“Let’s Talk About It” book series discusses family feuds

The Let’s Talk About It, Oklahoma book discussion series will resume in January, with a new theme shaped around family drama.

The first meeting of the new year will take place at 7 p.m. on Jan. 13 in Walker Center room 151.

This season’s theme is “The Dynamics of Dysfunction: To Laugh or Cry or Both.” Harbour Winn, director of the Center for Interpersonal Studies through Film and Literature, said that the books featured will focus on dysfunctional family relationships.

“Many great works of literature since time immemorial have explored issues of relationship problems within the family unit,” Winn said in a recent press release. “Look no further than the tortured families of Joseph with that colorful coat or Noah after the flood in the Old Testament. William Shakespeare, too, penned dramas featuring some rather unbalanced families.”

The first novel in the series is Joe, by Larry Brown. This novel is set in the South and features a deeply dysfunctional family that recall the Joads, from Steinbeck’s immortal Grapes of Wrath. Gary Jones looks to find a substitute father figure in Joe, who takes the teenager under his wing and tries to help the boy’s homeless, wandering family.

The series will feature five discussions, in which a humanities scholar will make a presentation on the book in the context of the theme. Small group discussions will follow the talk. At the end of the event, everyone will come together again for a brief wrap up.

The rest of the series features an eclectic mix of classics and new works centered around the dynamic theme:

For more information, contact Harbour Winn at 405-208-5472 or by email at hwinn@okcu.edu.