Urgent Museum Notice

Virtual

NMWA Book Club: Unwieldy Creatures

Event Details

Event Date and Time

Thu, Jun 15, 2023
6:00 to 8:00 pm ET

Tickets and Reservations

Free. Reservations required.

Location

Online

View of an aisle between two tall library bookshelves filled with multi-colored books. At the end of the aisle is a desk with a small orange footstool in front of it and a small bookshelf behind it.
Join author Addie Tsai, NMWA staff, and fellow readers for a deep dive into Tsai’s retelling of Mary Shelley’s classic tale.

Event Description

About the Event

Join us to explore Addie Tsai’s Unwieldy Creatures (2022), a biracial queer, nonbinary retelling of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Facilitated by literary maven Lisa Pegram, the author joins the discussion about the themes of the book in relation to fashion, art, and our own humanity.

The story follows three beings who navigate life from the margins. Plum is a queer biracial Chinese intern at one of the world’s top embryology labs, who runs away from home to be with her girlfriend, only to be left on her own. Dr. Frank is a queer biracial Indonesian scientist who compromises everything she claims to love in the name of science and ambition when she sets out to procreate without sperm or egg. Dr. Frank painstakingly creates a being that experiences complications at birth resulting from a cruel twist of revenge. Plum struggles to determine the limits of her own ambition when Dr. Frank offers her a chance to assist with her next project. How far will Plum go in the name of scientific advancement and what is she willing to risk?

About NMWA Book Club

This program is in partnership between the museum’s Women, Arts, and Social Change initiative and Betty Boyd Dettre Library and Research Center.

Register Today

Accessibility

Automated Captioning

This event will have automated speech-to-text transcription. The text will be displayed in the event video window, and attendees can turn captioning on or off throughout the program.

Accessibility Inquiries

If you are unable to register online or would like to indicate any accessibility services you require, please email accessibility@nmwa.org. Two weeks’ notice to request accessibility services is appreciated but not required. We will make every attempt to fulfill requests.