Category: Books - 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 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)

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

PACG Book Club for January 2022

10/24/2021

**PACG Book Club for January 2022 - War on Us: How the War on Drugs & Myths About Addiction Have Created a War on All of Us by Colleen Cowles**

We will meet via Zoom on Monday, January 17th at 5:30 pm to discuss War on Us: How the War on Drugs & Myths About Addiction Have Created a War on All of Us by Colleen Cowles. We are not meeting in December, so you will have two months to read this book. Although it is long, it is reported to be very engaging and easy to read. Also, it is not as long as you might think since there are lots of references at the end!

I spent some time at the waronus.com website. This book is very relevant to the work the Civil Rights Forum is doing on criminal justice reform and juvenile justice reform. I wonder if PACG and its coalition partners might want to bring the author here (probably by Zoom) to speak?

Here is some information about the book from Goodreads:

"While the War on Drugs may have sounded like a good idea at one time, the consequences have been catastrophic. From physicians persecuted for providing health care to their patients to parents grieving the loss of their children to overdose or prison — we've all become victims of this war.

Our health, our families, our assets, our safety and our freedom are at risk:

One in three adults in the U.S. now has a criminal record.
Patients with severe illnesses or chronic pain are denied access to proven pain medications.
Over a trillion in taxpayer dollars in the U.S. alone has 'bought' the highest drug use, the highest overdose and the highest incarceration rates in the world.

In War on Us, Colleen Cowles raises the alarm and offers practical, proven reforms. There are answers, as long as we have the will to implement change. It’s time to end the War on Drugs — and the war on all of us. This book is the roadmap to do just that."

Click on my name for a Zoom link to the discussion.

Alta Price

PACG Book Club for November 2021

10/24/2021

**PACG Book Club for November 2021 - The Constant Rabbit by Jasper Fforde**

On Monday, November 15th at 5:30 pm we will meet via Zoom to discuss The Constant Rabbit by Jasper Fforde.

Here is a review from Kirkus Reviews:

"Rabbits, foxes, weasels, and other creatures live as humans, among humans in Fforde’s wonderfully absurd new novel.

Fifty-five years ago, the Spontaneous Anthropormorphizing Event resulted in 18 rabbits, “six weasels, five guinea pigs, three foxes, a Dalmatian, a badger, nine bees and a caterpillar” inexplicably becoming, well, anthropomorphized. As time went on, the animals continued to reproduce—especially the rabbits—causing a bit of a political crisis for humans, who are loathe to extend human rights to human-adjacent creatures. Rabbits in particular are subject to cruelty and suspicion because of their rapid reproductive rate, causing political parties like the United Kingdom Anti-Rabbit Party and hate groups like TwoLegsGood (because humans, unlike animals, have two legs, get it?) to rise to immense power. Racism as we know it still exists in this world, as does Brexit. Indeed, "the consequences of the Event seemed to highlight areas of the human social experience that perhaps needed greater exploration, understanding and some kind of concerted action...although once a fringe idea, the notion that the event might have been satirically induced was gaining wider acceptance.” And is there anyone who can write satire quite like Fforde? Perhaps the sharpest, most searing aspect of this brilliant satire is the choice of Peter Knox as narrator. An unassuming human who thinks himself a well-meaning cog in a regrettably evil machine, Knox finds himself at the very center of the rabbit resistance. Not only must he make the choice to atone for the part he has played in the violent government organization RabCoT (Rabbit Compliance Taskforce) and put himself in danger for a greater good, but he learns to embrace a supporting role in a struggle that is not about him at all.

An astonishingly well-crafted work of social and political satire."

Click on my name for a Zoom link to the discussion.

Alta Price

PACG Book Club for October 2021

9/19/2021

**PACG Book Club for October 2021 - American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins**

For October we will read and discuss American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins. We will meet via Zoom on October 18th, the third Monday of the month, at 5:30 pm.

Here is more information about the book from Goodreads:

"También de este lado hay sueños.
On this side, too, there are dreams.

Lydia Quixano Pérez lives in the Mexican city of Acapulco. She runs a bookstore. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And while there are cracks beginning to show in Acapulco because of the drug cartels, her life is, by and large, fairly comfortable.

Even though she knows they’ll never sell, Lydia stocks some of her all-time favorite books in her store. And then one day a man enters the shop to browse and comes up to the register with a few books he would like to buy—two of them her favorites. Javier is erudite. He is charming. And, unbeknownst to Lydia, he is the jefe of the newest drug cartel that has gruesomely taken over the city. When Lydia’s husband’s tell-all profile of Javier is published, none of their lives will ever be the same.

Forced to flee, Lydia and eight-year-old Luca soon find themselves miles and worlds away from their comfortable middle-class existence. Instantly transformed into migrants, Lydia and Luca ride la bestia—trains that make their way north toward the United States, which is the only place Javier’s reach doesn’t extend. As they join the countless people trying to reach el norte, Lydia soon sees that everyone is running from something. But what exactly are they running to?"

Click on my name for a Zoom link to the Book Club meeting. (Note: If you are already on the list of Book Club members you will get a link without having to contact me each month.)

Alta Price

PACG Book Club for September 2021

5/22/2021

**PACG Book Club for September 2021 - Separated: Inside an American Tragedy by Jacob Soboroff**

Our September 2021 book will be Separated: Inside an American Tragedy by Jacob Soboroff. We will meet via Zoom on Monday, September 27th at 5:30 pm. (Note: We are meeting the fourth Monday instead of the usual third Monday since Alta will be out of town on the third Monday.)

Here is a description of the book from Goodreads:

"NBC News and MSNBC correspondent Jacob Soboroff, winner of the 2019 Walter Cronkite Award for his reporting on the child separation crisis, delivers a profoundly personal and moving report from the border and beyond, revealing the wrenching human story behind one of the most disturbing passages of modern American history.

Donald Trump’s most infamous decision as president, to systematically separate thousands of migrant families at the border, was in effect for months before most Americans saw the living conditions of the children in custody at the epicenter of the policy. NBC News and MSNBC correspondent Jacob Soboroff was among the first journalists to expose the truth of what their lives were like on the inside after seeing them firsthand. His widely shared reports in June 2018 ignited public scrutiny that contributed to the President reversing his own policy by Executive Order, and earned Soboroff the Cronkite Award for Excellence in Political Broadcast Journalism and the 2019 Hillman Prize for Broadcast Journalism.

In Separated, Soboroff weaves together his own experience unexpectedly covering this national issue with other key figures in the drama he met along the way, including feuding administration officials responsible for tearing apart and then reuniting families, and the parents and children who were caught in the middle. He reveals new and exclusive details of how the policy was carried out, and how its affects are still being felt.

Today, there is still not a full accounting of the total number of children the President ripped away from their parents. The exact number may never be known, only that it is in the thousands. Now the President is doubling down on draconian immigration policies, including threatening to hold migrant families indefinitely and making tens of thousands applying for asylum wait in some of Mexico’s most dangerous cities. Separated is required reading for anyone who wants to understand how Trump and his administration were able to carry out this inhumane policy, and how so many missed what was happening before it was too late. Soboroff lays out compassionately, yet in the starkest of terms, its human toll, and makes clear what is at stake in the 2020 presidential election."

Contact me by clicking on my name for a link to the Zoom meeting.

Alta Price

PACG Book Club for August 2021

5/22/2021

**PACG Book Club for August 2021 - The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah**

Our August 2021 book will be The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah. We will meet via Zoom on Monday, August 16th at 5:30 pm.

Here is a description of the book from Goodreads:

"Texas, 1934. Millions are out of work and a drought has broken the Great Plains. Farmers are fighting to keep their land and their livelihoods as the crops are failing, the water is drying up, and dust threatens to bury them all. One of the darkest periods of the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl era, has arrived with a vengeance.

In this uncertain and dangerous time, Elsa Martinelli—like so many of her neighbors—must make an agonizing choice: fight for the land she loves or go west, to California, in search of a better life. The Four Winds is an indelible portrait of America and the American Dream, as seen through the eyes of one indomitable woman whose courage and sacrifice will come to define a generation.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Nightingale and The Great Alone comes an epic novel of love and heroism and hope, set against the backdrop of one of America’s most defining eras—the Great Depression."

Contact me by clicking on my name for a link to the August 2021 PACG Book Club discussion.

Alta Price