Urban Life Experience Book Discussion Series

We are reading They Can’t Kill Us All for discussion on Jan. 6, 2018.  We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates is our book to read for Black History Month! It’s a bestseller and getting a lot of praise.   Sing Unburied Sing by Jesmyn Ward, is the winner of the National Book Award for fiction. It’s 304 pages long.  We should read this! Toni Morrison’s book, The Origin of Others is very short. Combining it with one of her novels seems like a good idea. Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric has been chosen for the Big Read of 2018. It ‘s a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry. Because it’s short (and it’s a poetry book) I was thinking we’d read it with another book of verse: Jason Reynold’s Long Way Down. The Floating World is a novel about Hurricane Katrina and Jane Crow is a biography of Pauli Murray. It may be too long (512 pages!) The Talented Ribkins...

Lowery’s work is set to gain even more attention because his book  They Can’t Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America’s Racial Justice  Movement  is now in development to be turned into a series on AMC. This is according to Monica Judge, writer of The Root. While Lowery was working on his story in Ferguson, he himself was harassed and arrested. He told his colleagues at the Washington Post:  "Multiple officers grabbed me. I tried to turn my back to them to assist them in arresting me. I dropped the things from my hands. “My hands are behind my back,” I said. “I’m not resisting. I’m not resisting.” At which point one officer said: “You’re resisting. Stop resisting.” That was when I was most afraid — more afraid than of the tear gas and rubber bullets. As they took me into custody, the officers slammed me into a soda machine, at one point setting off the Coke dispenser. They put plastic cuffs on me, then they led me out the door." ...

Urban Life Experience Book Discussion Series  The Urban Life Experience Book Discussion Series is not necessarily about urban themes or urban people (although often this is the case,) but is named "urban" because the Wilson Library is an urban library and many of us live in urban locations. For clarity, the books we read are not urban literature or "street lit." Most of the books we choose are non-fiction, although we have read two novels: Ben Winter's Underground Airlines and Paul Beatty's The Sellout. We normally choose books that have to do with African American History and Social Justice Issues. Many of our sons, grandsons, nephews, and friends have fallen through the cracks of the education system or have had experiences with over-zealous police officers. Many of us have friends or family members who have had experiences in the criminal justice system. All of us, as citizens have a stake in the political atmosphere in our country. The overr...