Book Discussion May 16, 2026 Jackson, Ketanji Brown: Lovely One: a Memoir 2024 The title Lovely One is the English translation of Justice Jackson’s African name: Katanji Onyika. Justice Jackson is the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court. Her autobiography is a true autobiography, describing her grandparents, her parents, and she and her brothe r growing up. She goes into great detail about her school years on the Debate Team and the visits to her grandparents' house fo llowing church services on Sundays. She describes her college life at Harvard , her years in musical theatre and performance oration, and the many jobs in the legal profession . It also chronicles her family life as an adult with a husband and two children. Only five of us met this time, there seemed to be a lot of family obligations/celebrations going on this weekend, since it’s graduation season and class reunion season . One of our regular...
Thirteen of us met on Saturday, March 28 th to discuss Mia McKenzie’s These Heathens. This 2025 novel featur es a young girl from rural Georgia going to Atlanta to seek an abortion in 1960 . The point of view is the protagonist in 2020, looking back on the events of that weekend. Aside from the theme of abortion, the novel examines themes like classism among African Americans, non-violence vs. armed resistance, segregation vs. Integration, female caregivers, female leadership, the LGBTQ2+ community back in 1960 , and religion. The real-life characters in the book include Malcolm X, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Bayard Rustin, and others. Robin, who started off our discussion, was very surprised that there were armed Black men who were in the background guarding the non-violence leaning act ivist s. She had us turn to page 115 when a group of armed men explained...