The Library is Open: The Book Club

A book club meeting hosted by leo. The hostess speaks a text that adapts a literary trope to question power relations inscribed in literacy. Reading from a book, leo explains the “Talking Book” trope as developed by Henry Louis Gates Jr., and uses “Yo’ Mama” jokes to probe the political dimensions of language. leo extends the questioning of literacy by learning how to speak “like a lady” together with Audrey Hepburn in an extract of the film My Fair Lady (1964), which tells the story of a bet surrounding a stereotypical young female worker and her transformation into a conventional high society lady. [text by Vanessa Gravenor]