VIRTUAL-Artist Reads at Charlotte Street with Jermaine Thompson

Charlotte Street is excited to launch our Artist Reads @CharlotteStreet monthly book club. Each month we have invited an artist to recommend a book that has inspired them, brought them joy or has been pivotal in some way. You will have one month to read the book. Artists will share their relationship and interpretation of the book and facilitate the monthly discussions which will be hosted virtually at the end of 2020.

For December we will read with local writer Jermaine Thompson! He has selected “Song of Solomon” by Toni Morrison. Those interested in joining the book discussion should consider the following questions suggested by Jermaine:
1. Song of Solomon is in many ways a text about the power of naming. What bearance do names and naming have on the characters and conflicts in Song of Solomon?
2. What does Song of Solomon want us to understand about inheritance and legacy?
3. There are easily searchable interviews of Toni Morrison in which she says that she writes without consideration of “the white gaze.” Many want to understand this motivation to mean that Morrison builds worlds that are free of the influence of Whiteness. How does this text disrupt that understanding?
4. How does Song of Solomon mimic an epic of Biblical proportions? What is Morrison communicating through this structure?

Want to purchase the book? Support our local bookstore Wise Blood and order your book from this link. As we’re unable to meet in person feel free to enjoy your own refreshments as we zoom into your living room.
Readers who register will be provided a zoom link before discussion on Wednesday, December 16th at 6:00 PM. Wise Blood Booksellers is Kansas City’s little bookshop on the corner, selling both new and used books and cultivating a community at 300 Westport Rd since late 2019. www.wisebloodbooksellers.com

ABOUT JERMAINE THOMPSON: Jermaine Thompson was born in Louisville, Mississippi. He learned language from big-armed women who greased their skillets with gossip and from full-bellied men who cursed and prayed with the same fervor. He’s been writing poetry since he was 13– inspired by having to memorize Langston Hughes’ “Harlem” for a Black History Program at his church. He has a B.A. in English from Stillman College, an HBCU in Tuscaloosa, AL, and a M.A. in English from Mississippi State University. He moved to Kansas City in August 2015 to complete an MFA in Poetry from the University of Missouri–Kansas City (UMKC). He has publications in The Pinch, Memorious, Whale Road Review, and Southern Indiana Review among others. He currently teaches freshman and junior English at Pembroke Hill Upper School and Black Studies at UMKC. Jermaine is also a board member of The Writers Place—a nonprofit organization dedicated to serving the literary community in Kansas City, Missouri.