Strong Black Woman Trope — A Three-Session Reading Group

A three-session structured reading group for African and African-diaspora women doing the work of deconstructing the strong-Black-woman trope in their own lives. The group reads Brittney Cooper's Eloquent Rage, Tressie McMillan Cottom's Thick, and selected chapters from bell hooks's Sisters of the Yam across three monthly sessions.

The reading group structure is three monthly 90-minute sessions. Each session covers one book and follows a consistent structure. The first 30 minutes is framing: a member-facilitator introduces the specific chapters and themes for the session and surfaces three or four discussion questions. The next 45 minutes is small-group conversation in breakout rooms of approximately six members each. The final 15 minutes is whole-group sharing of themes and a preview of the next session's reading.

The reading group is led by rotating member-facilitators drawn from the Strong Black Woman Trope Deconstruction network membership. The facilitator rotation provides varied vantage points across the three books and the three sessions.

Who this is for: African and African-diaspora women engaged in the active work of deconstructing the strong-Black-woman trope in their own lives. Members of the Strong Black Woman Trope Deconstruction network are particularly welcome; non-members curious about the network's broader work are also welcome. The reading group expects attendees to have completed the readings before each session; attendees who have not completed the reading will not be able to engage productively with the discussion format.

What attendees will leave with: a three-session structured reading engagement with foundational scholarship on the strong-Black-woman trope. Specific connections with breakout-group partners that may continue across the year. Continuing access to the Strong Black Woman Trope Deconstruction network for ongoing engagement with the broader work.

Logistics: virtual via the platform's event infrastructure across three consecutive monthly sessions. Three 90-minute sessions. Capacity 60 per cohort to preserve the depth of the breakout-group structure; registered count tracked at the platform-event-detail level.

Pre-cohort prep: registered attendees receive the reading list and access details two weeks before the first session. Completion of each session's reading is required for productive participation in the discussion format.

Post-cohort continuation: the cohort thread within the Strong Black Woman Trope Deconstruction network remains active across the year following the reading group.

Cost: sliding-scale ticket across the three-session cohort. The pricing supports the platform's broader Strong Black Woman Trope Deconstruction network infrastructure. Scholarships available; the request is at the bottom of the registration form.

This reading group has run multiple times across the platform's events program. Attendees from prior cohorts have reported specific outcomes that justify the format: deepened engagement with the foundational scholarship, durable connections with breakout partners, and ongoing engagement with the network across the long arc of the broader trope-deconstruction work.

The platform's broader Strong Black Woman Trope Deconstruction network infrastructure supports this reading group series. Additional reading-group cohorts run twice per year on the same foundational reading list, and a subsequent advanced reading group covers more recent scholarship and primary-research literature for cohort members who have completed the foundational reading group.

The trope-deconstruction work has been advanced through the foundational scholarship of Brittney Cooper, Tressie McMillan Cottom, and bell hooks among others. The structured reading group brings that scholarship into structured engagement with the cohort of women doing the deconstruction work in their own lives, in a way that individual reading alone does not produce.

Registration opens six weeks before the first session to support the pre-cohort reading preparation and typically reaches capacity within three weeks. Cancellation up to two weeks before the first session refunds the ticket cost minus the platform's standard processing-fee deduction; later cancellation transfers the registration to a subsequent reading group cohort.

Accessibility provisions include live captioning of all three sessions, recorded captions on the post-session recordings, scheduled-pause-points in the discussion segments, accommodations for attendees with varying reading capacities through provision of audiobook versions of the readings where available, and ASL interpretation available on request submitted at least two weeks before the first session.

The reading group format has evolved across multiple iterations. The early iterations covered a single book across the three sessions; attendee feedback consistently surfaced the value of engaging multiple books to permit broader engagement with the scholarship, leading to the current three-book structure.

The reading group is one component of the platform's broader Strong Black Woman Trope Deconstruction network infrastructure. Adjacent programming includes the network's discussion threads, the monthly virtual sessions, the smaller working-pod structures for members in active deconstruction work, the annual in-person retreat, and individual mentor sessions with senior network members including Brittney Cooper, Tressie McMillan Cottom, and other senior scholars whose work is part of the foundational reading list.

The reading group series has produced sustained engagement with the foundational scholarship across multiple cohorts. Many alumna of the reading group continue into the broader Strong Black Woman Trope Deconstruction network as sustained members and into the smaller working-pod structures for ongoing deconstruction work. The reading group is a primary on-ramp to the broader network membership.

The platform's event registration confirmation includes calendar invitations for all three sessions, the platform's video-conferencing access details, the reading list with full-text or publication-link access, and the cohort-thread access details. The platform's broader confidentiality framework applies to all discussion within the reading group sessions. Specific personal-context content shared during the breakout-group segments does not leave the room.

The reading group's three-book structure is one of several reading-group configurations that the Strong Black Woman Trope Deconstruction network offers across the year. Adjacent reading groups cover additional foundational scholarship including bell hooks's Sisters of the Yam and Salvation, the clinical-psychology literature on cultural barriers to mental health care, and the contemporary writing of Black women clinicians and theorists on the specific trope-deconstruction work.

Members who complete the foundational reading group are invited to participate in the advanced reading group, which covers more recent primary-research literature and the contemporary movement-organization work that builds on the foundational scholarship. The advanced group has stricter pre-reading expectations and assumes the foundational reading work has been completed.