Category: Women's History

PACG Book Club - March 20, 2018

3/1/2018

Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine is our March 2018 book.

The PACG Book Club met for the first time on Tuesday, Feb 27th at 6 pm at Fresh Deli to discuss The Little Book of Restorative Justice by Howard Zehr. We had an interesting group that included a few experts in restorative justice as well as many who had never heard of the concept. It was a productive conversation.

We agreed to meet on the third Tuesday of the month in the future, since the Sierra Club book club meets on the fourth Tuesday. So our next discussion will be Tuesday, March 20, 6 - 7:30 pm. We will meet at Fresh Deli in the Davenport Freight House (421 W River Dr, Davenport IA).

We had three professors from St. Ambrose at our discussion, including a professor of English literature, Emily Kingery. Emily suggested a book she teaches in class that will be perfect for Women's History month. It is Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine. You can read more about the book at the link to the title. I am going to include a few quotes from reviews.

(Note: Since the book includes visual art, you may want to get the paperback rather than get it on your e-reader.)

"Marrying prose, poetry, and the visual image, Citizen investigates the ways in which racism pervades daily American social and cultural life, rendering certain of its citizens politically invisible. Rankine's formally inventive book challenges our notion that citizenship is only a legal designation that the state determines by expanding that definition to include a larger understanding of civic belonging and identity, built out of cross-racial empathy, communal responsibility, and a deeply shared commitment to equality."—National Book Award Judges' Citation

"So groundbreaking is Rankine's work that it's almost impossible to describe; suffice it to say that this is a poem that reads like an essay (or the other way around)—a piece of writing that invents a new form for itself, incorporating pictures, slogans, social commentary and the most piercing and affecting revelations to evoke the intersection of inner and outer life."—Los Angeles Times

For book discussion questions click here.

Alta Price

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Celebration of Women: March 25, 2018 - Sponsored by Quad Cities NOW

PACG Book Club - March 20, 2018

Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine is our March 2018 book.

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