Syracuse Sun

The Breedlove Readers Book Club is partnering with the Syracuse University Art Museum to offer a unique literary arts experience for middle and high school girls throughout Central New York in Fall 2024.

Directed by School of Education Professor Courtney Mauldin, Breedlove Readers encourages girls ages 13 through 17 to celebrate Black girl stories through reading, writing, and creating in the community.

For the Fall 2024 program, the club will explore ideas around identity and coming-of-age, two themes that the Art Museum addresses in its latest exhibition, “Homeward to the Prairie I Come: Gordon Parks Photographs from the Beach Museum of Art.”

Book club participants will read a novel that resonates with the life and works of Gordon Parks—a pioneering Black photographer, poet, and musician—and then visit the Art Museum to explore connections between the novel and his photographs.

As a photographer, Parks worked in various styles, including fashion photography, celebrity portraiture, and social justice subjects. Parks famously called his camera a “tool of social consciousness” and a “weapon against poverty, against racism, against all sorts of social wrongs.” The exhibition includes photographs from Parks’ full body of work, which spans decades of his career.

Meeting Dates: Saturday, Nov. 2 (Syracuse University Art Museum) and Saturday, Dec. 7 (Syracuse University MakerSpace). Applications close Tuesday, Oct. 1. Space is limited to 10 participants per cohort ages 13-17. All programming is free of charge. Transportation is available. If accepted, participants must commit to attending all meetings.