Urban Life Experience Book Discussion Series

  Ten of us in person plus two more over Zoom met on Saturday Oct. 30 to discuss Bluebird Bluebird by Attica Locke. Bluebird Bluebird is the initial book in Locke’s Highway 59 Series. The prologue opens with a woman, Geneva Sweet bringing food and music to the graves of her husband and her son. Chapter 1 then begins with the main character Darren Mathews a Black Texas Ranger who is giving testimony on behalf of his friend Rutherford McMillan aka Mack. A white supremacist named Ronnie Salvo constantly harassed and threatened Mack. . One night, when the harassment turned to confrontation on Mack’s property, Mack called Mathews to come out to the property. No violence occurred that night but a few days later, someone found Ronnie Salvo dead and Mathew’s friend Mack is the number one suspect. Mathews’ superiors suspended him for going out to the property outside of authority. While on suspension, he’s given a suspicious assignment to look into two homicides in a town called ...

  Book Discussion of Everywhere You Don’t Belong by Gabriel Bump   The Urban Life Experience Book Discussion Series continued on Sept. 18 th at the Wilson Library. Nine of us met in person, while two more people joined in via Zoom. This was one of our most contentious book discussions ever. The people who hated the book were so strong in their assessment that I think that the people who liked it were almost afraid to admit that they liked it. The characters may not be as fleshed out as they could have been and of course the plot is improbable but there were some really funny parts in the book. I understand that the author had studied playwriting, which makes sense because scenes and dialogue are the standout qualities. This book has also been optioned to become a television series.   The protagonist is Claude McKay Love, an average Black young man living on Chicago’s South Side with his grandmother and her friend Paul. Claude’s parents abandoned him when he was...

  The Urban Life Experience Book Discussion Series continued on Aug. 7, 2021 in a hybrid set-up! Six of us met in person at the Wilson Library, after sixteen months of only meeting virtually. Two of our book club members opted to meet over Zoom. The Branch Manager at Wilson graciously set us up with a big screen so that we could see and hear Nancy and Sarah clearly, and they could see us.   We discussed Everybody’s Son by Thrity Umrigar.   Nine-year-old Anton was left in a hot apartment with no air condition and no food for seven days during a heat wave in 1991. His mother only meant to stay out for a short while, but her drug dealer held her captive, forcing her to perform sexual acts as a way to pay off her drug debt. The police discovered Anton walking along the street all bloody from breaking out of the apartment’s first floor window. Anton’s mother had locked the door from the outside, for his protection.     A well-connected and powerful judge adopted...

  The Urban Life Experience Book Discussion Series continued on Saturday June 26 th with a lively unpacking of Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid.  Such a Fun Age begins when Emira Tucker is called away from a birthday party late one night to care for two-year-old Briar Chamberlain when the Chamberlains have a household emergency. Emira agrees to go get Briar and take her to a high-end supermarket to keep her distracted until the coast is clear for Briar to be returned home. Emira is dressed in provocative late-night weekend party clothes and she's had a couple of drinks.  The manager at the market sees 25-year-old Emira who is Black with the little blond toddler and accuses her of kidnapping Briar. Another bystander in the store films the incident. Emira called Briar’s dad, who comes in and immediately clears up the misunderstanding. Emira is extremely embarrassed and thinks that if she had a “real job” this would not have happened. The guy who did the filming is Kelley...

  Notes from Book Discussion May 22, 2021   The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother's Life in the Detroit Numbers    by Bridgett Davis 2019 17 of us met over Zoom.   I began the discussion with questions about redlining and predatory lending, especially since most of the people in this group had also participated in Cultural Academy II, where we discussed these kinds of issues in Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns .   Marion S. offered that because of the redlining, Fannie couldn’t get a loan from the bank; she had to borrow from somebody and ended up paying huge interest. Marian: Plus, she didn’t even get the deed to her house for like 14 years. Marsha: I was wondering what if that man had died? Would his wife honor that agreement? Did his wife even know about the agreement?   Shelara: That’s what Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote in his article about redlining and tied it in to reparations … that happens a lot, people had b...

 The Age of Phillis by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers  The Urban Life Experience Book Discussion Series continued on Saturday April 10, 2021 over Zoom. There were twelve us on the webinar, and one by one, almost everyone lamented: "I'm not a poetry person! I just never understand poetry!" We still managed to discuss the book for over an hour and near the end,  all those who complained at first, now said, "Oh, I understand it better when I hear people read it out loud."  Honoree Fanonne Jeffers spent fifteen years doing archival research on Phillis Wheatley Peters. She even traveled to and lived in Gambia (the country it is believed Phillis was born in.) Remember Phillis Wheatley Peters was already seven years old when she crossed the Atlantic and was auctioned to John and Susuannah Wheately in Boston.  Jezrie: I love this book I would probably get this in hard copy and encase it in glass, and have lights on it and stuff because it’s so pretty! I also watched the YouTub...