The Monadnock Food Co-op (MFC) Community Book Club aims to create a space for community engagement amongst Co-op Member-Owners and the larger community through thoughtful connections. We strive to be a space that will engage and foster civil dialogue through reading and discussion. We will meet on the first Monday of each month at 6:00 pm in person on the Co-op patio if the weather permits, otherwise we will meet in the Co-op Meeting Room.
Guidelines
Lead or Facilitation
Although there will not be a leader, Megan, our Co-op’s Community Coordinator, will send out email reminders and come with questions for participants if there is no obvious place to begin our discussion.
Title Selection
Picking the next months title selection will be a collective process at the latter half of each months meeting. The group will be asked to suggest titles, along with short blurbs about each selection and we will collectively decide.
Titles Read So Far
February 2022: When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir By Patrisse Cullors, asha bandele
March 2022: The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South By Michael W. Twitty
April 2022: How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America By Clint Smith
May 2022: The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation By Anna Malaika Tubbs
June 2022: Crying in H Mart: A Memoir By Michelle Zauner
July 2022: Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge By Erica Armstrong Dunbar
August 2022: Night of the Living Rez By Morgan Talty
September 2022: The Book of Delights: Essays By Ross Gay
October 2022: The Vanishing Half: A Novel By Brit Bennett
November 2022: Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents By Isabel Wilkerson
January 2023: The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois: A Novel By Honoree Fanonne Jeffers
February 2023: I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown
March 2023: Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot by Mikki Kendall
April 2023: Deacon King Kong by James McBride
May 2023: Black Boy by Richard Wright
June 2023: Honor Killing: Race, Rape, and Clarence Darrow’s Spectacular Last Case by David E. Stannard
July 2023: Inciting Joy: Essays by Ross Gay
August 2023: The East Indian: A Novel by Brinda Charry
September 2023: The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
October 2023: The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich
January 2024: Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride
February 2024: The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story By Nikole Hannah-Jones (Created by)
March 2024: The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story By Nikole Hannah-Jones (Created by)
April 2024: First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers By Loung Ung
May 2024: Salt Houses by Hala Alyan
June 2024: James: A Novel by Percival Everett
July 2024: The Berry Pickers: A Novel by Amanda Peters
August 2024: Finding Me: A Memoir by Viola Davis
September 2024: Kindred: By Octavia Butler
Discussion
We will collectively decide how spontaneous, unrestrained, and free we would like our discussions to be. We can unanimously decide if we prefer a list of questions prepared and sent to members before our monthly group or not. Ultimately we want this group to cooperatively determine how we will spend our time.
Group Agreements
- Be present & engaged.
- Have grace with others in the group & ourselves.
- Consider power dynamics.
- Listen with respect.
- Acknowledge our impact & recognize intent.
- Sit with discomfort.
- Respect confidentiality.
- Examine the harm or danger of a single story.
- Notice patterns of participation.
