DISCUSSION GUIDES

Summary: In Ordinary Girls—one of the most anticipated books of the year—Jaquira Díaz writes a fierce and eloquent memoir of her challenging girlhood and triumphant coming of age in Puerto Rico and Miami Beach. Her family split apart. Her mother battled schizophrenia and addiction. Her own life was upended by violence and sexual assault. And she searched for support for her burgeoning sexual identity. But with refreshing honesty and vivid lyricism, Jaquira Díaz maps a way out of despair toward love and hope to become her version of the girl she always wanted to be.

Summary: Antiracism is a transformative concept that reorients and reenergizes the conversation about racism—and, even more fundamentally, points us toward liberating new ways of thinking about ourselves and each other. At its core, racism is a powerful system that creates false hierarchies of human value; its warped logic extends beyond race, from the way we regard people of different ethnicities or skin colors to the way we treat people of different sexes, gender identities, and body types. Racism intersects with class and culture and geography and even changes the way we see and value ourselves. In How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi takes readers through a widening circle of antiracist ideas—from the most basic concepts to visionary possibilities—that will help readers see all forms of racism clearly, understand their poisonous consequences, and work to oppose them in our systems and in ourselves. Kendi weaves an electrifying combination of ethics, history, law, and science with his own personal story of awakening to antiracism. This is an essential work for anyone who wants to go beyond the awareness of racism to the next step: contributing to the formation of a just and equitable society.

Summary: This is a story of friendship. This is a story of hope. It’s the story of an era that helped shape this country and define our times, told through one boy’s extraordinary journey through his own small patch of America. And it’s the story of a debt he can never repay to someone he knows only as The Bicycle Man.

Summary: Afterlife is a compact, nimble, and sharply droll novel. Set in this political moment of tribalism and distrust, it asks: What do we owe those in crisis in our families, including—maybe especially—members of our human family? How do we live in a broken world without losing faith in one another or ourselves? And how do we stay true to those glorious souls we have lost?

Summary: In her most revealing and powerful memoir yet, Glennon Doyle, the activist, speaker, bestselling author, and “patron saint of female empowerment” (People) explores the joy and peace we discover when we stop striving to meet others’ expectations and start trusting the voice deep within us.

Summary: At thirty-nine, Josie Bordelon has left behind her career as the "it" black beauty of the '90s and is now the director of admissions at San Francisco's most sought after private school. While managing the shenanigans of over-anxious parents at school, Josie is also trying to keep her seventeen-year-old daughter from making the same mistakes she did.

Summary: On a sunny summer morning by the sea in New England, Susan Ford’s cocoon of privilege is threatened when an Iraqi man from her distant past boards a plane in Baghdad to come find her.