Hey mersquad.

Don’t roll out the welcome wagon yet. I’m not sure if I’m actively back yet, but I did want to try my hand at blogging again, and I figured the best place to start would be after my very first book club meeting for a brand new book club. This is also another first because this is the first non-fiction book that I actually finished, since I really, really don’t read non-fiction novels.

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I read Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde as part of Eleanor’s Norfolk‘s newest book club (1 of 4 new book clubs, btw!). This one was for the Queer Book Club & Discussion Group, and it was a powerhouse first book to read.

I’m writing this after I got home from the meeting. And can I just tell you:

With the number of book clubs I’ve been a part of and the number of meetings that I’ve attended, for some reason, this one just hit differently. I feel like I’m in shock actually because, while I knew that I was going to enjoy myself, I didn’t realize that I was going to enjoy myself THAT much, you know?

We brought up so many good points that honestly, I’m not remembering right now because it’s been almost a week since I had the meeting… but also because I was paying more attention to what everyone was saying and wasn’t taking as many notes like I thought I was because of it, but hey!

One of the things that I do remember writing down was how it seemed like Lorde pretty much coined the term “intersectionality” even if it was attributed to someone else. I feel like I really sped through this book unfortunately so I don’t have many annotations either, but I could totally see that!

Long story short, I just had a really great time with this first book club meeting. Things may end up shifting so that we aren’t trying to read four books in one month – four different book clubs so far – but we will see! My next book club post will be on Pleasure Activism by adrienne maree brown, and hopefully I can get that post out faster than this one because the next meeting will be only a few days after that one!

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And for those who were interested in my book review, I left it here for you at the end!

I mean this isn’t a traditional review since how can you even critique or give critical comments (is that the same thing?) on Audre Lorde? I don’t think you can!

But I just had a lot of thoughts. Honestly, I feel like I’m still reflecting on what I listened to, and what I feel like I need to reread because I was just trying to absorb everything in time for book club and things kept hitting me left and right and I’m like… GEEZ.

Yeah, I don’t think I can really say anything else about this that would make any sort of sense, but just know that I have a lot of thoughts that I can’t seem to be able to vocalize in an intelligent fashion, so let’s just say that I would love to reread this sometime in the future and really do a better job at annotating it. It was a great first book club book for the year, and I’m curious to see how the future books go for 2022.

Especially since I don’t really read non-fiction novels, I was surprised that I was able to read this one, you know? But I figured that since this is from Audre Lorde, and that I’ve never had the pleasure of reading her work or being educated by her in the past, I thought this was a great introduction to her.