Book Groups
St. Aidan's Gourmet Book Group
The St. Aidan’s Gourmet Book Group will continue to meet via zoom with LeeAnn DeSalles serving as our zoom master. She will be sending zoom instructions prior to our meetings. If you would like help with zoom, please contact LeeAnn at leeanndesalles@comcast.net. If you would like to join the Book Group, please contact elaine@mannon.com.
Monday, June 28, 2021
7:00 – 9:00 p.m.
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton. A portrait of New York’s “irresponsible, grasping, and morally corrupt” upper class during “The Gilded Age.”
Monday, July 26, 2021
7:00 – 9:00 p.m.
The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing and the Future of the Human Race by Walter Isaacson. Focusing on the life and career of Doudna, the co-winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Isaacson anguishes over the ethics of gene editing as well as its potential to control future pandemics.
Monday, August 30, 2021
7:00 – 9:00 p.m.
The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey: A sensory rich mystery that illuminates the divisions within India’s religious groups whose members struggle between devotion to the old ways and an increasingly modernizing world.
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The New Jim Crow Book Group
The New Jim Crow Book Group at St. Aidan’s began as a joint book group between members of Holy Innocent’s Episcopal Church, St. Aidan’s Episcopal Church, and Golden Bridges School (then located at St. Aidan’s.) The first meeting was convened on September 11, 2015, and for the next several months the group focused on reading and discussing The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander. After the group finished that book, we decided that we wanted to continue to read books and articles on race, and we’ve been doing so ever since, in monthly meetings at St. Aidan’s on Sunday afternoons (currently via Zoom-- please reach out to Deacon Margaret for access information).
Below is a list of our readings through 2019. All are welcome to join the group. Questions? Contact Deacon Margaret at mdyerc@stanford.edu or 650-619-0781.
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2019:
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How To Be an Anti-Racist by Ibram Kendi
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Washington Black by Esi Edugyan
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On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
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Ma Raney’s Black Bottom by August Wilson
2018:
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Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination by Toni Morrison
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Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
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The Sellout by Paul Beatty
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On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope by Deray McKesson
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Stamped from the Beginning by Ibrahim Kendi (Started in 2018, went into 2019)
2017:
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White Like Me by Tim Wise
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If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin
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Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
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Welcome to Braggville by T.J. Johnson
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"The First White President" (Atlantic article), by Ta-Nehisi Coates
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Home by Toni Morrison
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The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race by Jesmyn Ward
2016:
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The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindess by Michele Alexander
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"The Case for Reparations" (from the Atlantic Monthly) by TaNehisi Coates
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Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
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Writing My Wrongs: Life, Death, and Redemption in an American Prison by Shaka Senghor
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The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
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Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
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The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks by Jeanne Theoharis
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The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
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