Every second Thursday of the month, join us for our monthly online discussion for significant conversations with fellow bibliophiles 🥵
Drop by in-store to pick up the book or buy online HERE.
This book club is free for our members - if you'd like to receive The Common Press book of the month delivered to your door each month, explore our membership tiers here.
7:30PM-8:30PM
Upcoming dates:
Thursday 18th December - Miss Major Speaks
Thursday 15th January - Between Queer Teeth
About the book:
A legendary transgender elder and activist reflects on a lifetime of struggle and the future of black, queer, and trans liberation
Miss Major Griffin-Gracy is a veteran of the infamous Stonewall Riots, a former sex worker, and a transgender elder and activist who has survived Bellevue psychiatric hospital, Attica Prison, the HIV/AIDS crisis and a world that white supremacy has built. She has shared tips with other sex workers in the nascent drag ball scene of the late 1960s, and helped found one of America’s first needle exchange clinics from the back of her van. Miss Major Speaks is both document of her brilliant life–told with intimacy, warmth and an undeniable levity-and a roadmap for the challenges black, brown, queer and trans youth will face on the path to liberation today.
Her incredible story of a life lived and a world survived becomes a conduit for larger questions about the riddle of collective liberation. For a younger generation, she warns about the traps of ‘representation,’ the politics of 'self-care,' and the frequent dead-ends of non-profit organizing; for all of us, she is a strike against those who would erase these histories of struggle. Miss Major offers something that cannot be found elsewhere: an affirmation that our vision for freedom can and must be more expansive than those on offer by mainstream institutions.
This book club is hosted by one of our amazing booksellers, Blake!
Blake is an MA student studying on the History of the Book course over at the School of Advanced Study, with a specialty in rare books and modernist publishing histories. Her favourite authors are Samuel R Delany, Ann Quin and Claire Louise Bennett; if you want to make her really excited, ask her about her collection of copies of Ulysses. Blake also started London's own trans climbing group, T-Climbing, so when she's not reading she's mostly up a wall (or on the dancefloor).