Radical Reads: The Simple Art of Killing a Woman by Patrícia Melo

About this event

All Adults, College Students, Older Adults, Young Adults (Ages 20-34). Radical Reads is an online book club focusing on literature that critiques and challenges current feminist topics. Join us for a vibrant discussion of Patricia Melo's The Simple Art of Killing a Woman, in which a young lawyer attempts to escape her newly aggressive lover by accepting an assignment in the Amazonian border town of Cruzeiro do Sul. All book club titles are available in a multitude of ways. For more information on using our online books, please visit the BPL's Stream and Download page. About the Book: To escape her newly aggressive lover, a young lawyer accepts an assignment in the Amazonian border town of Cruzeiro do Sul. There, she meets Carla, a local prosecutor, and Marcos, the son of an indigenous woman, and learns about the rampant attacks on the region's women, which have grown so commonplace that the cases quickly fill her large notebook. What she finds in the jungle is not only persistent racism, patriarchy, and deforestation, but a deep longing for answers to her enigmatic past. Through the ritual use of ayahuasca, she meets a chorus of Icamiabas, warrior women bent on vengeance––and gradually, she recovers the details of her own mother's early death. "Melo grapples with that essential question: how to turn systemic horror from the sound of a car alarm no one hears into a piercing scream. Though at times, and only for a moment or two, the characters are mouthpieces for ideas, overall Melo has tried something radical here. She combines feverishly poetic language and the searching intelligence of the narrator with a near-endless accounting of horror. “When a woman dies,” Melo writes, “her story must be told and retold a thousand times.” Reading, I could not turn away." - Ariel Ramchandani, Southwest Review Accessibility Notice: We strive to make our events accessible. To request a disability accommodation and/or language services, contact the department listed in the "