CLASS CANCELLED The Unruly Body: Roxane Gay’s Hunger and Other Literature Of The Body
Wednesdays, October 3-November 14, 2018 (six sessions; no meeting October 31)*
6:30-8:30 p.m.
Guide: Melissa Joan Walker, Tuition: $220
*This seminar meets at Another Read Through Bookstore (3932 N Mississippi Ave)
Roxane Gay’s recent memoir Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body uses the author’s own body as the site of an inquiry into self, relationship, connection and intimacy, isolation, safety, and assault. The work challenges the notion that our bodies are “public” and therefore available for public commentary and critique, while recognizing the inescapability of our own embodiment. In the cases of size, race, sex, and gender expression, one’s body clearly has social, economic and political implications. But what does one’s body have to do with one’s “self”? Issues of the body will be considered in light of the personal and the collective. Gay’s memoir offers us a means of considering our relationship to bodies — to our own, and to others’. Other works to be considered will include: creative nonfiction from Melissa Febos and Dorothy Allison, fiction from Margaret Malone, and poetry from June Jordan, July Westhale, and Kaveh Akbar.
Reading List: Roxane Gay, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body; plus creative nonfiction from Melissa Febos and Dorothy Allison, fiction from Margaret Malone, and poetry from June Jordan, July Westhale, and Kaveh Akbar.
SEMINAR GUIDE:
Melissa Joan Walker’s writing has appeared in outlets such as the Denver Quarterly; Sentence; Banshee; theNewerYork; After Hours; Orion Headless; Parable Press and more. She holds an MFA in Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and has taught writing, literature, and creativity to students at Roosevelt University, DePaul University, and St. Augustine College.
