aspiring writer. In Brooklyn, she moves into an apartment with her first serious girlfriend and tries to content herself with their comfortable relationship. But soon her longings, so closely hidden during her teenage years, explode out into reckless romantic encounters and obsessions with other people. Her desire to thwart her own destructive impulses will eventually lead her to The Ledge, an unconventional treatment center that identifies her affliction as “love addiction.” In this strange, enclosed society she will start to consider the unnerving similarities between her own internal traumas and divisions and those of the places that have formed her.
Opening up the fantasies and desires of one young woman caught between cultural, religious, and sexual identities, You Exist Too Much is a captivating story charting two of our most intense longings – for love, and a place to call home."
If you want to be part of the voting for next months book please follow our Intsagram @queersforbooks and join our WhatsApp group: https://chat.whatsapp.com/L78JnYQm7paE7AR5wypxqp
Can't wait to see you there!
An LGBTQ+ book club in SE London celebrating community, intersectionality and radical reading!
Queers for Books is a relaxed book club where each month we vote on a book to read as a group where we will then meet to discuss it at our in-person meets at Corner, New Cross!
Reading the book is not essential but it does help! We like to have disucssions that use the books themes and characters as useful jumping off points to explore big questions the queer community face more broadly. Anyone can contribute to our discussions, we are safe and inclusive space, no disrespect for the opinions of others will be tolerated.
Our book choice for March is You Exist Too Much - Zaina Arafat!
Description for this book by Storygraph:
"On a hot day in Bethlehem, a 12-year-old Palestinian-American girl is yelled at by a group of men outside the Church of the Nativity. She has exposed her legs in a biblical city, an act they deem forbidden, and their judgement will echo on through her adolescence. When our narrator finally admits to her mother that she is queer, her mother’s response only intensifies a sense of shame: “You exist too much,” she tells her daughter.
Told in vignettes that flash between the U.S. and the Middle East – from New York to Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine – Zaina Arafat’s debut novel traces her protagonist’s progress from blushing teen to sought-after DJ and aspiring writer. In Brooklyn, she moves into an apartment with her first serious girlfriend and tries to content herself with their comfortable relationship. But soon her longings, so closely hidden during her teenage years, explode out into reckless romantic encounters and obsessions with other people. Her desire to thwart her own destructive impulses will eventually lead her to The Ledge, an unconventional treatment center that identifies her affliction as “love addiction.” In this strange, enclosed society she will start to consider the unnerving similarities between her own internal traumas and divisions and those of the places that have formed her.
Opening up the fantasies and desires of one young woman caught between cultural, religious, and sexual identities, You Exist Too Much is a captivating story charting two of our most intense longings – for love, and a place to call home."
If you want to be part of the voting for next months book please follow our Intsagram @queersforbooks and join our WhatsApp group: https://chat.whatsapp.com/L78JnYQm7paE7AR5wypxqp
Can't wait to see you there!
Good to know
Highlights
- 1 hour 30 minutes
- In person
Refund Policy
Location
CORNER
117 New Cross Road
London SE14 5DJ
How do you want to get there?
