Urban Life Experience Book Discussion Series

  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...

  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 ...