Looking Forward to 2018!

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 by Ladee Hubbard sounds like a fun adventure.

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Don't Cry for Me by Daniel Black

The author, Dr. Daniel Black, said “ T his book is what most of us in many ways would hope that our parents would do one day. And that is to give us their hearts, share with us their story . This is the story of a man named Jacob Swinton who is on his death bed, and he is writing a series of letters. It’s the epistolary form . The l etters are to his estranged gay son named Isaac. The Urban Life Experience Book Discussion Series continued July 13 th , 2024 , where we discussed this amazing book. Before this meeting, the group listened to a YouTub e video of an interview with Dr. Black that had been recorded earlier this year. This video can be found by searching All CT Reads 2024 Dr. Daniel Black on Yo u Tube. Wendy started us out, saying, “ I listened to it on audiobook, and Dr. Black read it. I really liked that because it brought it to life. The downside was places where I thought he captured something about his own experience or love, and I wish I had it on a ...

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

Thirteen of us met on August 24 th to discuss James McBride’s acclaimed 2023 novel, The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store , winner of the 2023 Kirkus Prize for Fiction. McBride has said that his motivation for writing this book stems from his time working summers at a camp for differently abled children. He said the nugget for The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store was the story of Dodo and Monkey pants. Bonnie quickly interjected that the theme about the Blacks and the Jews is the one that jumped out at her more. Marian said she agreed with Bonnie here, especially since page one of the novel is about the interview the police had with Malachi about the mezuzah they found with the body at the bottom of the well. There was a lot of discussion about how the mezuzah ended up with the body. Robin offered that Moshe had made it as a gift for Malachi. Malachi refused it and insisted that Moshe give it to his wife Chona. Doc Roberts had snatched it from around Cho...

In the Upper Country by Kai Thomas 2023

Book Discussion of In the Upper Country by Kai Thomas Thirteen of us met on Saturday Oct. 5 th to discuss Kai Thomas’s In the Upper Country , his debut novel. The story begins with an elderly woman who has escaped slavey from the US, and is now in Canada, shoots a slavecatcher who has tracked her there. A much younger woman, a jou rnalist name Lensinda is assigned the task of interviewing the old woman, who is now in jail. When Lensinda asks the woman for her story, the woman responds by saying, “A tale for a tale.” Thus, Lensinda is required to tell a story to receive the old woman’s story. This starts a reciprocal arrangement of storytelling over the interviews. Kai Thomas, author Wendy started us out saying, “I have to say I loved listening to it, but I also think that if I had read it, I may have absorbed more. I thought the language was just exquisite . I also kept feeling that each story I would lose track of sometimes, bu t I stopped worryin...

Urban Life Experience Book Discussion Series

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