The Blossoms Mother-Daughter Reading Club is an intergenerational program that brings Black female Gen-Z students together with their mothers for dialogue that fosters voice, agency, self-confidence, & leadership. Reading texts centered on girlhood and womanhood, as experienced in Black culture, the group engages in bi-weekly workshops that enhance students’ vocabulary, comprehension, and verbal communication skills.
For the 2024-2025 season, the group of 50 (25 girls/25 moms) will read and discuss Taiyon J. Coleman‘s Traveling without Moving: Essays from a Black Woman Trying to Survive in America . During each bi-weekly meeting, the group will work towards the following objectives:
1. Explore themes such as Black culture, knowledge justice, empathy, systemic marginalization, girlhood, womanhood, strength of a mother, storytelling, and emergence
2. Summarize stories, pinpointing main ideas and supporting details
3. Examine imagery, metaphor, rhyme, alliteration, and symbolism
4. Compare and/or contrast characters and situations by making text-to-text, text-to-world, and text-to self connections
5. Complete interactive activities that help develop short, group presentations at a culminating event
September 21: Virtual Orientation — 2:00-3:00
September 22: Book Distribution Social at Lemuria Book Store — 2:00-3:00
