Tuesday Morning Booktalks

media release: Join fellow booklovers and award-winning UW English professor Emily Auerbach for a lively discussion of two powerful novels focused on race, resilience, love, and community. 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. This program is offered free, but with hope that participants will donate to the life-changing UW Odyssey Project, a free jumpstart course in the humanities for adults facing barriers to higher education. 

If you plan to attend Tuesday Morning Booktalks this spring, please register (even though free) so we know how much food to order and how many handouts to make.

Register here

Questions about Tuesday Morning Booktalks? Contact Professor Emily Auerbach at emily.auerbach@wisc.edu.

Tuesday, March 3: Toni Morrison, Jazz (1992), with guest Bob Auerbach on keyboard

Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison said her writing was intimately linked to African American music. In her 1992 novel Jazz, music shapes the structure of the novel itself. After giving her readers the plot on the first page (Joe murders his adolescent lover, and his wife attacks the corpse at the funeral), Morrison engages in variations and improvisations. Set in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, the novel moves from the rural South to the urban North, showing trauma and triumph, racism and resilience. We will use keyboard illustrations in class to explore the creative way Morrison makes her language jazz itself.