What we’re about
Welcome fellow Readers! This is an African-American book club in Denver for Black people to discuss issues of race in America regarding African-Americans, Black Americans, and the Black diaspora worldwide. This is an inclusive and progressive group and all Black people are welcome to join. The main purpose of the group is to foster community in Denver amongst the Black diaspora. This group reads and discusses books by Black authors and based on the comfort level of members in the group, we choose whether to conduct meetings virtually or in person, possibly at a Denver library, coffee shop, or other decided upon venue.
Upcoming events (3)
See all- Let's Select Our Next Book! Book Club Poll (Please Vote!) - Not an Event/MeetingNeeds location
Hello Book Club People! Our next book is a Non-Fiction title that we'll discuss during our Juneteenth celebration (in another Meetup event Post)!! This book club alternates between fiction and nonfiction books. We will be choosing between the following 7 titles (these were randomly selected from our book club list):
Poll: https://strawpoll.com/xVg717ADeyr
Poll closes on June 5th at 5pm MDT!!
They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us - In essays that have been published by the New York Times, MTV, and Pitchfork, among others--along with original, previously unreleased essays--Abdurraqib uses music and culture as a lens through which to view our world, so that we might better understand ourselves, and in so doing proves himself a bellwether for our times.
Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds - Inspired by Octavia Butler’s explorations of our human relationship to change, Emergent Strategy is radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help designed to shape the futures we want to live. Change is constant. The world is in a continual state of flux. It is a stream of ever-mutating, emergent patterns. Rather than steel ourselves against such change, this book invites us to feel, map, assess, and learn from the swirling patterns around us in order to better understand and influence them as they happen. This is a resolutely materialist “spirituality” based equally on science and science fiction, a visionary incantation to transform that which ultimately transforms us.
Born a Crime - Trevor Noah shares his remarkable story of growing up in South Africa with a black South African mother and a white European father at a time when it was against the law for a mixed-race child to exist. But he did exist--and from the beginning, the often-misbehaved Trevor used his keen smarts and humor to navigate a harsh life under a racist government.
Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"--the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different? His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing.
We Are Each Other's Harvest: Celebrating African American Farmers, Land, and Legacy - Natalie Baszile brings together essays, poems, photographs, quotes, conversations and first-person stories to examine Black people's connection to the American land from Emancipation to today. In the 1920's, there were over one million black farmers; today there are just 45,000. Baszile explores this crisis through the farmers' personal experiences.
Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community - In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., isolated himself from the demands of the civil rights movement, rented a house in Jamaica with no telephone, and labored over his final manuscript. In this significantly prophetic work, which has been unavailable for more than ten years, we find King's acute analysis of American race relations and the state of the movement after a decade of civil rights efforts.
All About Love - The acclaimed first volume in feminist icon bell hooks' "Love Song to the Nation,” All About Love is a revelation about what causes a polarized society and how to heal the divisions that cause suffering. Here is the truth about love, and inspiration to help us instill caring, compassion, and strength in our homes, schools, and workplaces.
Poll:
These books were randomly selected from the book list at the following link:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EfdJlaTJydyXoiQsEcb02k1cYucu-Ta-EYc6alkKOTw/edit?usp=sharingEveryone gets to make 3 selections and voting ends on June 5th, Thursday, 5:00pm. I will announce the book that has the most votes on June 5th, Thursday evening, and then I will update our Juneteenth meeting post to show the winning book! We have a bit of a protracted schedule so there won't be as much time to pick up and read the book, but DON'T WORRY, you don't have to have the entire book completed before the Juneteenth meeting!
If you have a particular book that you'd like to add to future polls, feel free to contact me on Meetup or add it to the book list shown above!
Thank you all for participating!
P.S. The books that you would like to present can be different from the books in the book club poll.
- Meeting with YAASPA (Young Aspiring Americans for Social and Political Activism)Link visible for attendees
Who: AABCD and YAASPA
What: Virtual Meeting with YAASPA
When: Friday, June 6th at 2:30pm
Where: Virtual Meeting
Why: To discuss collaboration between AABCD and YAASPA for ways to support young people of color in terms of literacy and civic engagement in the Denver community.
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Hey Book Club People! We're having a short, virtual meeting with YAASPA to talk about actions that we can take in the community to foster education and civic action. More info on YAASPA can be found here.This is a meeting that I wanted to inform y'all of, just in case you would like to participate and help our book club be part of efforts to ensure that young people of color effectively learn their history and, frankly, to combat the incredible vitriol and hatred that is a sign of the current times that we live in.
Join if you're interested and available!
