We kicked off our 2021 book discussions with Yaa Gyasi's award-winning debut novel Homegoing.
In addition to discussing this conversation-sparking book, we warmly welcomed members of the English Language Book Group in Bonn, Germany, for our joint discussion, and marked the start of the Biden-Harris Administration.
As usual, several notes and links came up during the conversation for further reading, viewing, and exploring. These include:
Amanda Gorman's reading of her inaugural poem, "The Hill We Climb"
The 1977 mini-series Roots
"Willful Amnesia: How Africans Forgot--and Remembered--Their Role in the Slave Trade" - PRI's The World (August 2019)
The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born by Ayi Kwei Armah (Satirical 1986 novel about the early days following Ghanaian independence)
An account of Dr. Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King's trip to Ghana for the 1957 independence day ceremony
A Ghanaian fantasy coffin in the collection of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
One of the Homegoing chapters includes the arrival of the cocoa bean in a struggling village. This is an article about fair trade chocolate in Ghana.
On February 3, San Francisco Public Library will host a free presentation about the de Young Museum's "Soul of a Nation" exhibit. (The full schedule of "More Than a Month" Black History events [plus reading recommendations for adults and youth] is available online.)
For February, we turn to a work of nonfiction: The Lonely City: Adventures In The Art Of Being Alone by Olivia Laing.
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