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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Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision by Barbara Ransby, 2003

Nine of us met on Saturday March 16 th to discuss Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement by Barbara Ransby, published in 2003. Although born 1903 in Norfolk, Virginia, Ella Baker was predominantly reared in Littleton, North Carolina. Her Civil Rights and Human Rights career spanned over five decades, some of her work took place in New York and some took place in the South. Some of the groups she worked with are YNC L Young Negroes’ Cooperative League WEP Worker s’ Education Project NAACP National Association for the Advancement of Colored People SCLC Southern Christian Leadership Conference M FDP Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party SCEF Southern Christian Education Fund SNCC Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee She established her place in these movements as a behind the scenes organizer and never sought leadership positions. Her philosophy abou...

Cornelius Eady: Brutal Imagination 2001

Eady , Cornelius: Brutal Imagination: Poems   Although this book is only slightly over 100 pages, the impact is huge. There are two cycles of poems, the first is from the point of view of a phantom young Black man who Susan Smith claimed kidnapped her two children, after she had actually drowned her children. The second cycle, called The Running Man Poems deals with a character based on reality, but whose legend is bigger than the person. Brutal Imagination was a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry in 2001 , and both cycles of poetry have been adapted into theater productions , led by Jazz composer Deidre Murray. In fact, Cornelius Eady, himself, leads a jazz trio, in addition to being a poet. This book is his seventh published collection. Cornelius Eady Trio Twelve of us met on Saturday, April 27 th for our book discussion. As we usually do for National Poetry Month, we took turns reading the poems aloud....

The Final Revival of Opal and Nev by Dawnie Walton

The Final Revival of Opal and Nev is a fictional oral history of the interracial 1970s rock duo Opal Jewell and Nev Charles. The journalist S. Sunny Shelton (nee SarahLena Curtis) is now editor of the music magazine Aural . Sunny proposes a book- length feature about Opal and Nev because there’s a rumor of an upcoming reunion tour. Sunny has her own reasons for wanting to write this story. The book begins with her note: Disclosure: My father, a drummer named Jimmy Curtis, fell in love with Opal Jewell in the summer of 1970. For the duration of their affair, he was married to my mother, who in ’71 got pregnant with me. Before my birth…he was beaten to death by a racist gang during the riot at the Rivington Showcase. And before my mother could bury his broken body, his mistress blazed to stardom. In continuing the Urban Life Experience Book Discussion Series, six of us met on Saturday Oct. 22 to discuss this incredible book. The way that the fictional duo fit int...

Urban Life Experience Book Discussion Series

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