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Southern Gospel

One club, a continuing series of books. Membership carries from one reading to the next.

In this series, we’re going to be diving into Southern Gothic fiction. Southern Gothic has a certain jambalaya je ne sais quoi to it. It’s like a slice-of-life manga in all the worst ways that make it great!

We’re going to start in the shallow end with some very well-known and more approachable works. To Kill a Mockingbird (one of my all-time favorite books) will be our first toe in the water. We’ll get into books like Kindred and Beloved, eventually getting even more obscure with authors like LaToya Watkins and Randall Kenan.

Let’s prepare for some cousin fucking.

About the series

This is going to be a slight repeat of Lenin in the Streets, Dostoevsky in the Sheets because they function similarly!

To start, I’m going to pick a novel or novella. We’ll begin with To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Our read-through will operate as follows:

We’ll read two chapters of the novel each week, starting on Saturdays, so you can use the weekend if you prefer.

On Tuesdays, I’ll post a short summary of each chapter, followed by a writing prompt that will help us examine what has transpired during our journey so far.

On Thursdays, I’ll post my own response to said prompt and ask that club members have their responses in by the same day.

Discussion will remain open until Saturday—or beyond, if you prefer to recurse to previous chapters or prompts—during which we’ll solicit feedback from one another.

I might host a weekly online Socratic circle on Sunday evenings if I get enough interest. Unlikely.

We’ll repeat the above process until we’ve wormed our way through the entire book. When we’re done, I’ll propose three new works we can take on and open the choice up to group members to vote—or “no confidence” my ass and pick something entirely out of left field.

Let’s learn about what makes the South so… witchy.

The reading sequence

Reading now

  1. To Kill A Mockingbirdby Harper Lee

    1 session

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Reading now

To Kill A Mockingbird

by Harper Lee

About the book ↗

Sessions & questions

To Kill A Mockingbird

A Child Is Born

· 60 minutes

Read before we meet: Chapters 1 & 2

Dill and the Radleys are introduced in the first chapter and then mostly absent from the second. Scout progresses through her summer and into her first day of school during this period. Compare and contrast the introductions of Dill and the Radleys, and consider how these different characters would have been viewed by the community given their different histories and the prejudices surrounding them. Are these characters really absent from the second chapter?

Discussion for To Kill A Mockingbird →

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