Rebel Women Lit Bibliotherapy Retreat
Highlights from our Bibliotherapy Retreat with TrueSelf Centre and Sippin’ Live
Join our community for a day of mindful journaling, yoga, swimming, laughter and warmth by the waterfalls of On March 13th, Rebel Women Lit travelled to Breadnut Valley Estate in St. Elizabeth for a day of yoga, journaling, swimming, hiking and great food!
We’re so grateful we got to enjoy movements with TrueSelf Center and fantastic food with Sippin’ Live.
Photography by Ornella Taylor
RWL Verandah Chat At Haveli Last Sundays
Rebel Women Lit discusses creative entrepreneurship and building communities with Mina Robertson at Haveli’s Last Sunday pop-up at 11 Devon Road.
Last Sundays is a new monthly event from Haveli that celebrates profitable women-led businesses that centre purpose, impact and building communities.
At the Verandah Chat, Jherane, founder of Rebel Women Lit, and Mina, founder of Haveli, had an in depth conversation about what drives their businesses, exercising their boundaries, and building communities.
The Haveli and Rebel Women Lit communities came together for a beautiful and tender day of storytelling, fashion and laughter.
Watch the full chat with the founders of Haveli & RWL, and visit Haveli on 11 Devon Road, every last Sunday to celebrate other women-ran businesses.
RWL Readers' Retreat - Holywell Park
Rebel Women Lit’s June Readers’ Retreat to Holywell Park, St. Andrew
Photos from our June 2021 readers’ retreat to Holywell Park.
📸: Nelly Taylor
Our Favourite Books of 2020 (So Far)
We asked four of our book club members for some the best books they’ve read so far this year and think would be a great accompaniment to your summer adventures, whether you're exploring the great outdoors or sticking close to the A/C.
As we figure out how to stay ‘socially distant’ while planning beach trips, — or chill out on the couch in front of your fan — we have to admit there's no better Summer companion than a great book. Instead of giving in to the torpor of long, hot days, and watching that series for the eighth time, why not use this Summer to expand your mind?
We asked four book club members for some of their favourite reads for the year (so far) and why they’re recommending you read it before the end of Summer.
Candiese’s favourite: Here Comes The Sun by Nicole Dennis Benn
Candiese with her favourite 2020 read (so far) Here Comes The Sun by Nicole Dennis-Benn
I love a good story and “Here Comes The Sun” is a great one. As a dark-skinned Jamaican woman, I saw myself and people I relate to in every single character. I especially loved the way Dennis-Benn was able to address issues we face daily in an authentic way without missing a beat and without dragging on. This story is authentic, entertaining and engrossing, but it will make you think.
The way the writer juxtaposed the white sand, tourist-attracting elements of this country and the struggles faced by those serving those tourists and working to keep the facade going was excellent. The way she brought to the forefront the various acts carried out behind the scenes while using one character to justify those acts while another condemns them... wow. This book is full of twists and turns, heartbreak and triumph. Characters struggle with identity issues, self-esteem issues, financial woes, trauma, sexual and emotional abuse, sexuality and coming of age concerns... just so much but in such a way that you’ll never want to put this down. This is a must-read.
It’s the one book I shove at all my friends and I’m shameless about it. Would I make the leap and say this is my favourite book of all time? I might. There’s just so much to say. I think my favourite thing about this book is how realistic it is. There is no dressing up - and I appreciate that more than anything else. Reading it was an experience.
Go read it and thank me later.
Follow Candiese on Twitter: @CandieseReads and Instagram MsLeveridge
Tyesha’s Favourite: Born A Crime By Trevor Noah
There had been much buzz about this book. However, my affinity for most things South African nurtured by a good South African friend drew me to this book.
In a big nutshell, Born a Crime is Noah's memoir focused on his childhood journey from illegitimate son (by society's standards) born out of an immoral and criminal act (by virtue of South Africa's 1927 Immorality Act with which he opens the book) to young adult. The story flows from Apartheid to democratic South Africa with his mother (she was the star character) as central theme throughout.
I enthusiastically recommend this book, especially to boys, as I enjoyed his easy, authentic and humorous way of dropping some blinding gems about life - racism and discrimination, relationships and friendships, love, sacrifice, charting one's path, acceptance, spirituality and priorities.
As I read the recounting of life under Apartheid in the late 1980s to early 90s and what that meant for black people living in their own country, I could not help but connect that to recent highlighted events of discrimination unfolding in the US and sadly, other parts of the world (Jamaica included) that may not be so widely televised.
In Chapter 15 "Go Hitler!", Noah writes "Every country thinks their history is the most important, and that’s especially true in the West. But if black South Africans could go back in time and kill one person, Cecil Rhodes would come up before Hitler. If people in the Congo could go back in time and kill one person, Belgium’s King Leopold would come way before Hitler. If Native Americans could go back in time and kill one person, it would probably be Christopher Columbus or Andrew Jackson." All key figures that struck a chord in these 2020 riots and sentiments! Are we not progressing? I felt sad and hopeless but never failed to crack a smile at some show of wit or comedy that Noah weaves consistently from start to end.
Shantay’s Favourite: Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
Shantay With Her Favourite for 2020 (so far) Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
Girl, Woman, Other was my first book of 2020, and I could not have started my literary year any better. This book was a JOURNEY! Bernardine Evaristo's writing style pulled me in from the very first page - in the first two lines! She threw the usual rules of punctuation out the window in favor of a more poetic but unconventional structure for prose - what is a full stop? Once I started, I could not put this book down. And as soon as I finished, I began losing my mind trying to find someone - anyone - to discuss this book with. I NEEDED someone to share all this greatness with because greatness like this deserves to be shared. The characters felt like people I've known all my life. Each individual's story was short, but Evaristo created such fully formed characters with each chapter. These are women you've mentioned on Twitter and women whose plays you want to watch. These women are your teachers and your friends.
Then there's the DRAMA! WHEW! It gets spicy. This is the sort of book that makes you want to sit down over tea and gossip about the things the characters are getting up to lately. I began to feel like the nosy neighbour keeping tabs on who is visiting who at what hours of the night and asking questions like "When last you visit your grandma?" The book also has it's more sensitive moments and deals so well with issues of abandonment and abuse. This book has so many POVs with characters of different ages with different upbringings, including immigrants and first and second-generation British women. It truly shows the diversity that is the experience of being a Black woman in Britain and the connections to Africa and the Caribbean. I don't know what else to say besides why haven't you bought this book yet? It is sheer brilliance, and I'm not going to shut up about it for a long time.
Follow Shantay’s mind and reading journey on Instagram & Twitter
Gabrielle’s Favourite: Children of Virtue and Vengence by Tomi Adeyemi
Gabrielle serving and sharing her favourite 2020 book: Children of Virtue and Vengence by Tomi Adeyemi
One of my best reads and this speaks volumes as this was a great year for literature. Children of Virtue and Vengence is the second book in the Legacy of Orisha series by Tomi Adeyemi.I’m obsessed with fantasy especially if it’s based on Afro-spirituality so I really love the retelling of Yoruban mythology in this book.
It was so exceptional but on the other hand, it made me so mad; I wanted to reach within the book and curse the characters for the drama they curated. But again, it is so good at the same time which is amazing for not many persons can write fantasy so enjoyable.
As such, I have all the reason to be frustrated because the release date of the third book is yet to be announced and I am itching to read it. How will I survive the wait? I still haven’t determined that.
Follow Gabrielle on Instagram: @gen_zea where she posts about books and tea
What’s your favourite book so far this year and what are you planning on getting to this Summer?
Come let’s get our Goodreads counter up!
Learning to Love Complicated Mothers - Episode 7 of Like A Real Book Club
In episode seven of “Like A Real Book Club”, we meditate on the complexities of Caribbean motherhood - ladened with a history of patriarchal violence that has architected the tenuous, terrible and beautiful bonds we form with the matriarchs in our lives (and, of course, how these relationships are depicted in Caribbean literature).
There’s a moment in your adulthood where you become aware of your parents’ humanness. The frailty in their bones from years of labour; the knowing in their eyes that can only be won through experience. You begin to understand, with certainty and clarity, how an unjust world shaped who they became and moulded the kind of relationships we end up having with them.
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In this episode of “Like A Real Book Club”, we meditate on the complexities of Caribbean motherhood - ladened with a history of patriarchal violence that has architected the tenuous, terrible and beautiful bonds we form with the matriarchs in our lives (and, of course, how these relationships are depicted in Caribbean literature). For us, humanizing mothers beyond the emotional labour they perform is a catalyst for a host of hard, and sometimes uncomfortable, emotions about what it means to exist as a woman who is mothering, but also how we see these women. Do we recognize their humanity untethered from their children? Do we provide space for their anger? Their resentment and frustration? Have we made room for them to mourn the loss of who they were before they were expected to give life?
The Confessions of Frannie Langton Review + Tea with Sara Collins on our Podcast
We review the Confessions of Frannie Langton and chat with Sara Collins, on Like A Real Book Club.
In The Confessions of Frannie Langton, Frannie shares her story of being formerly enslaved in Jamaica, who is then brought to England as an (under) employed servant, becomes a dominatrix sex worker, and later accused of murdering her employers.
Sis goes through a lot...
Everyone in book club was a little hesitant to start this book because the marketing focused on it being a slave narrative, an Lorde knows we can’t all handle the trauma that tends to come from books about slavery. But by in the first couple of pages, Frannie won us over convincing us that we’ve never read a book like this before.
“This is a story of love, not just murder, though I know that’s not the kind of story you’re expecting. In truth, no one expects any kind of story from a woman like me. No doubt you think this will be one of those slave histories, all sugared over with misery and despair. But who’d want to read one of those? No, this is my account of myself and my own life and the happiness that came to it, which was not a thing I thought I’d ever be allowed, the happiness or the account.”
Excerpt From: Sara Collins. “The Confessions of Frannie Langton.”
The book does indeed highlight slavery through the stories of experiments done on Caribbean plantations in the name of “science”, the motivations of white abolitionists, and other themes that we don’t see in best selling books based in the 19th Century England that are still on our CXC syllabus cough cough Jane Austen. Perhaps one of the best things about The Confessions of Frannie Langton is that it doesn’t throw historical records in our faces, instead, Sara Collins subtly shows how slavery built the UK’s wealth and how many people living in the UK never had to think about it when they asked for someone to “pass the sugar”.
At the start of book club a few people acknowledged that they stayed up all night reading the book, and Candiese even did a speed-read through the last few pages just before the meeting so she could talk about it! 🤣
Kristina summed up a lot of our feelings about being introduced to Frannie and Frannie’s drive to tell her own story.
The style of The Confessions of Frannie Langton is something we also admired for its very poetic and metaphorical language. In the book “scientists” try to find reasons for treating black people as sub-human, whereas Frannie uses logic and her hunger for knowledge to discover more about her humanity and the brutal ironies of abolitionists and slave-owners alike.
“It is impossible to be both black and a woman. Did you know that? No one was asking me to give any lectures. They allow some blacks to impress them. Men like Sancho, Equiano … Yet I fail to see what was so impressive about them. They wrote, yes. But thousands could, if someone would bother to teach them. And everything they wrote was written for whites. Petitions. Appeals. It’s another of this world’s laws. Blacks will write only about suffering, and only for white people, as if our purpose here is to change their minds.”
Excerpt From: Sara Collins. “The Confessions of Frannie Langton.”
Finally, the sex… oh the sex. No one saw The School House scenes coming and we couldn’t have predicted how thought-provoking it would’ve been to see 19th-century dominatrix black women in London. This spurred a lot of discussions about the politics of sex and how trauma can make its way into sex and sex work.
(No videos on that, go read the book! lol)
Another thing we really admired about the book was the intense that went into it. So much so that Natasha put together a playlist featuring all of Sara’s youtube videos talking about the research for the book.
There were a few things we wished were included in the book, particularly more about Paradise, Montego-Bay and more interactions between Frannie and other black people.
We got a chance to interview Sara Collins about her debut novel in our podcast Like A Real Book Club, and without even mentioning that we wanted to see more of Paradise, she brought up why she chose to tell the story the way she did.
Bonus: She talks about her upcoming sophomore novel.
And, in case you missed it, we also did our Like A Real Book Club podcast meetup to talk about this book in more details about the book and its plot.
We highly recommend reading this book and we guarantee it’s unlike any story you’ve read and we’re happy that it’s being adapted into a television series.
Subscribe to our podcast: Like A Real Book Club
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See You At Book Club!
7 Books You Should Read Before They Hit The Screens
7 Books You Should Read Before They Hit The Screens
Controversial opinion: read the book before its tv/movie adaptation comes out.
I can already hear the arguments in the comments and on twitter about which you should indulge in first to save yourself possible heartbreak. Personally, after I see a movie, it always feels too late to go back and read the book. So, when I know that a tv of film adaptation for a book is coming out, I try my hardest to read it first.
Regardless of where you stand on the Read It First vs Read It After debate, we can all agree that there’s nothing like seeing a story you only imagined come alive brilliantly on screen. So to help prep our reading list, I came up with a roundup of tv shows and movies coming out within the next few months that are based off novels diverse novels or will have diverse creators & casting.
Whether it be on your commute to work, before you go to bed, or on the beach these are definitely worth taking the time to read.
Americanah
About: Lupita Nyong’o and Danai Gurira’s planned adaptation of the Chimamanda Adiche’s novel “Americanah” has a 10 episode show lined up for HBO Max. When she was a teenager Ifemelu, fell in love with her classmate Obinze while living in military-ruled Nigeria. As young adults, they each depart for the West, with Ifemelu heading for America, where, despite her academic success, she is forced to grapple for the first time with what it means to be black living in America. Obinze had hoped to join her in America, but with post-9/11 America closed to him, he instead plunges into a dangerous undocumented life in London.
Who’s in it: Lupita Nyong'o, Uzo Aduba, Corey Hawkins, Zackary Momoh
Read Americanah
Release date: TBA from HBO
P.S. I Love You 2
About: If you love a cute rom-com you’ve probably seen the film To All The Boys I Loved Before a few million times on Netflix and you can’t wait to see the sequel coming out just before Valentine’s Day! In part 2, Lara Jean and Peter have finally taken their relationship from pretend to officially official. They’re going on romantic dinner dates, holding hands, giving valentine’s day gifts, the works. When another recipient of one of her old love letters (from part 1) enters the picture and Lara Jean realises she also has feelings for him. Can a girl be in love with two boys at once?
Who’s in it: Lana Condor, Noah Centineo, Madeleine Arthur, Ross Butler
Release date: February 12 on Netflix
High Fidelity
About: Hulu is also swinging in this Valentine’s Day with their gender and race swap on British novel High Fidelity was not something anyone could have anticipated, but we’re all pleasantly surprised by it. This Rom-Com follows Rob, the owner of a semi-failing record store, as she takes a look back at the five biggest heartbreaks in her life, all so she can figure out why she keeps having her heart broken.
Who’s in it: Zoë Kravitz, Jake Lacy, and Da’Vine Joy Randolph
Read High Fidelity
Release date: 14th February on Hulu
Little Fires Everywhere
About: Based on Celeste Ng’s 2017 turn-pager, Little Fires Everywhere follows the intertwined fates of the picture-perfect Richardson family and an enigmatic mother and daughter who upend their lives when they move into their rental property.
Who’s in it: Kerry Washington, Reese Witherspoon, Rosemarie DeWitt, and Joshua Jackson.
Read Little Fires Everywhere
Release date: March 13 on Hulu
The Underground Railroad
About: This Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner’s screen adaptation is highly anticipated by readers and cinephiles alike. This historical fiction TV series directed by Barry Jenkins follows Cora, a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia, who finds out about Underground Railroad, and decides to take a terrifying risk and escape with Caesar, a newly arrived slave from Virginia.
Who’s in it: Thuso Mbedu, Chase W. Dillon, Aaron Pierre, Joel Edgerton
Read The Underground Railroad
Release date: TBA on Amazon Video
Lovecraft Country
About: If you’re into drama horror this is the HBO tv serie created by Jordan Peele, Misha Green, J.J. Abrams and Ben Stephenson promises to be the story you’re craving. In this story, Atticus Black joins his friend Letitia and his Uncle George to embark on a road trip across 1950s Jim Crow America in search of his missing father. This begins a struggle to survive and overcome both the terrors of white America with monsters that could’ve been ripped from an H.P. Lovecraft book.
Who’s in it: Jonathan Majors, Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Wunmi Mosaku, Aunjanue Ellis, Michael K. Williams, and Abbey Lee
Read Lovecraft Country
Release date: TBA from HBO
The Witches
About: This Roald Dahl’s children’s book gets a dark fantasy twist for the big screen. In The Witches a little boy stumbles across a conference of witches while staying with his grandmother at a hotel, and gets transformed into a mouse by the Grand High Witch, played by Anne Hathaway.
Who’s in it: Anne Hathaway, Octavia Spencer, Stanley Tucci, Chris Rock
Read The Witches
Release date: In Theatres October 9th