Now learn about South American History!

From Africa, let's travel to Latin America and read a historical fiction novel by popular Chilean author Isabel Allende called Ines of my Soul.

Here's a book summary:

Only months after the inauguration of Chile's first female president, Isabel Allende recounts in her usual sweeping style the grand tale of Doña Inés Suárez (1507– 1580), arguably the country's founding mother. Writing in the year of her death, Inés tells of her modest girlhood in Spain and traveling to the New World as a young wife to find her missing husband, Juan. Upon learning of Juan's humiliating death in battle, Inés determines to stay in the fledgling colony of Peru, where she falls fervently in love with Don Pedro de Valdivia, loyal field marshal of Francisco Pizarro.

Basing the tale on documented events of her heroine's life, Allende crafts a swift, thrilling epic, packed with fierce battles and passionate romance.

Please join us for a great discussion on Sunday November 1 at 2pm - We're meeting at the Old Jerusalem Cafe, on 1340 Irving Street (between 14th Ave & 15th Ave) - hope to see you there!

Learning some American History

This book highlighted a part of history that is not widely familiar - the foundation of Liberia by freed African slaves traveling back to their home continent after being educated and raised in the United States.

Helene Cooper does a wonderful job of writing her childhood memories parallel to the history of Liberia involving her ancestors, coincidentally having both sides of her parents come from historical founding father figures of the country. What we all appreciated was her honesty of telling us her story without judgement, but to lay it as it is. This provoked more discussion including how her mother defended her childhood, her relationship with Eunice, her "sister," and her relationship with her father. It was fascinating to see how they all exiled from Liberia and yet the parents would go back quite frequently in spite of the dangers, to make money to support their children's education.

It was quite the page turner! I think we would have liked to know more of her life, as we were left with that feeling of wanting more and not missing out in any details.

Discovering a childhood in Liberia

Let's go from China to Liberia! Our next book discussion will focus on the memoir called The House at Sugar Beach by Helene Cooper.

Here's a book summary:

Journalist Cooper has a compelling story to tell: born into a wealthy, powerful, dynastic Liberian family descended from freed American slaves, she came of age in the 1980s when her homeland slipped into civil war. On Cooper's 14th birthday, her mother gives her a diamond pendant and sends her to school. Cooper is convinced that somehow our world would right itself. That afternoon her uncle Cecil, the minister of foreign affairs, is executed.

Cooper combines deeply personal and wide-ranging political strands in her memoir. There's the halcyon early childhood in Africa, a history of the early settlement of Liberia, an account of the violent, troubled years as several regimes are overthrown, and the story of the family's exile to America. A journalist-as-a-young-woman narrative unfolds as Cooper reports the career path that led her from local to national papers in the U.S. The stories themselves are fascinating, but a flatness prevails—perhaps one that mirror's the author's experience.

We'll be meeting in the Outer Richmond neighborhood on October 11.

The story of a friendship in historical China

This was an insightful glimpse of what women in China went through to earn a higher status as women in their society. The foot binding chapter was the most torturous part of the book making us all question how much do women need to suffer in order to earn a value.

Essentially the whole story focused on the friendship between Lily and Snow Flower and how their lives went in different directions in spite of being matched to become the best of friends. The story highlights the practice of nu shu (women's writing) - a language that is only learned by women to increase their status. The mother-daughter relationship in Lily's life brought a lot of comments about how different it is to what we see now and that daughters were really raised to become wives, which explains not being attached to them.

The writing style was brought up to see if it was intentional to have short sentences instead of elaborated prose and whether the perspective described to us was intentional in showing how disempowered women were in the time of 19th century China.

A highly recommended book that will spark many discussions on the role of women in historical China and how it compares to women today.

Going back in time in China

Let's travel to 19th century China, where we'll read Lisa See's popular book "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan." We'll be meeting on Sunday September 13 at 2pm.

Here's a summary of Snow Flower and The Secret Fan:

See's engrossing novel set in remote 19th-century China details the deeply affecting story of lifelong, intimate friends Lily and Snow Flower, their imprisonment by rigid codes of conduct for women and their betrayal by pride and love.

While granting immediacy to Lily's voice, See adroitly transmits historical background in graceful prose. Her in-depth research into women's ceremonies and duties in China's rural interior brings fascinating revelations about arranged marriages, women's inferior status in both their natal and married homes, and the Confucian proverbs and myriad superstitions that informed daily life.

Beginning with a detailed and heartbreaking description of Lily and her sisters' foot binding, the story widens to a vivid portrait of family and village life. Most impressive is See's incorporation of nu shu, a secret written phonetic code among women that dates back 1,000 years in the southwestern Hunan province. As both a suspenseful and poignant story and an absorbing historical chronicle, this novel has bestseller potential and should become a reading group favorite as well.

A story of identity struggle

We had a lively discussion on the memoir of Ghada Karmi as well as insightful as none of us really knew much about the Israel/Palestine conflict. Reading it through the eyes of a young girl in Palestine who exiles to England facilitated a better understanding of how complex this conflict is.

Ghada starts the novel in her childhood with glimpses of the symbolic things she remembered the most such as Fatimah, her maid and Rex, her dog. Leaving them behind was easy when the thought was that her family would eventually come back to their house, but circumstances forced them to exile to England for their own safety and opportunity. This section was filled with details and historical facts that made it hard to get through, but once we got to the England section, we felt a more personal connection with Ghada.

We can feel Ghada's struggle to become very British, even though, ironically her family thinks the British as their enemy and how she grows up trying to define that identity and ultimately discovering that she cannot ignore her Arab heritage and how she became displaced from her own country. We also found it fascinating in her relationship with her family, especially her mother who refuses to speak English in the 40 years she lives in England.

It was a great story to find insight on a Palestinian perspective we rarely get to hear in the Western countries.

In Search of Fatima

Thank you all for a wonderful book club discussion in June! Because of my travels again, we will be doing our next book club meeting on Sunday August 9 - and we'll be reading the book "In Search of Fatima" by Ghada Karmi.

Here's a summary of her book:

Karmi, a doctor and founding member of the British political group Palestine Action, relates her quest for cultural identity after her "fragile... and misfit Arab family" leaves Jerusalem for England during the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Ironically, they resettle in a Jewish neighborhood in London; Karmi, aged nine, quickly begins to assimilate-becoming an avid reader of English literature and befriending Jewish neighbors-despite her mother's insistence on traditional Palestinian culinary customs, dating mores and family codes.

Over the next two decades, events in the Middle East make their non-Arab neighbors increasingly hostile and her Jewish friends' pro-Israel fervor grows; after the Palestinian terrorist hijackings of the 1970s, some acquaintances refuse to speak to her. Karmi becomes an impassioned pro-Palestinian activist, and in 1977 she begins practicing medicine in a Palestinian refugee camp in South Lebanon and finds that her Western upbringing and habits make her even less welcome there than she was in England. Karmi writes engagingly, weaving Palestinian political and social history through her personal recollections and giving the age-old emigr‚ dilemmas a timely twist.

Location TBD

Remember you can get a 15% discount on this book if you purchase it at the BookSmith in the Haight neighborhood when you say you're a WOW Book Club member

See you on Sunday August 9 at 2pm!