San Diego Feminist Book Group

We'll meet on zoom. The zoom link will be posted closer to event date. We'll chat for 15-20 minutes to start, then get into the book. Around 3:15, we'll vote for future books, so please bring suggestions. Captioning and/or ASL interpreting can be arranged by request.

This month, we'll discuss The Measure. From goodreads:
It seems like any other day. You wake up, pour a cup of coffee, and head out.

But today, when you open your front door, waiting for you is a small wooden box. This box holds your fate inside: the answer to the exact number of years you will live.

From suburban doorsteps to desert tents, every person on every continent receives the same box. In an instant, the world is thrust into a collective frenzy. Where did these boxes come from? What do they mean? Is there truth to what they promise?

As society comes together and pulls apart, everyone faces the same shocking choice: Do they wish to know how long they’ll live? And, if so, what will they do with that knowledge?

SDFBG currently costs the group moderator about $30/month to run, plus her time. It is free to attend, but if you would like to contribute monetarily, it would be appreciated. You can contribute directly through

Venmo: @Jessica-Cole-100

We'll meet on zoom. The zoom link will be posted closer to event date. We'll chat for 15-20 minutes to start, then get into the book. Around 3:15, we'll vote for future books, so please bring suggestions. Captioning and/or ASL interpreting can be arranged by request.

From goodreads:
In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched, and beautifully written narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.

Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people—including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball’s Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others—she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their outcasting of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.

SDFBG currently costs the group moderator about $30/month to run, plus her time. It is free to attend, but if you would like to contribute monetarily, it would be appreciated. You can contribute directly through

We'll meet on zoom. The zoom link will be posted closer to event date. We'll chat for 15-20 minutes to start, then get into the book. Around 3:15, we'll vote for future books, so please bring suggestions. Captioning and/or ASL interpreting can be arranged by request.

This month, we'll discuss The Soul of a Woman. From goodreads:
As a young woman coming of age in the late 1960s, she rode the first wave of feminism. Among a tribe of like-minded female journalists, she for the first time felt comfortable in her own skin, as they wrote "with a knife between their teeth" about women's issues. She has seen what has been accomplished by the movement in the course of her lifetime. And over the course of three passionate marriages, she has learned how to grow as a woman while having a partner, when to step away, and the rewards of embracing one's sexuality.

So what do women want? To be safe, to be valued, to live in peace, to have their own resources, to be connected, to have control over their bodies and lives, and above all, to be loved. On all these fronts, there is much work to be done, and this book, Allende hopes, will "light the torch of our daughters and granddaughters with mine. They will have to live for us, as we lived for our mothers, and carry on with the work still left to be finished."

SDFBG currently costs the group moderator about $30/month to run, plus her time. It is free to attend, but if you would like to contribute monetarily, it would be appreciated. You can contribute directly through

We'll meet on zoom. The zoom link will be posted closer to event date. We'll chat for 15-20 minutes to start, then get into the book. Around 3:15, we'll vote for future books, so please bring suggestions. Captioning and/or ASL interpreting can be arranged by request.
From goodreads: William Waters grew up in a house silenced by tragedy, where his parents could hardly bear to look at him, much less love him. So it’s a relief when his skill on the basketball court earns him a scholarship to college, far away from his childhood home. He soon meets Julia Padavano, a spirited and ambitious young woman who surprises William with her appreciation of his quiet steadiness. With Julia comes her family; she is inseparable from her three younger sisters: Sylvie, the dreamer, is happiest with her nose in a book and imagines a future different from the expected path of wife and mother; Cecelia, the family’s artist; and Emeline, who patiently takes care of all of them. Happily, the Padavanos fold Julia’s new boyfriend into their loving, chaotic household.
But then darkness from William’s past surfaces, jeopardizing not only Julia’s carefully orchestrated plans for their future, but the sisters’ unshakeable loyalty to one another. The result is a catastrophic family rift that changes their lives for generations. Will the loyalty that once rooted them be strong enough to draw them back together when it matters most?
Vibrating with tenderness, Hello Beautiful is a gorgeous, profoundly moving portrait of what’s possible when we choose to love someone not in spite of who they are, but because of it.

SDFBG currently costs the group moderator about $30/month to run, plus her time. It is free to attend, but if you would like to contribute monetarily, it would be appreciated. You can contribute directly through