Edmonton Lesbian+ Book Club

February's title is The Creamsickle ! And according to our recent survey (have you taken our survey??), we love discussion questions. So here they are for you to ponder before next Tuesday. 1. This review ( here ) says: "Bois, boards, baby butches and bed hopping - Argo's angsty fiction debut, centred on the shenanigans of a crew of gender-fluid young women, should perhaps come with an age-appropriate label. Old folks - anyone over 40, more or less - ought to be adolescent at heart, or at least nostalgic for their own adventurous youth, to fully engage with its feisty plot..." Do you agree that The Creamsickle is mostly suited to one age group? Why? Why not? 2. How realistic was the characterization? Would you want to meet any of the characters? Did you like them? Hate them? 3 What about the plot? Did it pull you in; or did you feel you had to force yourself to read the book? 4. Some of the characters made choices that might be seen as having moral implications - su...

Okay, well, obviously Sappho wasn't the first lesbian. But she seems to be the first one in recorded history... And it's her home, the island of Lesbos, in Greece, that brought the word lesbian into usage. In January, we read and discussed Sappho's poems in a collection called "If Not, Winter" by Anne Carson. It was interesting to see how the historians and translators worked to bring such a body of poetry to life. The poems are found on old papyrus scraps. Shards. Like in the photo I'm attaching here. So in some cases the poems are nearly intact. In others, there is much left to the imagination. In some cases, it's hard to understand why the editor bothered to include one word on a page, although sometimes that one word did seem be evocative. Some members felt that using the broken fragments of poetry would be wonderful in an English class. Ask students to fill in the blanks. What a wonderful idea! February's title is The Creamsickle by Rhiannon Argo...