Read & Rights

 

The second Tuesday of November is the 13th, and until then, Read & Rights will be reading High Season: A Memoir by Jim Hearn. The event is free and will start at 7pm at LOOP. Tweet as you read by following @ReadandRights and using #highseason. If 140 character isn’t enough for your impressions of the book, send them along to hanne@rightnow.org.au, and we will use them to inform discussion on the night.

High Season has been described as a ‘raw and unapologetic’ celebration of hospitality. We chose it for November’s Read & Rights because the topic for November is Employment Rights, and whether it’s about working as a waiter or dining at a particular restaurant, everyone has their horror-story of hospitality. The question is, will it match Jim Hearn’s? More reviews of High Season be found on the Readings webpage, where you can also buy the ebook. Looking forward to hearing what you think of it!

ABOUT READ & RIGHTS

Read & Rights is a book club with a difference. We discuss human rights issues raised in a variety of literature. The book club will be hosted here on the Right Now website, and we will meet on the second Tuesday each month at Loop, a fantastic venue in Myers Place (off Bourke St).

The idea is similar to your usual book club, but it focuses on the issues in the book as well as how well it tells a story. The Right Now website will include book reviews, synopsis, reading guides, interviews, and discussion around the issues in the book. The monthly event will be a chance to meet other people who are interested in human rights and literature – a great combination! The events will feature an interview or panel discussion around the issues in that month’s book, and will be a chance to meet groups in the community standing up for the rights you’ve just read about.

Human rights aren’t conceptual in books. They’re relatable; they’re a story, mixed through romance, history, or adventure so that we can feel their importance and their absence. In Halina Wagowska’s memoir The Testimony freedom isn’t something abstract; it’s a Russian soldier flipping potato pancakes. In Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi it’s finding enough copies of The Great Gatsby for a small, secret reading group. It’s a secret library in Fahrenheit 451. It’s freeing a house elf with a sock in Harry Potter. Understanding the need for justice can come from the reading about the fictional trial of Tom Robinson in the fictional town of Maycomb, or from reading about the very true case of Chris Hurley in Chloe Hooper’s The Tall Man.