An online gathering of women debating books

A reading club for women

Ana-Maria Cononovici, 12.07.2022, 14:00

It all began in Iasi, north-eastern Romania, in 2020. It brought
together women from all walks of life, who gathered around books. And, since they
got together in a Spanish restaurant, they baptized their own gathering there
in Spanish, using a play-upon-words, Mujeres livres, with the play-upon-words using
libro and livro in Spanish and where mujeres stands for women, also in Spanish.
Free, book-loving women, in English. It is the name of a reading club for women.
Cezarina Caloian is an artist and an associate professor with the Graphic Arts
Section of the Iasi-based Fine Arts Faculty. She told us who exactly came up
with the idea for the reading club.

Cezarina Caloian:

The two founders, Arina Cosma and Florina Virna of Iasi
came up with the idea. The club made its debut in the winter of 2020. We had a
couple of physical meetings, then during the lockdown and for the first months of
the pandemic we had to cancel our meetings, then we went online, and we have ever
since stayed like that, we meet once in three weeks, and all women who would
like to do that can join in, since there also is an online community Florina
Varna has managed to organize very well. There’s 10 of us, or thereabouts, members
who have been participating constantly ever since the project took off, then
there are also people who join in once, maybe twice, or people who join in and remain
in the project.

Here is what another participant, Lavinia Popescu, told us about the
project of the reading club.

Lavinia Popescu:

It is a reading club proper, we get together to discuss
books as a book doesn’t end once you’ve finished reading all its pages, it has
a life of its own through the discussions it stirs and that is how you feel you
honor its author for all that they offered, you want to discuss what you felt, with
the others. It could be the pleasure of the text, the tenderness of the story
or the self-discovery experience you had. When you read a book, you feel you
are not alone. You feel you also want to share with the others what you felt,
and, especially, you want to find out from the others what they felt. That is exactly
the reason why this reading club was necessary. It is just as natural for us to
feel inclined to be part of a community capable of providing a secure space, a
space where you can express yourself and, especially, a space you can be part
of. That is exactly why we have this group of women, which is a support group
and, every time we meet, we really get our kicks out of listening to each other.

Lavinia Popescu recalled the first meetings of the club, and how the
meetings progressed.

For the first meeting we had, I think we were about
20 people who were happy to be together, it was a surprise for every one of us,
and then the pandemic broke out. During the pandemic, the reading club kept us
company, it provided survival resources for all of us. Through reading, we discovered
how humankind survived and, for us, that only buttressed a strong pillar of the
confidence whereby that was something we were going to get it over with,
completely. Together, we have read the stories of deportation and survival in
the Siberian Gulag, through the book titled Zuleikha, open your eyes (a
novel authored by Russian writer Guzel Yakhina). We saw how people lived with
the bombs swooshing over their heads, through the books of Khaled Hosseini (and
Afghan-American writer, born in 1965). We learned about acceptance from the Winters
of the Soul, by Katherine May, The 40 Rules of Love gave us comfort
through the Sufi wisdom ( The 40 Rules of Love, a book authored by Elif Shafak). When I look at the
shelf with the books we read at the club, I can only be grateful for the
journey I took together with the community we have created and I want us to be
able to enlarge the community, so that as many women as possible can draw their
inspiration from there, for their daily lives.

Cezarina Caloian:

We read all sorts of books, from Elif Shafak,
Hosseini Khaled, Maria Duena, Zafon (n.r. Carlos Ruiz Zafón). We read Vargas
Llosa as well as Romanian authors, Laura Ionescu, with her book I Can’t Find
You Anywhere, actually we had her as a guest in one of our online meetings. And the titles we chose are somehow from
various cultural spaces, from various types of literature. At the end of a meeting,
we decide upon the book for our following meeting. Every participant reads the
book, makes notes, highlights certain interesting aspects and for the online
discussion, moderated by one of the founders of the club, Gearina Cosma, the discussion actually revolves around various
interesting aspects, characters, episodes in the book, we share our own
opinion, polemic discussions are also generated. What’s also interesting is the
fact that joining the club are women from various walks of life, women with
different backgrounds. We’re physicians, psychiatrists, therapists, psychologists,
we’re people activating in healthcare, artists, IT specialists, students, and
then everyone of us comes up with an original interpretation of the text, for
our discussion. And for me, that’s exactly where the beauty of our meeting lies.

Lavinia Popescu told us the choice of the books was made democratically,
through voting, and that one of the greatest joys was for every participant to
share the impressions they got, in connection with this or that book.

It’s not just the sheer pleasure of
reading, it is also a means of self-knowledge through reading. And then we feel
happy to have the opinion of someone who is a philologist, for instance, the
opinion of a psychologist, what the opinion was of somebody else, no matter what
their background was. We collect ideas, we jot them down, or we don’t, that
helps each and every one of us. In general, we’re a nucleus made of seven
people who gather every time, but there are also other people joining in, for each
and every online meeting. We’re open to anyone who wants to participate in our meetings.
The fact that we have them online
and not only physically, that is also a good point. Oftentimes we intend to meet
physically, but the fact that we’re going online helps other people join us, people
from other cities.

Therefore, if you feel the need to meet women
who are passionate about books, you can join in for the Mujeres Livres online
meetings by posting a message on the club’s Facebook page.

(EN)