We would like to open the floor for a vote on what the next bookclub book should be. Like a lot of white American readers, I’ve been recently coming to terms with the fact that I’ve read mostly white authors. It’s our responsibility as lovers of art to engage deliberately in the work of black artists—since these brilliant contributions have historically been excluded from syllabi & the cannon, it’s the responsibility of us individual readers to subvert that on our own! With that in mind, these are some books that I’ve been excited to read. I wrote tiny situating tags for each based on what I’ve heard about the books, & why consequently I’m excited to read them, but please don’t eviscerate me if one of them is way off… like I said I havn’t read any of em yet! I encourage you to do additional research to inform your vote if you like. Here are the options we’re considering for our next book club:
– The Sellout (2014) by Paul Beatty
howling satire about slavery & capitalism
– Parable of the Sower (1993) by Octavia Butler
environmental dystopia by the legendary sci-fi innovator
– Open City (2011) by Teju Cole
a digressive & cerebral walk through nyc, i remember people went nuts when this one came out
– Citizen (2014) by Claudia Rankine
known as a milestone in american lit. experimental, intertextual, genre bending inquiry into race in contemporary USA
Click here for the poll
Let’s try ranked choice voting for this! The link to the poll makes it pretty self explanatory, but the main gist is that you’ll apply the numbers 1-4 to these choices. If a majority of people agree on their first choice we’ll have a winner. If not, we’ll eliminate the least-voted for book, with your second choice replacing your first choice, & so on, until we’ve picked our book!