Start Date
2 May, 2025
There will be 3 meetings on Friday 11am-2pm, starting from 2 May.
Overview
This course will take participants through three great writers and three tales taking inspiration from New York:
James Baldwin’s 'Go Tell it on the Mountain' is an intense autobiographical story set in Harlem in the 1930s concerning the life of Johnny Grimes, son of a preacher man. Set within the Pentecostal Church community, the novel is a disturbing and impressive family saga.
Sylvia Plath’s 'The Bell Jar' starts with student Esther Greenwood’s summer as an intern at a woman’s magazine, where she’s supposed to be having the time of her life. As the novel develops and Esther becomes increasingly alienated, Plath explores conflicting expectations of women’s work and sexuality alongside the experience of mental ill health.
In Colm Toíbín’s 'Brooklyn', Ellis Lacey emigrates from Ireland in the 1950s to find work in New York, where she also finds love. Drawn back by family to Ireland, Ellis re-establishes her life there but then is compelled to make a decision between the old country and the new.
Whilst these novels convey diverse views of New York, they all share an engagement with ideas of love, family, community, and exile.
Syllabus
1: James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain, 1953
2: Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar, 1963
3: Colm Toíbín, Brooklyn, 2009
Friday 2 May, Friday 6 June & Friday 4 July.
Please note that the ‘last date available to book’ date is only a guide. We reserve the right to close bookings earlier if courses are over- or under-subscribed. In order to avoid disappointment, please be sure enrol as soon as possible. Registrations will not be processed until the following day if received after 3pm.
Course Lecturer: Dr Shirley Jones
At Continuing Education, I currently run courses on contemporary women's writing, nineteenth-century writing, and the thematic strand, The Monthly Novel. Previously I have also taught courses on classic authors, such as Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, and Dorothy Wordsworth. My Ph.D was a study of the Victorian writer, Margaret Oliphant.
Outside of Continuing Education, I am a member of a writers' group and I run community writing workshops at the V G & M and the Lowlands centre in West Derby.
Courses fees: Full fee £70/Concession £35.
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