The CESJ is excited to host a book club dealing with issues of social justice. Our first book is going to be the critically aclaimed best seller The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas.
We will be reading the book now, with a meeting to discuss the book scheduled for early April. We hope everyone interested will join in the conversation!
Pick up a free copy of the book from one of our sponsors! Books are currently available in the MLK Center (313 Blaze Dining) and the CESJ office (location/hours) while supplies last.
Update:
Thank you to everyone who came out and made our discussion of this book great!
If you're interested in learning more or continuing this conversation, check out our further reading options.
Further Reading:
Talking about race
- So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
- "In So You Want to Talk About Race, Editor at Large of The Establishment Ijeoma Oluo offers a contemporary, accessible take on the racial landscape in America, addressing head-on such issues as privilege, police brutality, intersectionality, micro-aggressions, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the "N" word. Perfectly positioned to bridge the gap between people of color and white Americans struggling with race complexities, Oluo answers the questions readers don't dare ask, and explains the concepts that continue to elude everyday Americans."
How did we get here?
- Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond
- "Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Guns, Germs, and Steel is a brilliant work answering the question of why the peoples of certain continents succeeded in invading other continents and conquering or displacing their peoples. ... As Jared Diamond vividly reveals, the very people who gained a head start in producing food would collide with preliterate cultures, shaping the modern world through conquest, displacement, and genocide.The paths that lead from scattered centers of food to broad bands of settlement had a great deal to do with climate and geography. But how did differences in societies arise? Why weren't native Australians, Americans, or Africans the ones to colonize Europe? Diamond dismantles pernicious racial theories tracing societal differences to biological differences."
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"Just what is going on with white people? Police shootings of unarmed African Americans. Acts of domestic terrorism by white supremacists. The renewed embrace of raw, undisguised white-identity politics. Unending racial inequity in schools, housing, criminal justice, and hiring. Some of this feels new, but in truth it’s an old story. Why? Where did the notion of “whiteness” come from? What does it mean? What is whiteness for? Scene on Radio host and producer John Biewen took a deep dive into these questions, along with an array of leading scholars and regular guest Dr. Chenjerai Kumanyika, in this fourteen-part documentary series, released between February and August 2017. The series editor is Loretta Williams."
