Tuesday Morning Booktalks

media release: Join fellow booklovers and award-winning UW English professor Emily Auerbach for lively discussions of two novels by Georgia authors. Both focus on a search for identity and love in the face of trauma and racism in the American South. Classes meet on Tuesdays in the South Madison Community Room at 2300 S. Park St. (free and accessible parking) from 10-11:30 AM, with coffee and snacks served starting at 9:30 AM. These sessions are free but with the hope participants will donate to the life-changing UW Odyssey Project.

Tuesday, September 15: Alice Walker, The Color Purple

Blues singer Shug Avery says, “I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.” Rediscover this groundbreaking 1982 classic, the first Pulitzer Prize winner in fiction awarded to a Black woman. Many of us now know it for its movie versions or for its musical theatre adaptation on Broadway, but going back to the original epistolary novel proves surprisingly moving and relevant. The novel focuses on two resilient sisters surviving abuse and writing letters to each other while separated by an ocean.