Book Club Selections #WeNeedDiverseBooks #BookClub #SundaySalon
Happy Sunday! Sunday Salon is hosted by Deb at ReaderBuzz. Check out her post and the links to see what other bloggers have been up to in the last week.
This week, for Sunday Salon, I’m sharing the books that we considered on Thursday night during the annual book club selection meeting for the Community for Understanding and Hope Book Group.
Our group has been meeting since the summer of 2008 and we have read 160 books together, mostly about race in America. Our most recent book was James by Percival Everett. Our very first book was A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can’t Win by Shelby Steele.
These are the books that we’ll read in the coming year.
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism by Eve L. Ewing
Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America by Michael Harriot
Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler
Forest of Noise: Poems by Mosab Abu Toha and Rifqa by Mohammed El-Kurd (two books of poetry — that is new for us!)
We Are Not Like Them by Christine Pride and Jo Piazza
The Heaven and Earth Grocery Story by James McBride
The Black Angels: The Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis by Maria Smilios
Great Expectations by Vinson Cunningham
Here were the other books we considered:
Strangers in the Land: Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America by Michael Luo
Black-Owned: The Revolutionary Life of the Black Bookstore by Char Adams
The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer
The Tiny Things Are Heavier by Esther Ifesinachi Okonkwo
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass
Lula Dean’s Little Library of Banned Books by Kirsten Miller
Framed by Jim McCloskey and John Grisham
First Gen: A Memoir by Alejandra Campoverdi
American Whitelash: A Changing Nation and the Cost of Progress by Wesley Lowery
Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
A Thousand Ways to Die: The True Cost of Black Life in America by Trymaine Lee
Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock’s Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout by Laura Jane Grace
Wild Faith: How the Christian Right Is Taking Over America by Talia Lavin
Yellowface by R.F. Kuang
I have made many of these posts over the years. For more lists of books, check out these posts:
I’ll start now collecting titles to consider next year. Let me know of any books that you think my book club would like.



