Category: Book Club - PACG - Progressive Action for the Common Good

Project Now Book Club for March 2023 - The Savvy Ally

3/4/2023

The Savvy Ally - Project Now Book Club
Wednesday, March 22nd at 6:30 pm

Moline Public Library
Gold Room
3210 41st St
Moline, IL (map)

PACG Book Club and Gender Equity Forum

PACG Book Club members and members of the Gender Equity forum will be interested in reading and discussing The Savvy Ally: A Guide for Becoming a Skilled LGBTQ+ Ally by Jeannie Gainsburg. This is the next book for the Project Now Book Club, which welcomes anyone to come to their discussions.

The book is only 150 pages long. The Moline Public Library has 5 copies of the book available for checkout at the second floor desk.

Alta Price

PACG Book Club for March 2023 - Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West

2/26/2023

**PACG Book Club - Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West by Dee Brown (first 10 chapters)
Monday, March 20th at 4:30 pm via Zoom**

The PACG Book Club decided to further explore the history of our country’s treatment of its indigenous peoples by reading Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West by Dee Brown. Since the book is long, we will read and discuss the first ten chapters in March and finish the book in April.

More about the book from Goodreads:

“Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is Dee Brown's eloquent, fully documented account of the systematic destruction of the American Indian during the second half of the nineteenth century. A national bestseller in hardcover for more than a year after its initial publication, it has sold almost four million copies and has been translated into seventeen languages…

Using council records, autobiographies, and firsthand descriptions, Brown allows the great chiefs and warriors of the Dakota, Ute, Sioux, Cheyenne, and other tribes to tell us in their own words of the battles, massacres, and broken treaties that finally left them demoralized and defeated. A unique and disturbing narrative told with force and clarity, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee changed forever our vision of how the West was really won.”

We hope you can join us! Click on my name for a link to the March discussion, which will be by Zoom.

Alta Price

PACG Book Club for January 2023 - The Girl in the Photograph

12/10/2022

PACG Book Club - The Girl in the Photograph
by Byron L Dorgan
Monday, January 16th at 4:30 pm (via Zoom)

For January and February we will be back to Zoom. March may be in-person, depending upon the weather.

We are reading a non-fiction book about Native American issues in January, followed by a novel by a Native American author about a teenager growing up on a reservation in Washington State who decides to attend the local "white" high school.

The January book is The Girl in the Photograph by Senator Byron Dorgan. A description from Goodreads follows:

On a winter morning in 1990, U.S. Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota picked up the Bismarck Tribune. On the front page, a small Native American girl gazed into the distance, shedding a tear. The headline: Foster home children beaten--and nobody's helping.

Dorgan, who had been working with American Indian tribes to secure resources, was upset. He flew to the Standing Rock Indian Reservation to meet with five-year-old Tamara who had suffered a horrible beating at a foster home. He visited with Tamara and her grandfather and they became friends. Then Tamara disappeared. And he would search for her for decades until they finally found each other again.

This book is her story, from childhood to the present, but it's also the story of a people and a nation. More than one in three American Indian/Alaskan Native children live in poverty. AI/AN children are disproportionately in foster care and awaiting adoption. Suicide among AI/AN youth ages 15 to 24 is 2.5 times the national rate. How has America allowed this to happen?

As distressing a situation as it is, this is also a story of hope and resilience. Dorgan, who founded the Center for Native American Youth (CNAY) at the Aspen Institute, has worked tirelessly to bring Native youth voices to the forefront of policy discussions, engage Native youth in leadership and advocacy, and secure and share resources for Native youth. You will fall in love with this heartbreaking story, but end the book knowing what can be done and what you can do.

Alta Price (click on my name for the Zoom link)

PACG Book Club for February 2023 - The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

12/10/2022

PACG Book Club - The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
Monday, February 20th at 4:30 pm (via Zoom)

Our February book will be The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. I found this novel to be quick to read, entertaining and thought-provoking. It is a nice companion to January's book, The Girl in the Photograph, a non-fiction book about challenges facing children and youth on reservations.

A description of the book from Goodreads follows:

Bestselling author Sherman Alexie tells the story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Determined to take his future into his own hands, Junior leaves his troubled school on the rez to attend an all-white farm town high school where the only other Indian is the school mascot.

Heartbreaking, funny, and beautifully written, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which is based on the author's own experiences, coupled with poignant drawings by Ellen Forney that reflect the character's art, chronicles the contemporary adolescence of one Native American boy as he attempts to break away from the life he was destined to live.

Alta Price (click on my name for the Zoom link)

Book Club November 21st at 4:30 pm - " This Is How It Always Is"

10/30/2022

PACG Book Club - This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel
Monday, November 21st at 4:30 pm (in person)

Davenport Public Library
Fairmount Street Branch
3000 N Fairmount St, Davenport, IA (map)

Book Club

We have decided to meet in person in November and go back to Zoom for the winter months. We will skip December since it is too close to the holidays.

Our November book will be This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel. We will meet on Monday, November 21st at 4:30 pm at the Fairmount Street branch of the Davenport Public Library.

Here is some information about the book from Goodreads:

This is how a family keeps a secret…and how that secret ends up keeping them.

This is how a family lives happily ever after…until happily ever after becomes complicated.

This is how children change…and then change the world.

This is Claude. He’s five years old, the youngest of five brothers, and loves peanut butter sandwiches. He also loves wearing a dress, and dreams of being a princess.

When he grows up, Claude says, he wants to be a girl.

Rosie and Penn want Claude to be whoever Claude wants to be. They’re just not sure they’re ready to share that with the world. Soon the entire family is keeping Claude’s secret. Until one day it explodes.

This Is How It Always Is is a novel about revelations, transformations, fairy tales, and family. And it’s about the ways this is how it always is: Change is always hard and miraculous and hard again, parenting is always a leap into the unknown with crossed fingers and full hearts, children grow but not always according to plan. And families with secrets don’t get to keep them forever.

You can RSVP at our Facebook Event (not required). Contact me with any questions.

Alta Price

October 2022 PACG Book Club

9/10/2022

PACG Book Club - The Rage of Innocence: How America Criminalizes Black Youth by Kristin Henning
Monday, October 24th at 6:30 pm

Moline Public Library
3210 41st St
Moline, IL (map)

In October the PACG Book Club will have a joint discussion with the Project Now Book Club of Kristin Henning's book, The Rage of Innocence: How America Criminalizes Black Youth. Read more about the book at Goodreads.

PACG hosted a webinar with Professor Henning in June of 2021. You can read all about it, and find a list of resources she shared with us, at this PACG Blog post.

Contact me with questions.

Alta Price

PACG Book Club - September 2022

5/21/2022

PACG Book Club - The Cider House Rules by John Irving
Monday, September 19th at 5:00 pm - Updated

Since we are taking a break in July and August, you will have plenty of time to read our lengthy September book, The Cider House Rules by John Irving. I read this book decades ago and loved it. Since one of the themes of the book is abortion, and the setting is in a time when abortions were illegal, it seems quite relevant today. The book also deals with other issues of interest to our members, such as racism and sexism.

We will continue to meet via Zoom in September, partly due to personal plans that make it impossible for me (Alta) to attend in person. Also, for this month we will meet at 5:00 pm, rather than at 4:30 pm as originally scheduled. So we will meet at 5:00 pm on Monday, September 19th.

Here is more information from Goodreads:

Raised from birth in the orphanage at St. Cloud's, Maine, Homer Wells has become the protege of Dr. Wilbur Larch, its physician and director. There Dr. Larch cares for the troubled mothers who seek his help, either by delivering and taking in their unwanted babies or by performing illegal abortions. Meticulously trained by Dr. Larch, Homer assists in the former, but draws the line at the latter. Then a young man brings his beautiful fiancee to Dr. Larch for an abortion, and everything about the couple beckons Homer to the wide world outside the orphanage.

Contact me for a link to the meeting (if it is by Zoom) or with questions.

Alta Price

PACG Book Club for June 2022

5/21/2022

PACG Book Club for June 2022 - Equal Before the Law: How Iowa Led Americans to Marriage Equality by Tom Witosky and Marc Hansen
Monday, June 20th at 4:30 pm

We have decided to move PACG Book Club to 4:30 pm on the third Monday of the month (instead of 5:30 pm). We will meet in June but take off July and August. We have also decided to include books with social justice themes relating to women and LGBTQ+ people.

Our next discussion will be Monday, June 20th at 4:30 pm. We will read and discuss Equal Before the Law: How Iowa Led Americans to Marriage Equality by Tom Witosky and Marc Hansen. This book is especially relevant to those of us in Iowa. I personally worked for marriage equality in Iowa and I'm looking forward to the read!

Here is some information from Goodreads:

"We’ve been together in sickness and in health, through the death of his mother, through the adoption of our children, through four long years of this legal battle," Jason Morgan told reporters of himself and his partner, Chuck Swaggerty. "And if being together through all of that isn’t love and commitment or isn’t family or isn’t marriage, then I don’t know what is." Just minutes earlier on that day, April 3, 2009, the justices of the Iowa Supreme Court had agreed.

The court’s decision in Varnum v. Brien made Iowa only the third state in the nation to permit same-sex couples to wed—moderate, midwestern Iowa, years before such left-leaning coastal states as California and New York. And unlike the earlier decisions in Massachusetts and Connecticut, Varnum v. Brien was unanimous and unequivocal. It catalyzed the unprecedented and rapid shift in law and public opinion that continues today.

Equal Before the Law tells the stories behind this critical battle in the fight for marriage equality and traces the decision’s impact. The struggle began in 1998 with the easy passage of Iowa’s Defense of Marriage Act and took a turn, surprising to many, in 2005, when six ordinary Iowa couples signed on to Lambda Legal’s suit against the law. Their triumph in 2009 sparked a conservative backlash against the supreme court justices, three of whom faced tough retention elections that fall.
Longtime, award-winning reporters Tom Witosky and Marc Hansen talked with and researched dozens of key figures, including opponent Bob Vander Plaats, proponents Janelle Rettig and Sharon Malheiro, attorneys Roger Kuhle, Dennis Johnson, and Camilla Taylor, and politicians Matt McCoy, Mary Lundby, and Tom Vilsack, who had to weigh their careers against their convictions. Justice Mark Cady, who wrote the decision, explains why the court had to rule in favor of the plaintiffs. At the center of the story are the six couples who sacrificed their privacy to demand public respect for their families.

Through these voices, Witosky and Hansen show that no one should have been surprised by the 2009 decision. Iowans have a long history of leadership on civil rights. Just a year after Iowa became a state, its citizens adopted as their motto the phrase, “Our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain.” And they still do today.

Contact me for the Zoom link. (We'll continue to meet via Zoom for now. If the Covid situation improves by September, we may be able to meet in person then.)

Alta Price

May Book Club - "Home Made"

3/22/2022

"Home Made" - PACG Book Club Meeting via Zoom
Monday, May 16th at 5:30 pm

PACG Book Club

For our May book we are reading Home Made: A Story of Grief, Groceries, Showing Up - and What we Make When We Make Dinner by Liz Hauck.

Here's an excerpt from the Good Reads review: An intimate account of humorous and heartbreaking conversations, and a vivid account of the clumsy choreography of cooking with other people, Home Made is a sharply observed and honestly told story about how a kitchen can be both safe and dangerous; how even the short journey from kitchen to table can be perilous. Each chapter explores the interconnectedness of flavor, memory, culture, and life and offers a glimpse into the ways we behave when we are hungry and the food we crave when we seek comfort. Home Made is a tender and vivid portrait of poverty and abundance, vulnerability and strength, estrangement and connection. It is a memoir about the radical grace we discover when we consider ourselves bound together in community and a piercing investigation of the essential question: Who are we to each other?

Contact Alta Price or Julie Ross for a Zoom link to this meeting.

PACG Book Club for April - PACG Event

3/22/2022

"Klara and the Sun" - PACG Book Club Meeting via Zoom
Monday, April 18th at 5:30 pm

PACG Book Club

Our next meeting is Monday, April 18th at 5:30 pm, and we will be discussing Klara and the Sun by Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro. This is a work of science fiction. In PACG Book Club we alternate between fiction and nonfiction each month.

From the Goodreads review about Klara and the Sun: From her place in the store, Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her, but when the possibility emerges that her circumstances may change forever, Klara is warned not to invest too much in the promises of humans.

If you would like to read ahead, our book for May is Home Made: A Story of Grief, Groceries, Showing Up - and What We Make When We Make Dinner by Liz Hauk. We will meet on Zoom on Monday, May 16th. Read more at our May Book Club blog post here.

Contact the PACG Webmaster for the Zoom link for this meeting.

Alta Price