The Sisterhood Book Club

The Sisterhood Book Club is a friendly book club for adults, discovering and rediscovering female protagonists in classic, modern classic and contemporary fiction written by women. We have an eclectic taste and our reading journey has taken us all over the world. New Members are alsways welcome to join us!

We meet monthly to informally discuss a book we have read in advance and have a fun social evening at Do it Like a Mother in Westcliff on Sea. The cost of taking part is the purchase of the book to be discussed, the profit from which pays for the venue. Books are available at least a month prior to the book club and generally books for next month are purchased at the end of each club. They can also be ordered here and delivered.

We were originally inspired to form by Penguin Books' Sisterhood Collection, which included titles such as Anne of Green Gables, Little Women and Pride and Prejudice but we have throw off our foray into children's fiction and most recently the books we have read have included Diary of a Void (Emi Yagi), Foxash (Kate Worsley) and Violeta (Isabel Allende).

About the book this month:

Our Sister Killjoy by Ama Ata Aidoo

'Ver do you come from?' she asked Sissie.

'Ghana.'

'Is that near Canada?'

Sissie is leaving Africa for the first time, arriving in Europe on a scholarship to experience the glories of a Western education. In Germany, as guest of honour over embassy cocktails, she cringes at her countrymen. In a Bavarian castle, she is seduced by a lonely local mother to Little Adolf.

In freezing London, she witnesses 'been-tos' sharing myths of an overseas idyll. In between continents, she writes a letter on the plane to her exiled former lover. But it is not sent.

She will tell these tales back at home.

Ama Ata Aidoo's landmark debut Our Sister Killjoy exploded into the world in 1977. With its blistering feminist satire of the African diaspora, colonial legacies and toxic racism, expressed in a radical literary form - prose poetry, letter, manifesto - its provocative impact remains unmatched.