Book Club
The book club is an opportunity to engage in learning and professional development by reading a book, getting together with your colleagues to explore new ideas, network, discuss the content of the book, and create an action plan to apply your learning at work and in life.
Format
The book club follows this format:
- Participants will meet three times per book as a group.
- Each person receives a personal copy of the book (yours to keep), along with guided questions to consider for discussion with the larger group.
- Participants, please read the book.
- Sessions focus on a discussion about the contents and themes of the book, sharing thoughts about how the ideas presented in the book may be applied within the university community.
Facilitator
Jennifer Topping, Organizational Development, Human Resources
Session information
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Winter Offering
The Vanishing Half
Named a BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR (2020) by The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, NPR, Entertainment Weekly, Vulture, USA Today, GQ, Vanity Fair, Harper's Bazaar, Glamour, and Bustle.
The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect?
Join us to discuss :
Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.
Time: 3 - 4pm
Dates:Wednesday, February 15, 2023
Wednesday, March 8, 2023
Wednesday, April 5, 2023