Cliterature, the Vagina Museum's book club, offers you a generous and satisfying fingering through the feminist pages. We’ll include a mixture of fiction, non-fiction, essays and poetry. Everyone is welcome. Our book club is led by former trustee, Niharika Jain.
About the book
“With urgency and tenderness Evening Primrose explores issues of race, gender and the medical profession through the eyes of a junior doctor.”
When Masechaba finally achieves her childhood dream of becoming a doctor, her ambition is tested as she faces the stark reality of South Africa's public healthcare system.
As she leaves her deeply religious mother and makes friends with the politically-minded Nyasha, Masechaba's eyes are opened to the rising xenophobic tension that carries echoes of apartheid.
Battling her inner demons, she must decide if she should take a stand to help her best friend, even it comes at a high personal cost.
'The best kind of political novel, its turns of emotion are virtuosic. Matlwa's voice is one we need.' Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, author of Harmless Like You
'Slices straight to the heart, deft and clean' Laura Jane Williams, author of Becoming"
About the author
Dr. Kopano Matlwa Mabaso is a South African public health physician & novelist. She is founding Executive Director of the Grow Great Campaign ―a South African campaign aimed at galvanizing a national commitment to zero stunting in South Africa by 2030.
Kopano is a Rhodes Scholar and an alumnus of the University of Oxford where she gained both her masters and DPhil in Public Health. Kopano is a published fiction writer and the winner of the European Literary Award (2007) and joint winner of the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa (2010). Her three novels Coconut, Spilt Milk and Period Pain are social commentaries on post-apartheid South Africa and between them, have been received over a dozen international rights deals. Period Pain was in 2017/18 shortlisted for the Sunday Times Literary Award, the South African Literary Awards and South Africa’s Humanities & Social Sciences Awards.
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Useful information: If you can, try to get your hands on a copy via your local independent bookshop or library as a physical book, e-book or audiobook.
As this is a participatory event by nature, not a performance, anyone who doesn't engage - which can via audio, text, or any method accessible to you - will be automatically removed to ensure safety of all participants. Don’t worry if you’ve not finished the book in time for the session, having read some or most of it will help you take part in our discussion.
Live transcription will be enabled on Zoom for all our events. If you need a transcript after the event, please email us at info@vaginamuseum.co.uk to get a copy.