IMAGE: Jim Hodges, With Liberty and Justice for All (A Work in Progress), 2014–2016. Stainless steel, Dichrolam, acrylic, enamel paint, and LED lights. Installed, 84 x 1,737 x 10 inches. Installation view, The Contemporary Austin – The Moody Rooftop at the Jones Center, Austin, Texas, 2017. Artwork © Jim Hodges. Courtesy the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels. Image © The Contemporary Austin. Photograph by Brian Fitzsimmons.

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With Liberty and Justice for All Book Club

Join us to talk about On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, the acclaimed debut novel by poet Ocean Vuong. The main character, Little Dog, writes a love letter to his mother who cannot read that traces their family’s roots in Vietnam and examines their struggles with addiction, violence, and trauma. Vuong’s story is about people caught between disparate worlds, fueled by the question of how to survive and make joy along the way.

Our discussion of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is the latest installment in of a new book club that we are co-presenting with The Austin Public Library, drawing on fiction, poetry, and visual art to explore themes of racism, social justice, empathy, healing, and community.
 
Click here to check out the book from Austin Public Library!

Click here to buy the book!
 
Save the date for our August book club meeting, featuring The Bluest Eye (1970) by Toni Morrison.
 
Angelica Johnson is the Assistant Branch Manager at the Twin Oaks Branch of Austin Public Library. She recently moved to the Austin area and is hoping to build roots here. She has a great affinity for social justice causes that affirms the humanity and voices of marginalized groups while pushing for equitable structural change. Before entering management, she served as a Young Adult Librarian at Brooklyn Public Library where she worked closely with teens of diverse backgrounds to cultivate adequate programming and outreach efforts in addition to serving as an advocate for more teen spaces in the library.

Jeremy Garza is a Library Associate at the Twin Oaks Branch of the Austin Public Library, and graduate student at the Texas Woman’s University. He is a native Austinite, electric bike enthusiast, podcast addict, and tries to embrace Octavia Butler’s “Earthseed” virtues about change (especially in this city of constant transformation). As a librarian & community facilitator in-training, he is dedicated to the teachings of black feminisms and the mission of collective uplift for all people through life-long learning & grassroots community connection.