Third-years Sabrina Bellar and Jessica Buckwalter have a lot on their mind. At the forefront is connecting the women of EMU’s community through shared experiences, stories, warm drinks, baked goods, and their upcoming book club.
The club’s first meeting is Thursday, Nov 11., with the topic of focus being the first chapter of “Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger” by Soraya Chemaly.
“This was a book that Sabrina had read previously and had great things to say about it […] it’s talking about the power of women’s anger and just how so many women are not able to express certain emotions, and we see that as being a pretty big thing in society, on campus, so we wanted to create a place where women can talk about anger and emotions and maybe have others just share their stories or experiences. They can find, maybe, commonalities and just realize that they’re not the only ones experiencing anger but feeling like they have to suppress it,” Buckwalter said.
It was this very idea that gave Bellar and Buckwalter the foundation for the club.
While it’s still in the early stages, Bellar said that, “I want there to be a lot of discussion about what feels good for people in where we meet, what we talk about. We’ll generate some questions to start conversation, and then hopefully from there we’ll just invite whatever people have to say, whatever things came up for them. It’ll hopefully just evolve from the first gathering.” The format is very flexible, so specific times and places are always up for conversation and cognizant of the realities and busy schedules of college students. The pair ultimately wants the community of the club, the power of literature, and the fluidity of conversation to be the guiding forces.
Buckwalter said, “[…] I think stories have a lot of impact on people, and so having this group of women being able to meet, I feel like that allows them to share their stories, and in that way, others can be more impacted and then continue sharing those stories. So in reading this book and using this literature, I think it’s just a way to pass on stories that other women have shared, and I think that can be very valuable.”
Bellar continued this thought with the hope that “the people who come to the book club will be able to reflect on experiences they’ve had or growing up in maybe the ways that they’ve internalized some beliefs about what emotions are allowed to be expressed […] and the ways these beliefs have hurt them, and that they realize that emotions are not inherently good or bad, they just are, but it’s what you do with them that’s really important.”
Buckwalter further emphasized that sentiment. “With that, I think in any space when people can talk about things that they don’t normally have the opportunity to talk about and gain awareness about, then they’ll often share that with friends or family or just the people they interact within their daily lives, […] from that my hope would be participants in this book club would be able to learn something and be impacted in a way that they’d have a desire to share that with people around them, and hopefully those people will be impacted by what people in the book club have learned.”
Bellar concluded with, “I think reading literature is really helpful because oftentimes authors can bring to light something or can resonate with someone, or they can say it in a certain way that makes the reader think of something that they wouldn’t have normally thought of […]. Hopefully, people can just be more aware of interactions going forward from there, because you don’t know something until you know it, so just hopefully then their eyes will be opened or you’ll just be more aware of the way that different people move through their days.”
