SOTAREADING 2021-2024

  From the  New York Times   bestselling author of  A Long Petal of the Sea   comes a passionate and inspiring meditation on what it means to be a woman. "When I say that I was a feminist in kindergarten, I am not exaggerating," begins Isabel Allende. As a child, she watched her mother, abandoned by her husband, provide for her three small children without "resources or voice." Isabel became a fierce and defiant little girl, determined to fight for the life her mother couldn't have. As a young woman coming of age in the late 1960s, she rode the first wave of feminism. Among a tribe of like-minded female journalists, she for the first time felt comfortable in her own skin, as they wrote "with a knife between their teeth" about women's issues. She has seen what has been accomplished by the movement in the course of her lifetime. And over the course of three passionate marriages, she has learned how to grow as a woman while having a partner, when to s

 Hell of a Book by Jason Mott ***2021 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER*** ***THE NATIONAL BESTSELLER*** Winner of the 2021 Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction, Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize Finalist, 2022 Chautauqua Prize Finalist, Willie Morris Award for Southern Writing Shortlist, and the 2021 Aspen Words Literary Prize shortlist A Read With Jenna  Today  Show Book Club Pick! An Ebony Magazine Publishing Book Club Pick!  One of  Washington Post 's 50 Notable Works of Fiction | One of  Philadelphia Inquirer 's Best Books of 2021 | One of Shelf Awareness's Top Ten Fiction Titles of the Year | One of TIME Magazine’s 100 Must-Read Books | One of NPR.org's "Books We Love" |  EW ’s "Guide to the Biggest and Buzziest Books of 2021" |   One of the New York Public Library's Best Books for Adults |  San Diego Union Tribune —My Favorite Things from 2021 | Writer's Bone's Best Books of 2021 |   Atlanta Journal Constitution—Top 10 Southern Books of th

 Your Children are Very Greatly in Danger by Justin Murphy In  Your Children Are Very Greatly in Danger , the veteran journalist Justin Murphy makes the compelling argument that the educational disparities in Rochester, New York, are the result of historical and present-day racial segregation.  Education reform alone will never be the full solution; to resolve racial inequity, cities such as Rochester must first dismantle segregation. Drawing on never-before-seen archival documents as well as scores of new interviews, Murphy shows how discriminatory public policy and personal prejudice combined to create the racially segregated education system that exists in the Rochester area today. Alongside this dismal history, Murphy recounts the courageous fight for integration and equality, from the advocacy of Frederick Douglass in the 1850s to a countywide student coalition inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement in the 2010s. This grinding antagonism, featuring numerous failed efforts to

Sunny G’s Series of Rash Decisions  by  Navdeep Singh Dhillon.    Monday, May 23, 2022 4 pm “Pitch-perfect. One of the most endearing teen voices I’ve ever encountered.” —Becky Albertalli, #1  New York Times  bestselling author of  Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda For fans of Sandhya Menon and Adam Silvera comes a prom-night romantic-comedy romp about a Sikh teen's search for love and identity. Sunny G's brother left him one thing when he died: His notebook, which Sunny is determined to fill up with a series of rash decisions. Decision number one was a big one: He stopped wearing his turban, cut off his hair, and shaved his beard. He doesn't look like a Sikh anymore. He doesn't look like himself anymore. Even his cosplay doesn't look right without his beard.   Sunny debuts his new look at prom, which he's stuck going to alone. He's skipping the big fandom party—the one where he'd normally be in full cosplay, up on stage playing bass with his band and hi

  Winner of the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, the Michael L. Printz Award, and the Pura Belpré Award! Fans of Jacqueline Woodson, Meg Medina, and Jason Reynolds will fall hard for this astonishing  New York Times -bestselling novel-in-verse by an award-winning slam poet, about an Afro-Latina heroine who tells her story with blazing words and powerful truth.  Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood. Ever since her body grew into curves, she has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking. But Xiomara has plenty she wants to say, and she pours all her frustration and passion onto the pages of a leather notebook, reciting the words to herself like prayers—especially after she catches feelings for a boy in her bio class named Aman, who her family can never know about. With Mami’s determination to force her daughter to obey the laws of the church, Xiomara understands that her thoughts are best kept to herself. So when s

  March 28, 2022 4:00 Tommy Orange’s “groundbreaking, extraordinary” ( The New York Times )  There There  is the “brilliant, propulsive” ( People Magazine ) story of twelve unforgettable characters, Urban Indians living in Oakland, California, who converge and collide on one fateful day. It’s “the year’s most galvanizing debut novel” ( Entertainment Weekly ).   As we learn the reasons that each person is attending the Big Oakland Powwow—some generous, some fearful, some joyful, some violent—momentum builds toward a shocking yet inevitable conclusion that changes everything. Jacquie Red Feather is newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind in shame. Dene Oxendene is pulling his life back together after his uncle’s death and has come to work at the powwow to honor his uncle’s memory. Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield has come to watch her nephew Orvil, who has taught himself traditional Indian dance through YouTube videos and will to perform in public for the very

  NEW YORK TIMES  • 10 BEST BOOKS OF 2021 New York Times  • Times Critics Top Books of 2021 New York Times  Bestseller Best Books of the Year •  Washington Post ,  TIME , NPR, Oprah Daily,  Boston Globe ,  Christian Science Monitor ,  Kansas City Independent , Los Angeles Public Library, Washington Independent Review of Books, Spy, Audile, Biblioracle, AbeBooks Monday, Feb. 28  4 pm Moderator: Jim Tillotson The essential, sweeping story of Juneteenth’s integral importance to American history, as told by a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian and Texas native.   Weaving together American history, dramatic family chronicle, and searing episodes of memoir, Annette Gordon-Reed’s  On Juneteenth  provides a historian’s view of the country’s long road to Juneteenth, recounting both its origins in Texas and the enormous hardships that African-Americans have endured in the century since, from Reconstruction through Jim Crow and beyond. All too aware of the stories of cowboys, ranchers, and oilmen t

Call Us What We Carry poetry by Amanda Gorman Monday, January 31 Moderator:  Marcy Gamzon The instant #1  New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and   USA Today   bestseller The breakout poetry collection by #1  New York Times  bestselling author and presidential inaugural poet Amanda Gorman Formerly titled  The Hill We Climb and Other Poems , the luminous poetry collection by #1  New York Times  bestselling author and presidential inaugural poet Amanda Gorman captures a shipwrecked moment in time and transforms it into a lyric of hope and healing. In  Call Us What We Carry,  Gorman explores history, language, identity, and erasure through an imaginative and intimate collage. Harnessing the collective grief of a global pandemic, this beautifully designed volume features poems in many inventive styles and structures and shines a light on a moment of reckoning.  Call Us What We Carry  reveals that Gorman has become our messenger from the past, our voice for the future.