Project Quad-Cities Hosting Online LGBTQ Book Club
Are you an LGBTQ+ adult in the Quad Cities looking to stay connected to your community during COVID-19? Join The Project Quad Cities for a FREE virtual book club! Just fill out a quick RSVP form so The Project can collect an address to ship the book to.
Reserve your spot by April 28. Please note there are only have ten (10) spots available. They will take registrations on a first come first serve basis. If they cannot accept your registration, they will inform you via email.
Virtual meeting information will be shared with those who RSVP via email.
Discussion Date: Monday, May 18
Discussion Time: 4:30 p.m.
Book: In the Dream House
Author: Carmen Maria Machado
Summary: In the Dream House is Carmen Maria Machado’s engrossing and wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad, and a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse. Tracing the full arc of a harrowing relationship with a charismatic but volatile woman, Machado struggles to make sense of how what happened to her shaped the person she was becoming.
And it’s that struggle that gives the book its original structure: each chapter is driven by its own narrative trope – the haunted house, erotica, the bildungsroman – through which Machado holds the events up to the light and examines them from different angles. She looks back at her religious adolescence, unpacks the stereotype of lesbian relationships as safe and utopian, and widens the view with essayistic explorations of the history and reality of abuse in queer relationships.
Machado’s dire narrative is leavened with her characteristic wit, playfulness, and openness to inquiry. She casts a critical eye over legal proceedings, fairy tales, Star Trek, and Disney villains, as well as iconic works of film and fiction. The result is a wrenching, riveting book that explodes our ideas about what a memoir can do and be.
For more information, see The Project’s Facebook page.
