Urban Life Experience Book Discussion Series

 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...

  The Urban Life Experience Book Discsussion Series continued on Jan. 9, 2021, with our first book discussion of the new year. The book, Homegoing , was published in 2016. Of course we met over Zoom.  There were actually 19 of us this time, one of the all-time highest number of participants. The book follows the generations of two sisters (unknown to each other), one stays in Africa and marries a British soldier, the other is enslaved and brought to what is now the US.   As the book moves down generations, the characters only refer to stories about their grandparents as though they're fables. The novel spans a great deal of time but each chapter is somewhat a short story in itself.  That's why the novel moves fast, covering a great span of time as a whole but focusing on individuals during  their  time. I had to keep going back to the family chart at the beginning in order to keep everyone straight. One of our readers, Marion S., pointed out that we have th...

  The Urban Life Experience Book Discussion Series resumed on Saturday Dec. 5th. There were 13 of us on the session. This book: Stamped: Racism, Antiracism and You , is a YA version of an Ibram X. Kendi book called Stamped From the Beginning . This time, Jason Reynolds used the material from  Ibram X. Kendi's book to present a book that's more readable for teens. One of our members, Laura, shared that she had never read YA (Young Adult) before and she was unfamiliar with some of the words and phrases that mostly young people use. She called this a generation gap.  I found out so many facts in this book and asked the group if there were things they didn't know which were revealed in this book as well. Barbara shared with us that she didn't realize that one of the main reasons the colonies revolted against England was so that they could keep slavery. This is a good place to re-emphasize that this YA edition is a scaled-down version of the original. Whereas Stamped From ...

  The Urban Life Experience Book Discussion Series continued on Saturday Oct. 17th. Eleven of us met over Zoom. This amazing book begins in 1830 when 11 year-old George Washington Black is a field slave on a sugar plantation called Faith in Barbados. His caretaker, a field slave herself, is the indomitable Big Kit. One night he and Big Kit are called upon to serve dinner at the master's house, something highly unlikely, since field slaves never go into the Master's House.  While serving this dinner, the master's brother Christopher examines "Wash" and decides he's just the right size to assist him on his "cloud-cutter," a kind of hot air balloon and implores his brother to let the child become his assistant. Christopher tells Wash to call him "Titch," and encourages him to read, to draw, and to find various plants and animals for study. But he's also a servant. Titch likes to act the part of the great abolitionist but it's questiona...

  Brother by David Chariandy  Book Discussion of Brother by David Chariandy   The Urban Life Experience Book Discussion Series continued on Saturday September 12. Thirteen of us met over Zoom to discuss Brother by Canadian author David Chariandy.  We all were struck so much with the poetic and multi-sensory language of the book, while telling a story that’s so heartbreaking. Two brothers, Michael and Francis are growing up in a housing complex with their single mom in Toronto. It’s implied that their father still lives in the same city but has nothing to do with them. The mother regularly strings together three jobs just so they can have groceries. Their mom is a Trinidadian immigrant who warns her sons repeatedly to take advantage of education and not become “hardened” so that they can be able to have a better life.   Michael is in love with a girl from his school named Aisha who is extremely smart. She actually wins a  university scholarship. But ...

The Urban Life Experience Book Discussion Series continued with Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower , a science fiction novel written in 1993. The setting for the novel begins in 2014 when the main character, Lauren Olemina is only 15 years old. She and her family live in a walled community surrounded by horrors going on right outside of her neighborhood that eventually spill in.   Although Lauren’s dad is a Baptist minister, Lauren creates a religion called Earthseed that becomes her guiding principal. She wrote a Bible called Earthseed: The Books of the Living. All that you touch You Change All that you Change Changes you. The Only Lasting Truth is Change. God Is Change. When forced to travel by foot from Southern California to Northern California, Lauren becomes a leader of a small group traveling with her. She also suffers a condition called “hyperempathy” which makes her feel the physical pain of others. All of us in our discus...