SFE Book Club
The Snohomish for Equity Book Club meets on the second Tuesday of every other month from 6:30-8pm, starting in February. We alternate between fiction and non-fiction books.
Meetings are on Zoom unless otherwise noted.
To add events to your calendar, register via Eventbrite (links below).
Zoom Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85044640892
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James by Percival Everett
A brilliant reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—both harrowing and satirical—told from the enslaved Jim's point of view
When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he runs away until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck has faked his own death to escape his violent father. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.
Brimming with nuanced humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a literary icon, this brilliant and tender novel radically illuminates Jim's agency, intelligence, and compassion as never before. James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first-century American literature.
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Why is it important to revisit this story through James’ perspective? What does this book reveal about the importance of literacy in James being able to tell his own story? How does this relate to the name of the novel? See pages 48, 69, 73, 89, 91, 154, 203, 287, 288, and 302.
Have you read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn? In what ways does the story of Huck’s quest for adventure change with James as the protagonist? See pages 68 and 72.
What is the significance of James’ imaginary debates with philosophers throughout the book? Who does he talk to and what about? See pages 49, 102, 247, and 277.
Throughout the book, James and other enslaved people switch up their language/diction depending on who is around. Why is this necessary for their survival? See pages 15, 21, 52, 99, 143, 165, and 262.
What do you think is the author's purpose in writing the character of Huck, and the development of Huck and James' relationship, the way that he did?
How does this book complicate our view of “slave” versus “free” state during this time? Does James’ status really change as he travels from one state to another? See pages 41, 65, 79, 85, 136, and 219.
A central theme in this book is refuting the idea of a “good” or “benevolent” enslaver. Where is this myth addressed? What characters help us understand slavery’s cruelty regardless of if and how a white person was an enslaver? See pages 27, 89, 106, 149, 157, 161, 167, 176, 197, 282, and 290.
Why do you think Everett included the plot about the minstrel performers? What does this act reveal about how race is “performed”? See pages 157, 166, 170, 189, 195, and 200.
In this retelling, we learn who is the real father of Huck. Why do you think Everett made this choice? Does it change your understanding of the story fundamentally? If so, why? See pages 25, 46, 95, 150, 253, 257, and 264.
James depicts the brutalities of slavery, particularly the violence inflicted upon enslaved women and girls, through the stories of Sadie, Lizzie, Sammy, and Katie. What are the unique threats that these characters must navigate? How does Jim react to the gendered violence that he encounters?
Discuss the use of religion and superstition in the story.
Sources:
https://www.abhmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/ABHM-Book-Club-James-Discussion-Guide.pdf
The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race by Jesmyn Ward
National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward takes James Baldwin’s 1963 examination of race in America, The Fire Next Time, as a jumping off point for this groundbreaking collection of essays and poems about race from the most important voices of her generation and our time.
In light of recent tragedies and widespread protests across the nation, The Progressive magazine republished one of its most famous pieces: James Baldwin’s 1962 “Letter to My Nephew,” which was later published in his landmark book, The Fire Next Time. Addressing his fifteen-year-old namesake on the one hundredth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, Baldwin wrote: “You know and I know, that the country is celebrating one hundred years of freedom one hundred years too soon.”
Award-winning author Jesmyn Ward knows that Baldwin’s words ring as true as ever today. In response, she has gathered short essays, memoir, and a few essential poems to engage the question of race in the United States. And she has turned to some of her generation’s most original thinkers and writers to give voice to their concerns.
Internment by Samira Ahmed
Rebellions are built on hope.
Set in a horrifying near-future United States, seventeen-year-old Layla Amin and her parents are forced into an internment camp for Muslim American citizens.
With the help of newly made friends also trapped within the internment camp, her boyfriend on the outside, and an unexpected alliance, Layla begins a journey to fight for freedom, leading a revolution against the internment camp's Director and his guards.
Heart-racing and emotional, Internment challenges readers to fight complicit silence that exists in our society today.
Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America by Michael Harriot
From acclaimed columnist and political commentator Michael Harriot, a searingly smart and bitingly hilarious retelling of American history that corrects the record and showcases the perspectives and experiences of Black Americans.
America’s backstory is a whitewashed mythology implanted in our collective memory. It is the story of the pilgrims on the Mayflower building a new nation. It is George Washington’s cherry tree and Abraham Lincoln’s log cabin. It is the fantastic tale of slaves that spontaneously teleported themselves here with nothing but strong backs and negro spirituals. It is a sugarcoated legend based on an almost true story.
In Black AF History, Michael Harriot presents a more accurate version of American history. Combining unapologetically provocative storytelling with meticulous research based on primary sources as well as the work of pioneering Black historians, scholars, and journalists, Harriot removes the white sugarcoating from the American story, placing Black people squarely at the center. With incisive wit, Harriot speaks hilarious truth to oppressive power, subverting conventional historical narratives with little-known stories about the experiences of Black Americans. From the African Americans who arrived before 1619 to the unenslavable bandit who inspired America’s first police force, this long overdue corrective provides a revealing look into our past that is as urgent as it is necessary. For too long, we have refused to acknowledge that American history is white history. Not this one. This history is Black AF.
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Fair and long-legged, independent and articulate, Janie Crawford sets out to be her own person—no mean feat for a black woman in the '30s. Janie's quest for identity takes her through three marriages and into a journey back to her roots.
Red Paint: The Ancestral Autobiography of a Coast Salish Punk by Sasha taqwšəblu LaPointe
An Indigenous artist blends the aesthetics of punk rock with the traditional spiritual practices of the women in her lineage in this bold, contemporary journey to reclaim her heritage and unleash her power and voice while searching for a permanent home.
Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe has always longed for a sense of home. When she was a child, her family moved around frequently, often staying in barely habitable church attics and trailers, dangerous places for young Sasha.
With little more to guide her than a passion for the thriving punk scene of the Pacific Northwest and a desire to live up to the responsibility of being the namesake of her beloved great-grandmother—a linguist who helped preserve her Indigenous language of Lushootseed—Sasha throws herself headlong into the world, determined to build a better future for herself and her people.
Set against a backdrop of the breathtaking beauty of Coast Salish ancestral land and imbued with the universal spirit of punk, Red Paint is ultimately a story of the ways we learn to find our true selves while fighting for our right to claim a place of our own.
Examining what it means to be vulnerable in love and in art, Sasha offers up an unblinking reckoning with personal traumas amplified by the collective historical traumas of colonialism and genocide that continue to haunt native peoples. Red Paint is an intersectional autobiography of lineage, resilience, and, above all, the ability to heal.