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

October 2013: On Sal Mal Lane

After a long break, we'll be traveling to Sri Lanka, discussing the book "On Sal Mal Lane" by Ru Freeman in October 2013.

Here's a Book Summary:
In the tradition of In the Time of the Butterflies and The Kite Runner, a tender, evocative novel about the years leading up to the Sri Lankan civil war

On the day the Herath family moves in, Sal Mal Lane is still a quiet street, disturbed only by the cries of the children whose triumphs and tragedies sustain the families that live there. As the neighbors adapt to the newcomers in different ways, the children fill their days with cricket matches, romantic crushes, and small rivalries. But the tremors of civil war are mounting, and the conflict threatens to engulf them all.

In a heartrending novel poised between the past and the future, the innocence of the children—a beloved sister and her overprotective siblings, a rejected son and his twin sisters, two very different brothers—contrasts sharply with the petty prejudices of the adults charged with their care. In Ru Freeman’s masterful hands, On Sal Mal Lane, a story of what was lost to a country and her people, becomes a resounding cry for reconciliation.

We'll be meeting in the DogPatch neighbourhood at Cup of Blues - 900 22nd street (between Indiana & Minnessota St) on Sunday October 13 at 2pm.

Next Reading:

November - When I lived in Modern Times by Linda Grant

August 2013: WOW Book Club - Daughters who walk this path

Traveling to Nigeria, our next WOW Book Club discussion will focus on the book "Daughters who walk this Path" by Yejide Kilanko, in her first novel.

Here's a Book Summary:

Spirited and intelligent, Morayo grows up surrounded by school friends and family in busy, modern-day Ibadan, Nigeria. An adoring little sister, their traditional parents, and a host of aunties and cousins make Morayo's home their own. So there's nothing unusual about her charming but troubled cousin Bros T moving in with the family. At first Morayo and her sister are delighted, but in her innocence, nothing prepares Morayo for the shameful secret Bros T forces upon her.

Thrust into a web of oppressive silence woven by the adults around her, Morayo must learn to fiercely protect herself and her sister from a legacy of silence many women in Morayo's family share. Only Aunty Morenike—once shielded by her own mother—provides Morayo with a safe home and a sense of female community that sustains her as she grows into a young woman in bustling, politically charged, often violent Nigeria.

We'll be meeting in NOPA neighborhood at the Matching Half Cafe on Sunday August 25 @ 2pm!

Next Books to Read:

On Sal Mal Lane by Ru Freeman (Sri Lanka)

When I lived in Modern Times by Linda Grant (Israel)

WOW Book Club - July 2013: The Bonesetter's Daughter

Now in July summer, we're heading to a Chinese-American tale for perhaps a lighter fiction novel with The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan. 

Here's a Book Summary:

Ruth decides to move in with her ailing mother, LuLing Young and while tending to her discovers the story LuLing wrote in Chinese, of her tumultuous life growing up in a remote mountain village known as Immortal Heart. LuLing tells of the secrets passed along by her mute nursemaid, Precious Auntie; of a cave where dragon bones are mined and where Peking Man was discovered; of the crumbling ravine known as the End of the World, where Precious Auntie’s bones lie, and of the curse that LuLing believes she released through betrayal…

Set in contemporary San Francisco and pre-war China, The Bonesetter’s Daughter is an excavation of the human spirit. With great warmth and humour, Amy Tan gives us a mesmerising story of a mother and daughter discovering together that what they share in their bones through history and heredity is priceless beyond measure.

We'll be meeting in the Potrero Hill neighborhood on Sunday July 21 at 2pm at the The Thinker's Cafe.

Next Book to Read:

Daughters who walk this path - Yejide Kilanko (Nigeria)

WOW Book Club: Don't be Afraid Gringo - June 2013

Our next book club discussion will focus on Honduras through the book "Don't be Afraid, Gringo" by Elvia Alvarado (translator - Media Benjamin).

 

Here's a book summary:

The award-winning oral history of Elvia Alvarado, a courageous campesina (peasant) activist in Honduras, the poorest country in Central America. Trained by the Catholic Church to organize women's groups to combat malnutrition, Alvarado began to question why campesinos were malnourished to begin with. Her growing political awareness, her travels by foot over the back roads of Honduras, and her conversations with people frm all over the country have given her insights into the internal workings of her society that far surpass those of the majority of campesinos who have never ventured outside their villages.

Working as a campesino organizer, Alvarado has led dangerous land recovery actions in an effort to enforce the national land reform laws. As a result of these activities, she has been harassed, jailed, and tortured at the hands of the Honduran military.

We'll be meeting on Sunday June 23 at Spiro Coffee in the Van Ness neighborhood!

Next Book to Read:

July 2013: The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan (China)