Get a free book! Discuss with peers, faculty, and staff!

Real Lit[erature] — UW Tacoma’s fiction based book club co-created by the UW Tacoma Library and the Center for Equity and Inclusion — is back for Winter 2020, and you won’t want to miss it.  The book we’re going to be reading, Elizabeth Acevedo‘s The Poet X, is about finding one’s way in the world, being the child of immigrants, and negotiating your religion, identity and feelings. Really amazing is the fact that the book is written as slam poetry!  The author has a BA in Performing Arts from The George Washington University, and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Maryland. She’s also a National Poetry Slam Champion!

To sign up, please click here!

As always, all are welcome: staff, students, faculty.  Students will receive a free copy of the book on a first come, first serve basis.

The Poet X is winning all sorts of awards, and is a powerfully honest, must-read book. Here’s a bit about our selection.

A young girl in Harlem discovers slam poetry as a way to understand her mother’s religion and her own relationship to the world. Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood. Ever since her body grew into curves, she has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking. But Xiomara has plenty she wants to say, and she pours all her frustration and passion onto the pages of a leather notebook, reciting the words to herself like prayers—especially after she catches feelings for a boy in her bio class named Aman, who her family can never know about. With Mami’s determination to force her daughter to obey the laws of the church, Xiomara understands that her thoughts are best kept to herself. So when she is invited to join her school’s slam poetry club, she doesn’t know how she could ever attend without her mami finding out, much less speak her words out loud. But still, she can’t stop thinking about performing her poems. Because in the face of a world that may not want to hear her, Xiomara refuses to be silent.

And stay tuned about skyping with the author, as we have in the past!

To sign up for the Real Lit Book Club, please click here!

All meetings take place in SNO 136 unless otherwise indicated.

Thursday, January 9, 2020
12:30-1:20 p.m.
Meet one another, get your book, read the community agreements, ask your questions

Thursday, January 16, 2020
12:30-1:20 p.m.
Discussion through to page 92

Thursday, January 30th, 2020
12:30-1:20 p.m.
Discussion through to page 181

Thursday, February 13, 2020
12:30-1:20 p.m.
Discussion through to page 270

Thursday, February 27, 2020
12:30-1:20 p.m.
Discussion through the end of the book