Urban Life Experience Book Discussion Series

The Urban Life Experience Book Discussion Series continued on Saturday Nov. 23, 2019. Nine of us met and all agreed that this was a hard book to digest. Even though we talked for nearly two hours, we didn't have time to comment on all of it. Laura said these "were such horror stories, there's an overall feeling of danger lurking." The eight stories collected in the book are: " The Rockpile " " The Outing " " The Man Child " " Previous Condition " " Sonny's Blues " " This Morning, This Evening, So Soon " " Come Out the Wilderness " " Going to Meet the Man " Most of the stories seem to end with no resolution at all. I think that we're used to stories having some kind of satisfying ending, which Baldwin does not give. The other thing is that when Baldwin used flashbacks, there wasn't really any transitional phrase to cue the reader that what's being describ

     The Urban Life Experience Book Discussion Series continued on Saturday Oct. 5th. Thirteen of us met here at the Wilson Library for a lively discussion of Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves . This collection of essays gathered by Glory Edim features a wide array of writers describing the works that gave them a glimpse of themselves through literature.      Shelara started out by saying that although she didn't see herself in the literature she read at school, her parents made it their purpose to buy books in which she was reflected.       Kay said that when she was growing up she didn't recognize that she wasn't seeing herself in the stories she read, she related, " When I was growing up I think I was colorblind. I was going to the library three or four times a week. I loved the Dick and Jane books and later the white teenage romances. For me it has to be a good story. Of course now, I buy books by Black authors in order to su

The book scheduled for our August 17 th discussion is Dreamer by Charles Johnson. It takes place in Chicago during the summer of 1966 and Dr. Martin Luther King is staying in a disgusting tenement apartment to underlie the argument for affordable decent housing. Riots are going on all around and Dr. King is questioning as to whether his position of non-violence will work in a northern city. The parts of the book that are in italics are the inner thoughts of Dr. King, the pages in plain type is the story. The narrator is Matthew Bishop, a college dropout who joined the Movement as a record-keeper/note-taker, who says about himself: “I knew I left no lasting impression people who met me once (and often two and three times). Most never remembered my name, I had no outstanding features, no “best side,” as they say, to hold in profile…a shy, bookish man who went to great lengths not to call unnecessary attention to himself…I was nobody.” Our discussion wasn’t well attended at

Book Cover: Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry  Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry  by Imani Perry Imani Perry being interviewed for PBS November 2018 1        Lorraine Hansberry was the first African American female author to have a play produced on Broadway. Her second play, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window was also staged on Broadway, but had a much shorter run. 2        The title of her play:   A Raisin in the Sun is taken from a Langston Hughes poem with the line:            “What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?”        Lorraine’s own family had moved into a white neighborhood in Chicago. The neighborhood had a “restrictive covenant.” Ta Nehesi Coates discussed these covenants in the book We Were Eight Years in Power. White angry mobs threw bricks into the Hansberry’s windows. Lorraine’s father, Carl Hansberry, took his case a

The Urban Life Experience Book Discussion continued today, Saturday, May 18, 2019 by discussing Defining Moments in Black History: Reading Between the Lies by Dick Gregory. There were nine of us on Saturday and two of the participants were first-timers. One participant brought her great-grandson who was a first grader and extremely cute. His presence provided us an opportunity to describe the contents of the book without using some of the words or mentioning some of the topics Mr. Gregory presented. Instead of restricting our conversation, this actually enhanced our conversation, forcing us to be creative in our tone and language.   This was Dick Gregory’s last book and in fact he had already passed away when the book came on the market.   We all agreed that this would be a great book for a young person who had no knowledge of African American History. The book details The Middle Passage, Nat Turner, Frederick Douglas, Harriet Tubman, Eli Whitney, The Dred Scott Decisi

On Saturday April 6, we discussed The Poet X  by Elizabeth Acevedo in honor of National Poetry Month. We took turns reading passages aloud during our discussion, experiencing the sounds of the poetry instead of just reading the works on paper. All of the excerpts of poems written below are the property of Elizabeth Acevedo.   The Poet X was written for Young Adults and has won the 2018 National Book Award. One of the themes in the book is how mothers are so fearful about what might happen to their daughters (at the hands of men) they want to place their daughters in a box and not let them breathe. Another theme is blatant sexual harassement of a 15 year old girl, sometimes by adult men. Xiomara (pronounced See-oh-MAH-ra) lives in the Dominican community in Harlem and although she hates the attention she gets from men because of her fully developed body, she yearns to know how it feels to kiss a boy. Last year we read another teen book written in prose:  Jason

     The Urban Life Experience Book Discussion Series met on Saturday Feb. 23, there were twelve of us. In keeping up our Black History Month theme we began last year by reading various biographies or works written by Langston Hughes, this year we chose Ida B. Wells as our subject.  We were to read any book written by Ida B. Wells or about Ida B. Wells. I have to say that the participants truly stepped up to the task. At least a couple people read two different books. Judy read To Keep the Waters Troubled and On Lynchings        Ida B. Wells is known as a prolific crusader against lynching through her journalism and public speaking. She also started women's' social clubs, rallying women to become politically involved and she was a suffragist. She was usually found "too radical" by the Civil Rights Crusaders of her time, but she did become a great friend to Frederick Douglass.         Connie TR began our meeting by passing around a copy of  Without San

On Saturday Jan. 19th the Urban Life Experience Book Discussion Series delved into Becoming by Michelle Obama. Eighteen people ended up in attendance, all in various stages of still reading, finished, or still listening to the audio-book. This is our all-time high for attendance!  Almost everyone at the table could relate to the topics Mrs. Obama wrote about such as having grandparents who were part of the Great Migration of Southern Blacks to the North, the abandonment of the inner cities, and of having parents and grandparents who ended up giving up on their dreams due to lack of educational opportunities and being shut out of trade unions.  Mary F. shared how her parents migrated to New Haven from Georgetown SC to look for a better life. They, like Michelle Obama's family witnessed their neighborhood's decline. Mary shared how she went away to college then came back to her old neighborhood to teach, really noticing the deterioration after being away.  Mart