2023 Book Club Events
January 10 | 7 – 8:30 p.m. | Register here
Overdue: Reckoning with the Public Library by Amanda Oliver
In Overdue: Reckoning with the Public Library Oliver highlights through her experience at this branch, Oliver highlights the national problems that have existed in libraries since they were founded, troublingly at odds with the common romanticization of the library as a shining beacon of equality: racism, segregation, and economic oppression. These fundamental American problems manifest today as police violence, the opioid epidemic, widespread inaccessibility of affordable housing, and a lack of mental health care nationwide—all of which come to a head in public library spaces.
March 7 | 7 – 8:30 p.m. | Register here
Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century by Alice Wong
In Disability Visibility contains original pieces by up-and-coming authors like Keah Brown and Haben Girma, to blog posts, manifestos, eulogies, Congressional testimonies, and beyond: This anthology gives a glimpse into the rich complexity of the disabled experience, highlighting the passions, talents, and everyday lives of this community. It invites listeners to question their own understandings. It celebrates and documents disability culture in the now. It looks to the future and the past with hope and love.
May 2 | 7 – 8:30 p.m. | Register here
A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door: The Dismantling of Public Education and the Future of School by Jennifer Berkshire
If America’s public schools don’t survive the COVID-19 pandemic, it won’t just be due to the virus. Opponents of public education have long sought to dismantle our system of free, universal, and taxpayer-funded schooling. But the present crisis has provided them with their best opportunity ever to realize that aim. Books like Jane Mayer’s Dark Money and Nancy MacLean’s Democracy in Chains sounded a clear warning about the influence that right-wing plutocrats increasingly exert over American politics. Now, A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door takes their analyses a step further, addressing an urgent question: Why is the right so fixated on dismantling public education in the United States?
July 11 | 7 – 8:30 p.m. | Register here
A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota by Sun Yung Shin
In A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota, sixteen of Minnesota’s best writers provide a range of perspectives on what it is like to live as a person of color in Minnesota. They give readers a splendid gift: the gift of touching another human being’s inner reality, behind masks and veils and politeness. They bring us generously into experiences that we must understand if we are to come together in real relationships.
September 5 | 7 – 8:30 p.m. | Register here
Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms by Maya Schenwar
In Prison by Any Other Name, activist journalists Maya Schenwar and Victoria Law reveal the way the kinder, gentler narrative of reform can obscure agendas of social control and challenge us to question the ways we replicate the status quo when pursuing change. A foreword by Michelle Alexander situates the book in the context of criminal justice reform conversations. Finally, the book offers a bolder vision for truly alternative justice practices.
November 7 | 7 – 8:30 p.m. | Register here
Spirit Car: Journey to a Dakota Past by Diane Wilson
Spirit Car is an exquisite counterpoint of memoir and carefully researched fiction, a remarkable narrative that ties modern Minnesotans to the trauma of the Dakota War. Wilson found her family’s love and humor—and she discovered just how deeply our identities are shaped by the forces of history.
