Iberia African American Historical Society starts book club
The Iberia African American Historical Society invites the public to join a new book club. In October, November and December IAAHS will host virtual discussions on three different books by black authors about “The Great Migration.”
Participation in the book club is free and open to all, though organizers ask that potential participants sign up at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeXzX8jlO4-cJ_Ajy_NDk47VP-q_vXQ... to stay up-to-date on book club information, such as upcoming selections and topics, discussion dates, questions submissions, and other details.
Participants can find copies of book selections at their local library, bookseller and online, or borrow from a friend.
The first virtual discussion will be at 6 p.m. Oct. 19. The first selection will be national bestseller, “The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration,” the first book by Pulitzer Prize winner Isabel Wilkerson and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Heartland Prize for Nonfiction, the Anisfield-Wolf Award for Nonfiction, the Lynton History Prize from Harvard and Columbia universities, and the Stephen Ambrose Oral History Prize. It was also shortlisted for both the Pen-Galbraith Literary Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.
From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. In book, Wilkerson tells this story through the lives of three unique individuals.
In 1937, Ida Mae Gladney left sharecropping and prejudice in Mississippi for Chicago, where she achieved quiet blue-collar success and, in old age, voted for Barack Obama when he ran for an Illinois Senate seat.
Sharp and quick-tempered George Starling fled Florida in 1945 for Harlem, New York, where he endangered his job by fighting for civil rights, saw his family fall, and finally found peace in God.
Robert Foster left Louisiana in 1953 to pursue a medical career, and became Ray Charles’ personal physician as part of a glitteringly successful medical career, which allowed him to purchase a grand home where he often threw exuberant parties.
About the Author
Isabel Wilkerson, winner of the National Humanities Medal, has become a leading figure in narrative nonfiction, an interpreter of the human condition, and an impassioned voice for demonstrating how history can help us understand ourselves, our country and our current era of upheaval.
Through her writing, Wilkerson brings the invisible and the marginalized into the light. Through her lectures, she explores with authority the need to reconcile America’s karmic inheritance and the origins of both our divisions and our shared commonality.
She is a native of Washington, D.C., and a daughter of the “Great Migration,” the mass movement that she would go on to write about. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing in 1994, as Chicago Bureau Chief of The New York Times, making her the first African-American woman to win a Pulitzer Prize in journalism. She then devoted 15 years and interviewed more than 1,200 people to tell the story of the six million people, among them her parents, who defected from the Jim Crow South.
About The Iberia African American Historical Society
The mission of The Iberia African American Historical Society is to foster the appreciation, understanding, and teaching of the long, rich, and unique history of African Americans in Iberia Parish; and also, by example and through programs and activities, to encourage and promote research, preservation, and publication of historical materials related to the history of African Americans.
The IAAHS is a not-for-profit organization that funds special programs and events through donations. For more information, visit IAAHS.org.
For information, contact Jayd Buteaux at 337-369-6446 or info@iaahsonline.org