They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us Reading Group
Weekly Tuesdays 6-8 CT
(1/12, 1/19, 1/26, 2/2, 2/9, 2/16, 2/23)
Platform: Zoom
Pricing: Sliding Scale (60% of program income goes to the educator)
Participant Limit: 20
Workshop Leader: Stuti Sharma
A seven-session reading group for the book They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Abdurraqib.
They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us didn't talk me out of wanting to die. It’s a book that talked me into love and gratitude to be alive. It gave me opportunity to find meaning and significance in life, especially following the turmoil that was 2016 and onwards. The essays in this book and their intersections with culture, justice, and beauty invite rich discussion around the cultural implications and impact of music on our lives and communities. The author, Hanif Abdurraqib, is an Ohioan poet, essayist, and music critic.
As we enter into 2021, many of us are dedicating ourselves to principles both learned and cemented through the upheaval of society the COVID pandemic has caused, and through our living and engaging in the Black Lives Matter and police abolition uprisings. Knowing the work is sustained and will continue as we show up in community, build mutual aid support for one another, and learn how to love ourselves and each other, I invite you to expand yourselves through this reading group. They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us recenters and teaches. This book invites readers to celebrate music and joy, and to celebrate what music represents - the people we love, the people who are gone and the people we honor. - Stuti Sharma
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“I know that I stopped thinking about extreme grief as the sole vehicle for great art when the grief started to take people with it. And I get it. The tortured artist is the artist that gets remembered for all time, particularly if they either perish or overcome. But the truth is that so many of us are stuck in the middle. So many of us begin tortured and end tortured, with only brief bursts of light in between, and I'd rather have average art and survival than miracles that come at the cost of someone's life.”
― Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us
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Note: Readers will supply their own books. Buy your copy of the book from Semicolon Chi, a Black-owned Chicago bookshop, or your favorite local small business.
* We encourage BIPOC community members to pay the lowest sliding scale option regardless of economic status. *
Questions? Contact us!
About Stuti Sharma:
Stuti Sharma is all over the place. She is focusing on her healing journey right now, learning how to be more compassionate to herself and feel more at home in her body. She is a queer, multidisciplinary artist. She is Indian-heritaged, Kenyan-born, Illinois-raised and loves each of those parts. Right now, she’s been working on a lot of fun and sad music. She loves poetry so much it hurts, and she loves to read, study, teach, and write it. Stand-up comedy opened the door for her to so many communities, and comedy continues to be the center of her motivation. Previously she ran an after school program in Chicago’s West Ridge neighborhood for immigrant and refugee youth--in the same neighborhood she grew up as an immigrant herself. Stuti is currently a children’s science librarian.