Radical Reading Group online
Sarah-Clare Conlon, Literature Editor
DecoloniseUoM and Manchester Museum joined forces in January to set up the Radical Reading Group after young people who came to Manchester Museum requested a space to explore key texts to help them better understand issues that impact people of colour. The first text nominated and voted for on Twitter was Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Y Davis, which was discussed by the group in February, before lockdown. In March, the group moved online to digitally discuss the chosen texts, which have so far included Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon, Decolonization Is Not A Metaphor by Eve Tuck and K Wayne Yang, and Audre Lorde’s collection of essays and speeches, Sister Outsider.
The text up for discussion is Beloved by the late American writer Toni Morrison, winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature, and you’re invited to join in
In June, the text up for discussion is Beloved by the late American writer Toni Morrison, winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature, and you’re invited to join in (ages 16 to 25; click “Find Out More” for sign-up details). Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue and richly detailed African American characters, and Beloved – set after the American Civil War – is inspired by the life of African American woman Margaret Garner, who escaped slavery in Kentucky in late January 1856 by crossing the Ohio River to the free state of Ohio. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988, the year after it was published, so is definitely one for your reading list.
