After I spoke about what The Great Gatsby meant to me, the newest member of our book club announced that my entire career as an English teacher was not just wrong, but “harmful.”
She was a walking glossary of academic jargon in expensive shoes, a self-appointed cultural critic who saw our simple love of stories as a problem to be solved.
For six months, she had systematically dismantled our comfortable little group, turning every discussion into a trial where we were always found guilty of some thought crime. This attack was different; it wasn’t just condescending, it was a character assassination.
She made a critical error, however, assuming a retired teacher had forgotten how to do her homework.
What she didn’t know was that I’d already found her secret online crusade against ‘problematic’ literature, and my next book club selection would feature a banned novel, a special guest from the school board, and the public immolation of her two-faced ideology.
The First Cracks in the Bindings: A Comfort of Worn Spines
There’s a specific kind of peace that settles in a room full of books and old friends. It smells like paper, dust, and Brenda’s too-buttery scones. For five years, the first Tuesday of the month had been my sanctuary. My living room, with its sagging armchairs and rings on the coffee table from forgotten glasses of wine, was the designated temple. We were the Literary Ladies of Northwood—a name my husband, Mark, had coined with a loving eye-roll. It was just me, Brenda, and Sarah. Simple. Easy.
Then came Willow.
Brenda had met her at a yoga retreat and invited her in, all breathless praise about her “sharp, modern perspective.” Willow arrived six months ago like a weather front, all cool air and the promise of a storm. She was at least twenty years younger than the rest of us, with the kind of severe, asymmetrical haircut that suggested she had very strong opinions about architecture.
Tonight, we were discussing a gentle, character-driven novel. I’d just poured the last of a decent Malbec when Sarah, a timid librarian who usually needed coaxing, offered a thought. “I just found the mother’s quiet resilience so moving,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “It reminded me of my own grandmother.”
Willow, who had been scrolling through her phone, looked up. Her expression was one of pained tolerance. “I think what you’re responding to, Sarah, is the author’s reliance on the archetype of the long-suffering matriarch, which is a problematic trope rooted in patriarchal expectations of unpaid emotional labor.”
Sarah’s face fell. The air in the room changed, the comfortable warmth leaching away. Brenda shifted, forcing a bright smile. “Well, that’s one way to look at it! Who wants another scone?” The looming issue wasn’t the books anymore. It was the C-4 Willow strapped to every discussion, threatening to blow our peaceful sanctuary to bits.
The Deliberate Misunderstanding
Willow arrived late, as she often did, blaming a “decolonization workshop that ran over.” She swept into the room, bringing a gust of cold October air and the scent of expensive, organic perfume. She placed a bottle of cloudy, pale orange wine on the counter. “It’s a biodynamic pet-nat,” she announced to no one in particular. “I just can’t with all the sulfites in commercial wines.”
I smiled tightly, gesturing to the spread I’d laid out. “Help yourself to some cheese, Willow.”
She eyed the brie, the cheddar, the grapes. “It’s a bit of a dairy-forward selection, isn’t it? Have you ever explored a plant-based charcuterie? The cashew cheeses are texturally fascinating.”
It wasn’t a question; it was a judgment. I spent thirty years teaching high school English, navigating the fragile egos of teenagers and the bureaucratic nonsense of the administration. I thought I was immune to this kind of subtle condescension, but from Willow, it felt like a thousand tiny needles. She wasn’t just critiquing the cheese; she was critiquing my entire way of being.
She settled into my favorite armchair without asking, tucking her legs beneath her. She hadn’t touched the book until five minutes before the meeting, I’d bet my pension on it. She’d just skimmed a few academic think-pieces and was ready to deploy them like weapons. “So,” she began, her voice dripping with the authority of a PhD she didn’t have, “shall we deconstruct the inherent classism in the protagonist’s narrative arc?”
The Weight of a Word
Brenda, ever the peacemaker, tried to steer the conversation back to safer waters. “I just thought the descriptions of the countryside were so lovely,” she offered, her eyes pleading with me to back her up.
“They were beautiful,” I agreed, relieved. “The author really captured that feeling of a crisp autumn morning.”
Willow sighed, a theatrical, put-upon sound. “But we have to ask ourselves whose countryside is being described. This pastoral idealism is a common literary device used to erase the violent history of land acquisition and the labor of the marginalized peoples who actually worked that land. It’s an aesthetic of erasure.”
Sarah, who had been silent since her first comment was shot down, sank a little deeper into the couch cushions. Brenda’s smile was stretched so thin it was transparent. The joy of the discussion, the simple act of sharing our love for a story, was being systematically dismantled. Every observation was filtered through Willow’s rigid, unforgiving lens until all that was left was a pile of problematic dust.
I tried to push back, gently. “Or, perhaps, the author was just writing about a farm she remembered from her childhood. Sometimes a tree is just a tree.”
Willow gave me a look that was somewhere between pity and disdain. “With all due respect, Diane, that’s a very pre-Foucauldian reading of the text. Power structures are embedded in all narratives, whether the author is conscious of them or not. To ignore them is, in itself, a political act of complicity.” I had a Master’s degree in English Literature. I’d read Foucault. But in that moment, she made me feel like I’d never read a book in my life.
Echoes in an Empty Room
An hour later, Willow was gone, leaving her “biodynamic pet-nat” untouched on the counter. The three of us sat in the ensuing silence, the half-eaten cheese board between us a monument to a failed evening.
“Well,” Brenda said, her voice brittle. “That was… educational.”
Sarah finally spoke, her voice small. “I feel stupid. Every time I say something, she makes me feel like I’m a bad person for liking a book.”
“You’re not stupid, Sarah,” I said, my voice sharper than I intended. “You’re a thoughtful reader. She’s a bully who uses academic language as a club.” The anger I’d been swallowing all night was starting to burn in my throat. This little club was my retirement gift to myself. It was supposed to be about connection, about the magic of getting lost in a story together.
Brenda wrung her hands. “I know. I’m so sorry, Diane. I just thought she’d bring a different energy.”
“Oh, she brought a different energy, all right,” I muttered, starting to gather the plates. We sat for a while longer, talking about everything except the book. We talked about our kids, about the weird weather, about a new bakery downtown. We were trying to glue the pieces of our sanctuary back together, but we could all feel the cracks. Willow wasn’t just a guest anymore; she was an occupying force. And I had a sinking feeling she was just getting started.
The Souring of a Classic: The Pre-Reading Mandate
The email arrived on a Thursday morning. The subject line simply read: “Next Meeting Prep.” It was from Willow. My stomach tightened before I even opened it. The next meeting was at her apartment, and we were reading The Great Gatsby, a choice I had championed. It was a novel I’d taught for decades, one I loved for its melancholy beauty and its sharp critique of the American Dream.
Hi everyone, the email began, deceptively breezy.
So excited to host you all on Tuesday! To facilitate a more rigorous and productive discussion of Fitzgerald’s work, I’ve attached a few supplemental texts. There’s a fantastic essay on the homoerotic subtext between Nick and Gatsby, a Marxist critique of the commodity fetishism in the novel, and a paper on Daisy Buchanan as a proto-feminist figure trapped by cisheteronormative patriarchal structures. It would be great if everyone could read them beforehand so we can start the conversation on the same page.
Best, Willow
I stared at the screen, a low-grade hum of fury starting in my chest. This wasn’t a book club. It was a graduate-level seminar I hadn’t signed up for, taught by a professor of nothing. I forwarded the email to Mark with the note, “See what I have to deal with?” His reply came two minutes later: “Just drink the wine and think of England.” Easy for him to say. He didn’t have to spend three hours in a sterile apartment being lectured about cisheteronormative patriarchal structures. I deleted the email and its attachments without a second thought. I was going to talk about the book I read, not Willow’s assigned homework.
The Anesthetic of Minimalism
Willow lived in one of those new condo buildings downtown that looked like a stack of glass boxes. Her apartment was exactly as I’d pictured it: aggressively minimalist. The walls were white. The floor was polished concrete. The furniture was all sharp angles and muted colors—gray, beige, a slightly different gray. There were no photos, no clutter, not a single book in sight that wasn’t the current club selection, which sat alone on a stark black coffee table. It felt less like a home and more like a high-end dental office.
Brenda and Sarah arrived together, looking as uncomfortable as I felt. We huddled in the kitchen area, making small talk while Willow prepared artisanal tea in a complicated-looking glass contraption. “The water has to be at precisely 197 degrees Fahrenheit for this particular oolong,” she explained, her back to us. “Otherwise, you scorch the leaves and release too many tannins.”
I caught Brenda’s eye and gave her a look. Really? Brenda responded with a slight shake of her head that said, I know, I’m sorry, just smile and nod. The whole atmosphere was designed to be intimidating, to strip us of our comfortable familiarity and put us on her turf, where she made all the rules. The cheese board she’d prepared was, of course, entirely plant-based. The cashew cheese tasted like chalky disappointment.
Privilege and the Green Light
We settled onto the unforgiving sofa, the silence in the room as sterile as the decor. I decided to start, to try and inject some genuine warmth, some real human feeling into the conversation before Willow could suffocate it with theory.
“You know,” I began, holding my copy of the book, its cover soft with wear. “I first read this book when I was sixteen. I remember being so completely captivated by the last page, by that line about the green light and the boats against the current. It was the first time I understood that a book could be beautiful and desperately sad at the same time. It… it shaped me, as a reader and as a person. It felt like someone had put a secret, universal truth into words just for me.” I looked around, hoping to see a flicker of shared experience.
Willow, who had been observing me with an unreadable expression, let out a small, sharp scoff. It was barely audible, but it sliced through the room.
“Actually, Diane,” she said, her voice laced with a cold, academic certainty, “that reading is incredibly privileged and ignores the entire post-colonial discourse surrounding the text. Fitzgerald’s romanticism of wealth is built on a foundation of inherited capital and racial exclusion. The ‘universal truth’ you felt was the specific truth of a white, upwardly mobile class clinging to a decadent, dying dream.”
She leaned forward, her eyes glinting. “To focus on the ‘sad beauty’ is to be complicit in the text’s erasure of the marginalized voices it was written over. It’s frankly a bit disappointing that, as an educator, you’re still promoting such a dated and harmful interpretation.”
The words hung in the air, thick and poisonous. Disappointing. Harmful. She hadn’t just disagreed with my opinion; she had indicted my character, my career, my entire life experience. The blood drained from my face. Brenda stared at her hands. Sarah looked like she wanted the concrete floor to swallow her whole. The rage that had been simmering for months erupted inside me, a silent, white-hot supernova of humiliation and fury.
The Unspoken Verdict
I don’t remember the rest of the meeting. It was a blur of Willow’s voice, a monologue of jargon and condescension that no one dared to interrupt. I didn’t say another word. I just sat there, my knuckles white on the cover of my worn-out paperback, the book I had loved, the book she had turned into a weapon against me.
The drive home was silent. Mark was in the passenger seat, having picked me up so I could have a couple of glasses of wine—a futile hope, as it turned out. He glanced over at me, his brow furrowed with concern. “That bad, huh?”
“You have no idea,” I whispered, my voice hoarse.
“What did she say?”
I couldn’t repeat it. To say the words out loud would be to give them power all over again. It would be admitting that this smug, performative child had gotten under my skin, that she had made me feel old, and irrelevant, and stupid. “She just… she invalidated me. In front of everyone.”
He reached over and put a hand on my arm. “She’s just one person, Di. An unhappy one, from the sounds of it.”
I knew he was trying to help, but he didn’t understand. It wasn’t just about Willow. It was about the slow, creeping theft of something I loved. It was the feeling of being tried and convicted for a crime I didn’t even understand. As I pulled into our driveway, the engine cutting out and plunging us into darkness, I made a decision. I was done being the gracious victim. I was done being quiet. I was a teacher. It was time to teach Willow a lesson.
The Secret in the Comments Section: A Sour Aftertaste
The humiliation lingered for days, a sour taste at the back of my throat. Every time I looked at my bookshelf, I felt a pang of the shame Willow had so expertly inflicted. She had taken the thing I loved most—the sharing of stories—and twisted it into a public flogging. The book club group chat was silent, a digital graveyard of our former camaraderie. Brenda sent me a private text filled with apologies and heart emojis, which I appreciated but didn’t answer. I needed to let the anger cool, to let it harden into something useful.
I spent Wednesday afternoon weeding my garden with a vengeance, yanking out dandelions and crabgrass as if they were tiny avatars of Willow herself. Mark watched me from the kitchen window, wisely keeping his distance. He knew this mood. It was the same quiet fury I got when the school board cut the arts budget or when a student I’d fought for dropped out anyway. It was the anger of a woman who cared too much and was tired of seeing things ruined by ignorance or arrogance.
Was I the problem? The thought slithered into my mind, unwelcome and insidious. Was I just an old woman, a retired teacher stuck in my ways, unable to see the world through a “modern lens”? Was my love for classic literature just a comfortable blanket of privilege? I hated that she had planted that seed of doubt. I hated the power she had, the power to make me question my own mind. That, more than anything, was what I couldn’t forgive.
An Unwelcome Familiarity
That night, unable to sleep, I found myself doing what I always do when my brain won’t shut off: scrolling aimlessly through the internet. I was deep in the rabbit hole of our town’s local Facebook group, a place normally filled with posts about lost dogs and complaints about leaf blowers. But recently, a new, angrier topic had taken over: a debate about books being challenged in our high school library.
A thread with over two hundred comments caught my eye. The original post was a furious tirade from a parent about “inappropriate content” and “divisive concepts” being pushed on students. I sighed, my old teacher-heart aching for the beleaguered school librarian. I started reading the comments, a grim spectator to the usual culture war battlefield.
Then I saw a series of posts from a user named “Karen S.” Her profile picture was a generic stock photo of a sunset. Her comments were long, articulate, and vicious. She wrote about the need to protect children from “ideological agendas” and the “dangers of texts that promote social discord.” But it wasn’t just the sentiment that made me pause. It was the language.
She used phrases like “problematic narratives,” “hegemonic power structures,” and “the aesthetic of erasure.” She wielded academic terms like cudgels, shutting down anyone who disagreed with her. Her tone was smug, condescending, and utterly certain of its own moral and intellectual superiority. It was chillingly, sickeningly familiar. It was Willow’s voice.
The Digital Fingerprint
My heart started to pound, a slow, heavy drum against my ribs. It couldn’t be. It was too perfect, too bizarrely hypocritical. Willow, the champion of deconstruction and challenging norms, was secretly a book-banning crusader?
I clicked on “Karen S.”‘s profile. It was locked down tight, but she was a member of a public group: “Concerned Parents of Northwood.” I joined instantly. The group was a cesspool of moral panic, full of grainy screenshots of book pages taken out of context and angry manifestos about parental rights. I scrolled through months of posts, my stomach twisting with a mixture of disgust and morbid fascination.
“Karen S.” was a star in this group, a prolific and celebrated voice of righteous indignation. And then I found it. A post from three months ago. It was a photo of a stack of books she was demanding the library remove, with a long caption about protecting innocence. In the corner of the photo, reflected in the glossy cover of one of the books, was a distorted but unmistakable image: a slice of a white room, a gray sofa, and the corner of a severe, asymmetrical haircut.
And on the table next to the books, clear as day, was a bottle of cloudy, pale orange wine. A biodynamic pet-nat.
The air went out of my lungs. I had her. The sheer, breathtaking hypocrisy of it all was stunning. Willow, who publicly shamed me for a “harmful” reading of The Great Gatsby, was privately working to ban books by Black and LGBTQ+ authors from the school library. She wasn’t a progressive; she was a fraud. She used the language of the left to bully and dominate her social circle, and the language of the right to censor and control her community. The two projects weren’t contradictory; they were two sides of the same coin. Both were about power. Both were about her.
The Syllabus of Revenge
The anger was gone. In its place was a cold, clear certainty. The doubt she had planted in me withered and died, exposed to the light of her staggering duplicity. This wasn’t just about a personal grudge anymore. As a retired teacher, a lifelong defender of literature and the freedom to read, I had a duty to act. She had made the classroom a battlefield; I was going to bring the war to her.
I walked over to my desk and pulled out a notebook. The plan came to me fully formed, a perfect lesson plan of petty, life-ruining justice.
First, I needed to choose the next book. It had to be one of the most prominent titles on the “Concerned Parents of Northwood” hit list. The Hate U Give was a popular target. Perfect.
Second, the location. It had to be my house. My turf. My rules.
Third, and most importantly, I needed a witness. A special guest. I thought for a moment, then smiled. I knew exactly who to call. Elizabeth Vance, a sharp, no-nonsense woman I’d served on a PTA committee with years ago. A woman who was now a prominent and unapologetically liberal member of the Northwood School Board, and the one leading the charge against the book banners.
I picked up my phone, my fingers steady. The trap was designed. The bait was chosen. All I had to do was wait for the wolf in sheep’s clothing to walk right into it.
An Unscheduled Reading: A Timely and Important Invitation
My email to the book club went out the next day. It was a masterpiece of casual understatement.
Hello Ladies,
I’ll be hosting our next meeting on the first Tuesday of the month. After our last few discussions, I was inspired to choose something a bit more contemporary and topical. We’ll be reading “The Hate U Give” by Angie Thomas. I know it’s a bit of a departure, but I think it’s a timely and important read that will spark some fantastic conversation.
As a special treat, I’ve also invited a guest. My friend, Elizabeth Vance, is eager to join us. Some of you might know she serves on our local school board, and she’s very interested in hearing community perspectives on modern literature.
See you all then!
Best, Diane
I hit “send” and felt a jolt of pure, unadulterated satisfaction. I didn’t have to wait long for the reactions. Brenda replied almost immediately with a simple, “Sounds great!” Sarah sent a thumbs-up emoji.
Willow’s response came an hour later. Fascinating choice, Diane, she wrote. A bit YA for my taste, but I’m sure it will be an interesting exercise in analyzing the intersectionality of race and police brutality from a mainstream perspective. Looking forward to hearing what your school board friend has to say. The condescension was practically dripping off the screen. It was perfect. She had no idea she was RSVPing to her own immolation.
The Bait in the Living Room
The night of the meeting, my house felt like a stage set. I put out the good cheese—the stinkiest brie, the sharpest cheddar. I opened a bottle of bold Cabernet Sauvignon that Mark and I had been saving. I wanted the scene to be one of utter comfort and normalcy, a stark contrast to the surgical strike I was about to execute.
Brenda and Sarah arrived looking nervous, clutching their copies of the book like shields. “This is an intense one, Diane,” Brenda said in a low voice as she took off her coat.
“That’s why we need to talk about it,” I said calmly.
Elizabeth Vance arrived next. She was a tall, imposing woman with a warm smile and eyes that didn’t miss a thing. I’d given her a brief, edited-for-clarity rundown over the phone. I didn’t mention Willow by name, only that one of our members had some “very strong, surprising opinions” on the district’s library collection and I thought it would be “educational” for Elizabeth to hear them firsthand. Elizabeth, who had been fighting the “Concerned Parents” for months, understood immediately. “I’ll bring my notepad,” she’d said with a dry chuckle.
Finally, Willow swept in, five minutes late, of course. She was wearing an all-black ensemble that made her look like a chic cult leader. She greeted Elizabeth with a practiced, confident smile. “Willow, so nice to meet you,” she said, shaking her hand. “I’m a passionate advocate for community engagement with challenging texts.” The irony was so thick I could have cut it with a cheese knife.
The Unraveling Thread
We settled in the living room, a palpable tension in the air. I let Brenda and Sarah start. They spoke haltingly at first, but with real feeling, about how the book had angered and moved them, how it had opened their eyes to a perspective so different from their own. It was a good, honest book club discussion. The kind we used to have.
Elizabeth listened intently, nodding and asking thoughtful questions. Willow stayed quiet, biding her time, a predator waiting for the perfect moment to strike. I knew she couldn’t stand it, listening to a conversation she wasn’t controlling.
Finally, she saw her opening. “While I appreciate the emotional responses here,” she began, her voice cutting through the warmth of the discussion, “I think we need to be critical of what this book is actually doing. By centering the narrative on a single, palatable protagonist, it arguably simplifies a complex systemic issue for mainstream consumption. Furthermore, the language and situations, while perhaps ‘authentic,’ are deeply inappropriate for the adolescent audience it’s marketed to. It’s an emotionally manipulative text that promotes a divisive, anti-authority agenda.”
She leaned back, a smug little smile on her face. It was the same rhetoric from the Facebook group, polished up with a few academic buzzwords. Elizabeth’s expression remained neutral, but I saw her fingers tighten around her pen. This was it. The moment I’d been waiting for.
The Final Footnote
I let the silence hang in the air for a beat, letting her words sink in, letting everyone absorb the sheer audacity of her statement. Then I leaned forward, placing my wine glass carefully on the coffee table.
“That’s a fascinating point, Willow,” I said, my voice even and calm. The entire room turned to look at me. Willow’s smile widened, assuming I was capitulating.
“Or should I say,” I continued, my voice dropping just a little, “Karen S.’ from the ‘Concerned Parents of Northwood’ online forum?”
The smug smile vanished from Willow’s face. Her skin went pale, a sickly, chalky white. Brenda gasped. Sarah’s eyes were wide as dinner plates.
I didn’t raise my voice. I didn’t need to. I laid it out piece by piece, like a prosecutor giving a closing argument. “The comments about ‘divisive agendas.’ The crusade against ‘inappropriate content.’ The demand to have this very book, along with dozens of others, banned from our high school libraries. It’s a very different take from the woman who, just last month, told me my reading of Fitzgerald was dated and harmful because I wasn’t considering marginalized voices.”
I paused, looking directly at her, letting her feel the weight of every eye in the room. “My guest from the school board,” I said, gesturing to a stone-faced Elizabeth, “would love to hear your thoughts on literary censorship. Please, elaborate on how a book can be both a tool of dangerous indoctrination for teenagers and a simplistic, mainstream text for a book club. I’m sure we’d all find your ideological flexibility… educational.”
Willow opened and closed her mouth like a fish, but no sound came out. The carefully constructed persona of the progressive intellectual had shattered, revealing the bitter, censorious hypocrite underneath. In the devastating silence of my living room, surrounded by the books she purported to understand but only sought to control, she was finally, utterly, speechless. Justice, I thought, as I picked up my wine, is a dish best served in a room full of readers.
About the Author
