Ladies Who Lit & Friends: Exhibition Tour + Discussion of THE TURNER HOUSE

Ladies Who Lit's August book selection is The Turner House by Angela Flournoy. Flournoy’s debut novel was a 2015 National Book Award finalist, and her second novel, The Wilderness, is being released by Mariner Books this September (we cannot wait, by the way!)

The Turner House is a beautiful rumination on emotional inheritance, and a thorough portrait of an evolving place—specifically, Detroit’s East Side—as seen through the lens of one big, multi-generational family.

We'll be discussing the novel at Joy Machine within the context of the gallery's latest joint exhibition of ceramic and mixed-media works by Chicago artists Haylie and Sydnie Jimenez, on view August 9 to September 20, 2025.

The Turner House is a portrait of adult siblings in various states of transition (13 of them, to be exact), a familial tale offering an immediately obvious thread between the novel and the two twin sister artists behind Speak of the Devil. Aside from being a fantastic exhibition title, "speak of the devil" is a common phrase uttered when someone being talking about suddenly appears, seemingly out of nowhere. To that end, we meet the eldest Turner sibling, Cha Cha, in the third act of a lifelong hunt for the haint (i.e. ghost) who has haunted him since childhood. To take this idiom even further, consider Joy Machine's own interpretation in the gallery's exhibition didactice: "An expression of endearment and surprise, 'speak of the devil' is about manifesting what one desires," which is really what we see the Turner family working through in this novel, as well. Expressing individual desires, needs, hopes, dreams, etc. is never easy, and it's especially difficult with people who have know you your whole life, and therefore think they know you the best, have differing expectations.

Join Ladies Who Lit, Early Work, Joy Machine and the Jimenezes for an evening exploring additional unexpected and exciting connections between this work of fiction and visual art on view in Chicago right now.

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Host or Publisher Kaylen Ralph