Fem Book Club – Foreign Soil
Featuring
- Jess Boyce
See more about Jess Boyce
Mar 17, 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Centre for Stories
Fem Book Club is an introduction to a diverse range of texts by women about women. Through informal conversation about each text we will focus on the manifold experiences of being a woman through different moments in history and across varying communities. It is an opportunity to think about and challenge what it means to be a woman and perhaps undermine any assumed universal experience by looking at how people of colour, transgender and non-binary identifying writers, or those who suffer with mental health issues have vastly different experiences of ‘feminism’ or what it is to be a ‘woman’.
This is a welcoming and safe space. We encourage participation from LGBTI women, men, trans and gender diverse persons and non-binary persons.
During this session of Fem Book Club, we’ll be discussing Foreign Soil by Maxine Beneba Clarke.
In Melbourne’s western suburbs, in a dilapidated block of flats overhanging the rattling Footscray train lines, a young black mother is working on a collection of stories.
The book is called Foreign Soil. Inside its covers, a desperate asylum seeker is pacing the hallways of Sydney’s notorious Villawood detention centre, a seven-year-old Sudanese boy has found solace in a patchwork bike, an enraged black militant is on the warpath through the rebel squats of 1960s Brixton, a Mississippi housewife decides to make the ultimate sacrifice to save her son from small-town ignorance, a young woman leaves rural Jamaica in search of her destiny, and a Sydney schoolgirl loses her way.
The young mother keeps writing, the rejection letters keep arriving…
Our preferred bookseller is Boffins Books. We value our local booksellers and think they are an important part of the literary community. Boffins stocks a limited number of copies of each Fem Book Club text, so please purchase your copy as soon as possible as we cannot guarantee stock. When purchasing in store, mention our name for 10% off!
The full text list for Fem Book Club 2021 is as follows:
17 March – Foreign Soil by Maxine Beneba Clarke
19 May – Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi
21 July – The Color Purple by Alice Walker
15 September – Noughts & Crosses by Malorie Blackman
17 November – The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
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Jess Boyce
Collapse BioJess Boyce is a curator, arts worker and artist working on Wadjuk boodja. Working in community arts with Mundaring and Midland Junction Arts Centre, Jess has also been involved in a number of artist-run projects including as a co-founder of Cool Change Contemporary and a co-director of Moana Project Space. Jess graduated from Curtin University in 2014 with First Class Honours Bachelor of Arts.
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