The Intersection of 'Community' within the Reading Experience: Lesbian Women's Reflections on the Book as Text and Object

Abstract

Using the qualitative methods of interviewing and narrative gathering, this research examines ideas of socially interconnected reading practices and focuses on meanings of community in the lives of adult lesbian women who read for pleasure. It is argued that reading is a useful means to understanding ‘information’ and the everyday lives of readers.En utilisant les méthodes qualitatives de l’entrevue et de la collecte narrative, cette recherche examine les idées des pratiques de lecture socialement interconnectées et converge sur la signification de la communauté dans la vie des femmes lesbiennes adultes qui lisent pour leur loisir. On soutient que la lecture est un moyen utile pour comprendre « l’information » et la vie quotidienne des lecteurs. ***Student to CAIS/ACSI Award Winner***

“Pure Delight and Professional Development”: The Reading Practices and Library Use of an Active Poetry Community / « Pures délices » et développement professionnel : Les pratiques de lecture d’une communauté active de poésie et la fréquentation de la bibliothèque

“…Pecoskie (2012) developed the concept of the "grafted space" in which readers push against the limits of personal and communal identities-a concept that has value for our study as we sought to understand the interplay between professional and personal reading stances of poetry readers. Together with earlier findings by McKechnie, Ross, and Rothbauer (2007), Pecoskie's (2005) analysis of the book-as-object to support identity informed some of our thinking about the possibilities for personal collections of poetry for our respondents. Research by Cedeira Serantes (2012) and Howard and Ziolkowska (2010) supports a fine-grained approach to the readership of comics and graphic novels-although these are very different fields of production than poetry, like poetry they are specialized literary forms.…”