The Ruby is excited to host Graphic Lit Book Club! Whether you’re a graphic novel and graphic memoir enthusiast, you’ve always hoped to dive into the world of long-form graphic narratives, or you’re just looking for your next great read, we’re thrilled to have a space for discussing graphic literature in a cozy book club setting.
Co-hosted by Rubies Zareen Choudhury and Rebecca Rubenstein, Graphic Lit Book Club will meet from 6:00 - 7:30 pm at The Ruby, with light snacks and tea provided.
For our October gathering, we’ll be reading and chatting about Unterzakhn by Leela Corman, "a mesmerizing, heartbreaking graphic novel of immigrant life on New York’s Lower East Side at the turn of the twentieth century, as seen through the eyes of twin sisters whose lives take radically and tragically different paths."
Read more about the book below, and snag your copy from a local comic book shop, an independent bookstore, or even your local library. You can also hop into the #graphic-lit-book-club channel on The Ruby Discord to see if anyone has a copy to lend out. For anyone unable to attend (or who wants to talk about all things graphic lit in between meetings), we’ll be keeping the conversation flowing on Discord.
A non-member femme or non-binary friend may join if they are hosted by a Ruby member. For non-members, we hope you feel the warmth of our space and community and also recognize the trust through which we are sharing space. Please help us keep the space clean, safe, and comfortable so that it can remain a sanctuary for artists and writers.
About Unterzakhn (from the Penguin Random House website):
"For six-year-old Esther and Fanya, the teeming streets of New York’s Lower East Side circa 1910 are both a fascinating playground and a place where life’s lessons are learned quickly and often cruelly. In drawings that capture both the tumult and the telling details of that street life, Unterzakhn (Yiddish for “Underthings”) tells the story of these sisters: as wide-eyed little girls absorbing the sights and sounds of a neighborhood of struggling immigrants; as teenagers taking their own tentative steps into the wider world (Esther working for a woman who runs both a burlesque theater and a whorehouse, Fanya for an obstetrician who also performs illegal abortions); and, finally, as adults battling for their own piece of the “golden land,” where the difference between just barely surviving and triumphantly succeeding involves, for each of them, painful decisions that will have unavoidably tragic repercussions."