Content warning: mentions of sexual assault.
SFU’s department of gender, sexuality, and women’s studies (GSWS) concludes Sexual Assault Awareness Month (SAAM) with community. On January 12, the GSWS book club collaborated with SFU’s Sexual Violence Support & Prevention Office (SVSPO) to discuss the novel, Bury our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab.
Belinda Karsen, an educator at SVSPO, told The Peak about her role in preventative and educational programming at SFU. This includes education campaigns and outreach on consent, healthy relationship boundaries, and supporting those impacted by sexualized violence. Partnering with GSWS for the first time, both enterprises overlap for outreach with the department’s book club.
Meetings are monthly, taking place downtown at the Harbour Centre building at the SFU Vancouver campus. Coordinator and GSWS masters’ alumni Yasmin Vejs Simsek contributed to the conversation that The Peak had with Karsen. Yasmin said the goal of this book club is not “huge attendance [but rather] quality conversations where every member feels heard.” A benefit of the intimacy created in this environment is the emotional security enjoyed by members as they examine taboo topics. Simsek said that discussions are “essential in educating ourselves and each other,” and Karsen articulated that discussions “normalize conversations around healthy relationships with our peers.” Simsek added that knowing others in the book club have gone through the same or similar issues creates community.
The meeting was an entryway to conversations about how to recognize and break cycles of trauma and abuse.
According to Karsen, close reading is necessary to discern between empowering narratives and romanticized ones. That can mean finely registering character development, or continued motifs and imagery as sites for interpretation towards patterns of abuse or hopeful narratives. Bones is a queer vampire novel, so Karsen suggested looking out for reinforced 2SLGBTQIA+ stereotypes.
SVSPO hosts a variety of events during SAAM. The book club decides its line-up of readings semesterly on two criteria: the novel must be fiction and must lend itself to feminist analysis. When SAAM is over, the SVSPO will continue to provide free, confidential support for students.
