WOW Book Club - December 2013 - Love InshAllah

Let's celebrate our final WOW Book Club discussion this December 2013, which is taking place on a SATURDAY - please don't forget!

Our final discussion will focus on Love InshAllah: The Secret Love Lives of American Muslim Women, short stories collected by Nura Maznavi & Ayesha Mattu - both local authors!

Here's a Book Summary:

In this groundbreaking collection, American Muslim women writers sweep aside stereotypes to share their real-life tales of flirting, dating, longing, and sex. Their stories show just how varied the search for love can be—from singles' events and college flirtations to arranged marriages, all with a uniquely Muslim twist.

These heartfelt tales are filled with passion and hope, loss and longing. One follows the quintessential single woman in the big city as she takes a chance on a Muslim speed-dating event. Another tells of a shy student from a liberal college town who falls in love online and must reveal her secret to her conservative family. A third recounts a Southern girl who surprises herself by agreeing to an arranged marriage, unexpectedly finding the love of her life.

These compelling stories of love and romance create an irresistible balance of heart-warming and tantalizing, always revealing and deeply relatable.

We will be meeting Saturday December 14 @ 2pm at Cafe Murano in the Lower Pacific Heights neighbourhood.

Exhibits on Kibbutz History at Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco

Today's discussion included perspectives on displacement, finding one's own identity, adaptability, survivor's mode and others, among a context of the final days of British occupation of Palestine in 1946.

A focal topic in our discussion was life in a kibbutz and how it has developed to current times - fortunately, there was a suggestion to encourage readers to go to the Contemporary Jewish Museum, which has two exhibits on the kibbutz - one exhibit ends in January 2014 and the other in July 2014!

Find more information at this link: http://www.thecjm.org/on-view/currently/to-build-and-be-built-kibbutz-history/about#

Contemporary Jewish Museum is near the POWELL Muni/BART station at 736 Mission Street (between 3rd and 4th street).

November 2013: When I lived in Modern Times

Thanks to everyone who came to the book discussion on Sri Lanka - now we're going to the Middle East region (London, Palestine, Israel) and discuss next When I lived in Modern Times by Linda Grant.

Here's a Book Summary:
In the spring of 1946, Evelyn Sert stands on the deck of a ship bound for Palestine. For the twenty-year-old from London, it is a time of adventure and change when all things seem possible.

Swept up in the spirited, chaotic churning of her new, strange country, she joins a kibbutz, then moves on to the teeming metropolis of Tel Aviv, to find her own home and a group of friends as eccentric and disparate as the city itself. She falls in love with a man who is not what he seems when she becomes an unwitting spy for a nation fighting to be born.

When I Lived in Modern Times is "an unsentimental coming-of-age story of both a country and a young immigrant . . . that provides an unforgettable glimpse of a time and place rarely observed."

Winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction!

We'll be meeting at Cumaica coffeeshop at 200 Clement Street in the Inner Richmond neighborhood on Sun Nov 24 @ 2pm

Final WOW Book of 2013:

Saturday, December 14 2013: Love Inshallah; The Secret Love Lives of American Muslim Women by Nura Maznavi and Ayesha Mattu