Register 12 Seats Remaining
A book club dedicated to discussing books by black authors. Join us on the 3rd Saturday of each month. Please contact asipple-mcgraw@lexpublib.org for a reserved library copy of the featured title.
Join us this month to discuss You Get What You Pay For by Morgan Parker. Light snacks and beverages will be provided.
Please contact asipple-mcgraw@lexpublib.org or stop by the Eastside Circulation Desk for a copy of the book.
Dubbed a voice of her generation, poet and writer Morgan Parker has spent much of her adulthood in therapy, trying to square the resonance of her writing with the alienation she feels in nearly every aspect of life, from her lifelong singleness to a battle with depression. She traces this loneliness to an inability to feel truly safe with others and a historic hyperawareness stemming from the effects of slavery.
In a collection of essays as intimate as being in the room with Parker and her therapist, Parker examines America’s cultural history and relationship to Black Americans through the ages. She touches on such topics as the ubiquity of beauty standards that exclude Black women, the implications of Bill Cosby’s fall from grace in a culture predicated on acceptance through respectability, and the pitfalls of visibility as seen through the mischaracterizations of Serena Williams as alternately iconic and too ambitious.
With piercing wit and incisive observations, You Get What You Pay For is ultimately a portal into a deeper examination of racial consciousness and its effects on mental well-being in America today. Weaving unflinching criticism with intimate anecdotes, this devastating memoir-in-essays paints a portrait of one Black woman’s psyche—and of the writer’s search to both tell the truth and deconstruct it. -Penguin Random House
Mon, Jun 24 | 9:30AM to 7:00PM |
Tue, Jun 25 | 9:30AM to 7:00PM |
Wed, Jun 26 | 9:30AM to 7:00PM |
Thu, Jun 27 | 9:30AM to 7:00PM |
Fri, Jun 28 | 9:30AM to 6:00PM |
Sat, Jun 29 | 9:30AM to 5:00PM |
Sun, Jun 30 | 1:00PM to 5:00PM |
The Eastside Branch is located near the intersection of Man 'o War Boulevard and Palumbo Drive.