Queerspawn Book & Media Club with Author Q&A

If you are 16 or older and have one or more LGBTQ+ parent/caregiver, join our Queerspawn Book & Media Club, co-hosted by the Queerspawn Resource Project. The Queerspawn Book & Media Club will read, watch, and consume literature and media that is by or about queerspawn! We assign a new work and meet on a bi-monthly basis (every other month). All you have to do to join the Club is read the assigned book below and register for the Zoom meeting. If you can’t join this time around, check back after November 12 for the next assignment and meeting date. This month, for the second half of the meeting we will get to do a Q&A with the author!

The piece of work for November is This Terrible True Thing by Jenny Laden. The publishers graciously offered a 25% discount to any queerspawn reading this book for the Book Club. Visit this site and use the code Terrible25.

About the Book: While high school senior Danielle Silver is applying to RISD to fulfill her long-time dream of becoming an artist, she finds that AIDS has struck her father’s friends. Balancing mourning and physics homework, first crushes and paralyzing fear, Danielle must struggle to find the positive in the dark days of the early 90s. The visual style of the work allows us to see Danielle’s drawings, read her journal entries, and experience her poetry as she tries to capture all the feelings of her adolescence and hard realities collide. It is in turns touching, insightful, funny, and devastating as we watch a girl  realize the relationship between the personal and political, art and activism. While set in the 90s at the height of the AIDS crisis, the themes of pandemic fear and activism through art ring true to today. . The work includes 59 b/w illustrations, and each chapter of the book is titled for a relevant “vintage” song to help set the mood.Here is a full playlist.

About the Author: Jenny Laden was born in Philadelphia and began painting at the age of nine. She studied art and art history at Barnard College and received her master’s degree in fine art from New York University. She has exhibited in New York; Chicago; Washington, DC; McClean; Richmond; Miami; Philadelphia; San Francisco; and Berlin, and had work in multiple publications. After her father’s death in 1996, she became a HIV/AIDS educator in New York City and worked with C.O.L.A.G.E. (Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere) leading staff at Family week for four summers. She works at the Institute of Contemporary Art at UPenn, and  lives in Philadelphia with her family. More info can be found at www.jennyladen.com