This weekend marks a year since Hurricane Helene poured into our mountains, creating both big C catastrophe and small C communism. To grapple with what we'd experienced, we created a Disaster Reading Group, initially focused on exploring Rebecca Solnit's "A Paradise Built In Hell." It was a wildly successful space, filling our bookstore to capacity for biweekly discussions. The group became a container for friendships forged in the chaos of last September alongside new relationships premised on a shared desire to process the worst, and hold onto the best, of the storm days.
Like other containers created for folks to find one another post-Helene, the reading group served as a launch pad for a multitude of organically organized activities, spaces, and dreams. In the new year, as we slipped from infrastructural crisis into political crisis, our group developed into a place to process the horror of watching fascism reassert itself within the US American body writ large, an anti-solidarity antithesis of what we'd co-created as storm survivors.
We know that Helene will continue to fall further behind us, with new storms looming. And while what we experienced will stay with us forever, it's time to wind down this particular space that was created for our grief and joy as survivors. The final reading cycle will, appropriately enough, return us to Helene and our own stories.
Whether or not you've attended in the past, you're invited to join on Monday, Oct 6th to discuss "Appalachia the Catastrophe," the final issue of the incredible Mergoat Magazine. Copies can be found at our shop or purchased through our website with a 10% discount using promo code BEHOLDEN. We'll be splitting the publication—replete with photos, poetry, art, and essays—into two sessions followed by a final potluck to send us off into the next adventure, no doubt full of both terror and unanticipated possibilities. We hope you can join us!
#HurricaneHelene #AshevilleStrong #MutualAidDisasterRelief #FeministBookstore (- L)
