Reading Club: Fleeting Moments of Safety - Third Meeting

Can literature become a space for safe conversation, identity exploration, and community building?

At Društvo Parada ponosa, we are starting the reading club Fleeting Moments of Safety, where in autumn meetings, through the literature of Vietnamese-American queer author Ocean Vuong, we will open up questions of love, sexual and ethnic identity, class, migration, family trauma, language, and the search for freedom. Intersectionality much? We don't know how else.

Third meeting: on Wednesday, October 21, at 4:30 PM at Muzejska ploščad in Ljubljana, in case of rain under cover in front of the National Museum (yes, very close to Metelkova).

The main focus will be Vuong's award-winning novel On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, which, in the translation by Anja Zag Golob and Katja Šaponjič, was published by Mladinska knjiga. It is a son's letter to his mother, in which, as we will be able to read together, personal and family history are lyrically intertwined. We will also try to answer the question of how to find a language for one's own experience by getting to know other Vuong works, such as the novel The Emperor of Gladness.

The reading club is intended for everyone interested in quality literature and discussion about the topics it opens up, but we especially want to create a safe space for LGBTIQ+ individuals and youth, where through literature we can explore our own experiences, identity, and relationship to the world. We understand the reading club as a space for literary exploration, community care, and empowerment.