#TheMood Book Club - Nia Centre for the Arts
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#TheMood Book Club

Sign up by Jan 15 to get supplies

Date

February 1, 2021

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Books are #TheMood of 2021. They enrich our minds, and help us build connections in our community and learn different perspectives. This month, we’ll be launching our very first book club, #TheMood! Where we’ll read books of various categories by Black authors, unwind and discuss what we’ve taken in once a month. 

Led by multidisciplinary artist Sapphire Woods, participants will be able to explore diverse forms of literature in a stress-free environment while absorbing the power of storytelling. 

Books and all materials will be provided to you. For participants between the ages of 14-29.

Deadline to apply: Jan 15 at 4pm

Books to choose from:

PET By Akwaeke Emezi

There are no more monsters anymore, or so the children in the city of Lucille are taught. With doting parents and a best friend named Redemption, Jam has grown up with this lesson all her life. But when she meets Pet, a creature made of horns and colours and claws, who emerges from one of her mother’s paintings and a drop of Jam’s blood, she must reconsider what she’s been told. Pet has come to hunt a monster, and the shadow of something grim lurks in Redemption’s house. Jam must fight not only to protect her best friend, but also to uncover the truth, and the answer to the question — How do you save the world from monsters if no one will admit they exist?

Butter Honey Pig Bread by Francesca Ekwuyasi

Spanning three continents, Butter Honey Pig Bread tells the interconnected stories of three Nigerian women: Kambirinachi and her twin daughters, Kehinde and Taiye. Kambirinachi believes that she is an Ogbanje, or an Abiku, a non-human spirit that plagues a family with misfortune by being born and then dying in childhood to cause a human mother misery. She has made the unnatural choice of staying alive to love her human family but lives in fear of the consequences of her decision.

For readers of African diasporic authors such as Teju Cole and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Butter Honey Pig Bread is a story of choices and their consequences, of motherhood, of the malleable line between the spirit and the mind, of finding new homes and mending old ones, of voracious appetites, of queer love, of friendship, faith, and above all, family.

Beloved by Toni Morrison

Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has borne the unthinkable and not gone mad, yet she is still held captive by memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. Meanwhile Sethe’s house has long been troubled by the angry, destructive ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.

Toni Morrison’s Beloved is a spellbinding and dazzlingly innovative portrait of a woman haunted by the past. Combining the visionary power of legend with the unassailable truth of history, Morrison’s unforgettable novel is one of the great and enduring works of American literature.

The Stars and the Blackness Between Them by Junauda Petrus

Told in two distinct and irresistible voices, Junauda Petrus’s bold and lyrical debut is the story of two black girls from very different backgrounds finding love and happiness in a world that seems determined to deny them both.Junauda Petrus’s debut brilliantly captures the distinctly lush and lyrical voices of Mabel and Audre as they conjure a love that is stronger than hatred, prison, and death and as vast as the blackness between the stars. 

The Salt Eaters by Toni Cade Bambara

Set in a town somewhere in the South, here is the story of a community of black people searching for the healing properties of salt who witness an event that will change their lives forever. Some of them are centered, some are off-balance; some are frightened, and some are daring. From the men who live off welfare women to the mud mothers who carry their children in their hides, the novel brilliantly explores the narcissistic aspect of despair and the tremendous responsibility that comes with physical, spiritual, and mental well-being.

Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor

When a massive object crashes into the ocean off the coast of Lagos, Nigeria’s most populous and legendary city, three people wandering along Bar Beach (Adaora, the marine biologist- Anthony, the rapper famous throughout Africa- Agu, the troubled soldier) find themselves running a race against time to save the country they love and the world itself… from itself.

Told from multiple points of view and crisscrossing narratives, combining everything from superhero comics to Nigerian mythology to tie together a story about a city consuming itself.

‘There was no time to flee. No time to turn. No time to shriek. And there was no pain. It was like being thrown into the stars.’

Afar by Leila del Luca

Boetema suddenly develops the ability to astrally project to other worlds, unintentionally possessing the bodies of people light years away.

Inotu, her inquisitive brother with a penchant for trouble, finds himself on the run after he’s caught eavesdropping on an illegal business deal between small town business tycoons and their cyborg bodyguard. When Boetema accidentally gets someone hurt while in another girl’s body, the siblings are forced to work together to solve the problems they’ve created on their planet and others.


About Sapphire Woods

Sapphire is a Black of Caribbean descent, Queer, gender-expansive world-builder and Truthteller. Their life purpose and professional align in co-imagining, building and advocating with Black queer and trans community. Sapphire formally hustled York University for their Master’s of Education to be able to create dope programming for Black folks through non-profit and educational institutions. Sapphire has always loved reading and believes that Afrofuturism and Black radical rest charges our superpowers. With that being said, Sapphire takes a lot of naps, likes to hang out with their Granny on the phone and prefers tea to coffee.

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