The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver - June 2010

On Sunday June 6 at 2pm we'll be discussing the book: The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. Location will be in the North Beach neighborhood - 901 Columbus Avenue (between Chestnut and Lombard). 

Here's a book summary:

The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it -- from garden seeds to Scripture -- is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa.

Books to read in the future:July - Little Bee by Chris Cleave

Following month:

Nine Parts of Desire by Geraldine Brooks

Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down - May 2010

Forgot to post this book club meeting and discussion:

Here's a book summary:

The Hmong people in America are mainly refugee families who supported the CIA militaristic efforts in Laos. They are a clannish group with a firmly established culture that combines issues of health care with a deep spirituality that may be deemed primitive by Western standards. In Merced, CA, which has a large Hmong community, Lia Lee was born, the 13th child in a family coping with their plunge into a modern and mechanized way of life. The child suffered an initial seizure at the age of three months. Her family attributed it to the slamming of the front door by an older sister. They felt the fright had caused the baby's soul to flee her body and become lost to a malignant spirit. The report of the family's attempts to cure Lia through shamanistic intervention and the home sacrifices of pigs and chickens is balanced by the intervention of the medical community that insisted upon the removal of the child from deeply loving parents with disastrous results.

This compassionate and understanding account fairly represents the positions of all the parties involved. The suspense of the child's precarious health, the understanding characterization of the parents and doctors, and especially the insights into Hmong culture make this a very worthwhile read. 

This is a great book for a book club discussion even though the book might be outdated - I can see how this book is required for reading in many universities and departments. It was so fascinating to study the dynamics of the Hmong family and their interactions with the medical staff. I don't think any of us got to a specific solution of what could have been done better, but the need of interpretation for culture as well as language is key to addressing any issue, in this case health.

Amazing the stories but who's the audience?

Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas D. Kristof


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I was actually debating between 3 and 4 stars - I really did enjoy the book and thought it was powerful and many of the stories are so well described, but towards to the end I started to feel uncomfortable in the ways to resolve these issues. For example, he talks about the importance of using a bottom-up approach and then he gives the example of Heifer International and how it was a foreign woman who changed the life of a Zimbabwean who went to the US to get her education and that was a success story.... Also supporting the Mexico program Oportunidades as an exemplary model where I have observed in person that it's not the case in the state of Chiapas, makes me start questioning the credibility of some of his case studies.

Nevertheless, I was very engaged with the book and my heart went out to so many of those stories. Just when I thought I could sit down and read some pages before going to sleep I read a page of a horrific gang-rape case... I also cried on the MUNI multiple times reading this book...

Great book to discuss about, for sure!

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Meet incredible women from around the world

Our next book for March will celebrate International Women's Month by reading Half the Sky - Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women worldwide by Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl DuWann. We'll be meeting on Sunday March 28 at 2pm - our next coffeeshop will be Cafe Abir in the NOPA neighborhood. 

Here's a book summary:

New York Times columnist Kristoff and his wife, WuDunn, a former Times reporter, make a brilliantly argued case for investing in the health and autonomy of women worldwide. More girls have been killed in the last fifty years, precisely because they were girls, than men were killed in all the wars of the twentieth century, they write, detailing the rampant gendercide in the developing world, particularly in India and Pakistan. The authors reveal local women to be the most effective change agents.

I just found out that this book has a long waiting list at the Library - so here are some options:

1) You can read the New York Times magazine that featured this book at the following link: www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/magazine/23Women-t.html

2) You can read the book online through Borders website at the following link: www.borders.com/online/store/TitleDetail?sku=0307267148 - click on "Look Inside"

3) If you're willing to purchase the book - check out Green Apples or go to BookSmith, which gives 15% discount when you say you're a WOW book club member

Books to read in the future:

April - Spirit catches you - Anna Fadiman

Next Month - The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingslover

Impressed with the power of a young Afghan woman

We were all in awe of an incredible young woman living in a place where women don't have freedom of speech and can be killed for it - and yet we discover the story of someone who has overcome incredible odds to speak about women's rights in Afghanistan. We are all surprised how she is still alive.

We valued how much her parent's support has been key to maximizing her potential to become such an empowered woman from the moment she decided to return to Afghanistan from a refugee camp to lead education program underground for women. 

She has the support of her community to represent them at the parliament level and it was insightful for us to read how courageous and beautiful the community is. We don't usually get to hear how active and brave the Afghan people are when we read about Afghanistan in the US newspaper. 

We hope to support her and other women who are fearless in voicing out injustices around the world - we all left inspired to do something!

Insight into Aghan people and its history

A Woman Among Warlords: The Extraordinary Story of an Afghan Who Dared to Raise Her Voice by Malalai Joya


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book was such a wonderful unique insight into knowing the people from Afghanistan - after hearing so many negative news from that country - it was inspiring. The first part of the book was definitely an easier flow and the second part was quite harder to read, but so powerful. I hope everyone gets a chance to read this book and see how inspiring and beautiful Afghan people are.

View all my reviews >>

Going to Afghanistan

Let's travel to Afghanistan! We'll be reading another memoir written by Malalai Joya called A Woman Among Warlords: The Extraordinary Story of an Afghan Who Dared to Raise Her Voice. We'll be meeting in the Haight/Ashbury neighborhood on Sunday February 28, 2010.

Here's a book summary:
One of the few women, and the youngest, to win a seat in Afghanistan's Parliament, Joya recounts in strong, uncompromising language her march to activism, from her humble origins to recognizing a burning need to bring the corrupted leaders to justice in her war-torn country. Native to the western Afghan province of Ziken, and later Farah City, Joya—a name she had to adopt in order to protect her family—grew up mostly in desperate, unsafe refugee camps in Pakistan after the Russians invaded Afghanistan in 1978. 
With only a high school education (and one wonders how she wrote this book in English), she nonetheless became a teacher in the camps, then worked to organize underground classes for girls in Herat in defiance of Taliban edicts.

Her activism grew, supporting orphanages and war victims after the Taliban fled and the U.S. began air strikes and became an armed presence; Joya is adamant in underscoring the responsibility America holds in reinstalling to power the same warlords (commanders she names in the Northern Alliance) who once tore the country apart during the civil war of the 1990s. Having won election to Parliament in 2005 at age 27—Eva Mulvad's film Enemies of Happiness documented her election—Joya was outspoken in condemning these warlords she called criminals and antiwomen, enduring the shutting off of her microphone, assassination threats and, finally, suspension from Parliament.
Note: Get 15% discount for your book choice by saying you're a WOW book club member at BookSmith - support your local independent bookstore.

Books to read in the future:
March - Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristoff
April - Spirit catches you by Anna Fadiman
Join our Facebook Group: Women of the World (WOW) Book Club