“A profound and riveting story of identity and resilience.”
—Christina Baker Kline, author of Orphan Train

For readers of All the Light We Cannot See, a moving and deeply humane story about a trans man who must relinquish the freedoms of prewar Berlin to survive first the Nazis and then the Allies while protecting the ones he loves.

Brimming with hope, resilience, and the enduring power of community, The Lilac People tells an extraordinary story inspired by real events and recovers an occluded moment of trans history.

While The Lilac People is a work of fiction, author Milo Todd was inspired by true history and artifacts he found in his research. Its pages contain such events as the rise of the original trans and queer fascism movement, the first documented queer and trans book ban, and other atrocities.

Here you can see some images to help you visualize that time and to read more about the research.

“A stunning debut about love, race, brutality, and the balm of forgiveness.” —People, A Best New Book

A four-year-old Mi’kmaq girl goes missing from the blueberry fields of Maine, sparking a mystery that will haunt the survivors, unravel a family, and remain unsolved for nearly fifty years.

“A harrowing tale of Indigenous family separation…Peters excels in writing characters for whom we can’t help rooting…takes on the monumental task of giving witness to people who suffered through racist attempts of erasure like her Mi’kmaw ancestors. ‘White folks been trying to take the Indian out of us for centuries,’ a character tells Norma. ‘But now that you know, you gotta let people know.’ Peters is letting people know.” —The New York Times Book Review

For readers of The Vanishing Half and Woman of Light, this showstopping debut by a vibrant new voice in fiction is a riveting novel about the search for truth, the shadow of trauma, and the persistence of love across time.

Discover more and find discussion questions for The Lilac People and The Berry Pickers for your next group meeting!

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Welcome to Oak Knoll. Old brick homes, stately trees, residents who know one another. Like Valerie Alston-Holt and her son Xavier, a talented classical guitar player. Life hasn’t always been easy since the loss of her husband. But Valerie has persisted, guided by the presence of the historic oak in her backyard. And Xavier will be heading to San Francisco in the fall to study music.

But the arrival of Brad Whitman, a local celebrity thanks to his HVAC business and a million-dollar invention, threatens all of this. Brad clears the neighboring plot of land to build a luxury home for his family, threatening the peace—and the giant oak—next door.

The stage is set for these two neighbors to clash. Their children, Xavier and Juniper Whitman, will fall in love, and the entire neighborhood will take part in a tragedy.

What You See Isn’t What You Get

The Whitmans are white, the Alston-Holts a biracial family: Valerie is Black and her former husband was white. And along with the differences in race and class come assumptions about who these characters really are.

Valerie reminds herself not to jump to conclusions about Brad’s slick personality and his wife Julia’s trendy fitness clothes, about their fancy home and pool. But all the neighbors talk, sweeping readers along, forming the same first impressions.

A Good Neighborhood does this well. It shows us our own assumptions about the characters, and then it complicates them, or even turns them inside out. The reality soon becomes more clear, and more complex. Julia Whitman plays the role of the wealthy wife, but she endured a hard life of poverty. And her mistreatment by men in the workplace doesn’t differ much from Valerie’s own experience growing up with an inappropriate uncle.

As the novel unfolds, we realize how important it is to consider someone’s complex history. How it contributes to empathy and defuses conflict. And yet how hard it can be to learn those personal histories, an awareness that often arrives too late.

Crossed Lovers

Xavier and Juniper are star-crossed for sure, as Xavier discovers a force equal to his music. They’re class-crossed, too, given their lifestyles. And race-crossed, especially given how Brad Whitman remains ignorant of Xavier’s biracial background. Love transcends these differences for the young lovers, who follow only their happiness.

And yet the differences matter, and they pose a dangerous threat. The novel shows how easily the most promising of talents and simplest of emotions can end in a matter of minutes. Readers will have much to discuss about how, or even whether, good intentions stand a chance in the face of large forces like cultural attitudes, the media, and the justice system.

Part of the Chorus

A Greek chorus of neighbors tells the story of the two families, with ominous hints about the outcome: “It’s in the telling of a tragedy that we sow the seeds—we hope—of prevention of future sorrows.”

But it’s easy, perhaps too easy, to observe and comment from the outside. Readers take their place in this group, becoming bystanders to the events and also implicated in what happens. They will begin to wonder: could the result have been avoided if those in the neighborhood had listened better, or stepped in?

A Good Neighborhood raises important questions about our role as individuals in a community. The novel invites readers to look at their own communities and discuss their place within them, their responsibility toward the people with whom they share space. They can reflect on their biases and impressions of others they know. And they can recognize that other, deeper personal stories may lie behind them.

And even if the future generation finds ways to heal and bring justice, we leave the novel with an unsettled feeling. This is a story all too likely to continue, and will do so, unless we change.

Discover more and find discussion questions for A Good Neighborhood for your next group meeting!

Visit the author’s website.

The post Learning to Live Together: A Good Neighborhood appeared first on Reading Group Choices.

Denounced and interrogated, tortured and burned. Kathyrn Nuernberger recounts and investigates the stories of witches, women persecuted for being something other than what their world demanded. The essays accomplish what essays do best. They dive into these lives to see what the past can reveal about us and our world today. Or as the author says: “I wonder about … what in each of us is a little bit witch.”

Crones and Cunning Women

Known by many names, witches occupy a place in our collective understanding. But Nuernberger lifts them from the abstract. Like the noblest of spells, she brings them to life and gives voice to their fates. Readers follow their individual stories through the collection.

Agnes Waterhouse, whose daughter confesses to have seen her mother change their cat into a toad. Maria Gonçalves Cajada, a Brazilian sorceress accused of creating storms to shipwreck Portuguese vessels on pirate islands. Marie Laveau, in what was truly a feat of magic, navigated the complex laws of land ownership to secure a financial future for her and her children.

In each case, Nuernberger looks within the potions and trials to ask important questions about why: the motives, their connection to history and human nature. What do these stories tell us about the needs and fears of humans back then? And what do they illuminate now?

Tangled Vines

It quickly becomes clear that the past not only reflects the present, but the two are inextricably entwined. The essays make all-too-tragic connections between the stories of persecution and headlines today. From the wrongful conviction of Black youth to sexual assault investigations. Notably, the deception in interrogation methods, with authorities “inventing the proof they were desperate to receive.”

She also turns to the Earth, the roots and wildflowers that bring healing—and condemnation. They lead her to reflections about her own garden, about fracking and the tainted water in Ozark mining towns.

She looks at the larger forces behind the treatment of the women in these stories and finds that “The history of witches is a history of need.” The need to create a system of rational belief. The need to embody the sins of a community in an “other”. The need to keep the lesser parts of ourselves on the outside, to maintain an “us” and “them”.

Readers will find no shortage of opportunities to link the lives and issues in The Witch of Eye to the events of today’s world. And all of us can find ways to navigate our way forward.

Learning How to Live

Along with the stories of others, readers accompany Nuernberger as she investigates her own life. She contemplates the place of love and desire in her marriage, and whether to separate from her husband. She witnesses through her daughter how the unwanted kisses of a young boy at school demonstrate how early we begin to form our expectations about the world. And at her side are the witches, the myths, the literature that serves as a guide for how to live.

She draws in philosophy and art, from Foucault to The Crucible, from how J.M.W. Turner captures fire in his paintings to the many ways in which one can understand a rose. She casts a kaleidoscopic eye toward her life and world, and creates her own spell.

Readers, too, are invited to reflect on how history, art, and literature have influenced their beliefs. They can ask what signposts they have found as they move through life, and which ones they can look to today.

In the end, the lessons that we can learn from witches may be the very desires that drew suspicion onto them. They dared not to conform, insisted on inventing themselves, and refused to apologize in the pursuit of a more just world. As the author notes, “it is helpful to remember her crime was never that she displayed too little of her power.”

Photo: Marie Laveau, portrait by Frank Schneider

Discover more and find discussion questions for The Witch of Eye for your next group meeting!

Visit the author’s website.

The post Past Meets Present: The Witch of Eye appeared first on Reading Group Choices.

This tale of a woman with a tortured past in pursuit of a disappearing species gives readers and book groups much to discuss about finding home in a changing world.

The Final Journey

Franny Stone, the protagonist of Migrations, feels drawn again and again to the sea. Eternally restless, she follows where her passions lead her, whether sneaking into university lectures given by her yet-to-be future husband, Niall, or off across Ireland in search of her family’s roots. But now she’s on a mission. She is determined to follow the Arctic tern as it makes its migration south from Greenland to the Antarctic. This journey is all the more important for a simple reason: it’s likely their last.

The tern has the longest migratory journey of any animal, racking up enough miles in a lifetime to travel to the moon and back three times. They’re also disappearing because their source of food is being depleted. Climate change and over-harvesting have led to a growing absence of fish.

Franny will do anything to follow the birds, and she convinces a reluctant sea captain, Ennis Malone, to take her aboard his ship, the Saghani. Ennis has a goal of his own: to find the fabled “Golden Catch”, a massive haul of fish like what used to occur in former times. So begins the story of a dangerous and possibly doomed journey.

Finding Home

The terns aren’t the only creatures in flight. Franny has a dark past that slowly begins to reveal itself. The night terrors that threaten herself and her husband. The daily violence during a stint in prison for a crime she may or may not have committed. And a search for her own roots, for the mother who disappeared when Franny was only a child, to connect the lines between her upbringing in Ireland and Australia.

It’s no surprise that the Saghani is full of characters with shadows in their pasts. The crew includes Samuel, who quotes poetry and has an epic number of children waiting for his return; and Léa, superstitious and volatile; and of course Ennis, who most closely matches Fanny in terms of ambition and secrets. They carry traumas best left forgotten, far from home or in search of one. All respond to the pull of the sea and the only livelihoods they have known. And some will face a reckoning with their decisions, as inevitable as the changing climate.

A Climate Novel

Migrations is a book for our ecological times, directly addressing the controversies and complexities of the state of the planet and the life that inhabits it. Fanny straddles both sides of the environmental debate, as a conservationist and also as part of a fishing crew, whose livelihoods depend on a dying industry. Book clubs are asked to consider their own stances, and also discuss how effectively novels about the climate crisis can carry a message.

The topics of discussion also move beyond current events. Fanny and the crew present opportunities to question what it means to have a home, or be without one. Readers can explore what they know about their own origins and the challenges of finding home as the world changes. In a novel populated by characters who, willingly or not, are left adrift, the title becomes much more than a simple definition.

Most notably, the novel places its humans on an animal scale. These characters feel endangered, the creatures just as close to losing their larger home, this environment, as the Arctic terns. And readers of Charlotte McConaghy’s novel will ultimately be asked to think about what happens when we have nowhere left to go.

Discover more and find discussion questions for Migrations for your next group meeting!

Visit the author’s website.

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During the fall of Saigon in 1975, Phuc Tran’s family evacuates and begins a journey that brings them to the small town of Carlisle, Pennsylvania. It’s here, in this unfamiliar country, that this coming-of-age memoir begins with a child’s question to his parents. What is his name? Not his Vietnamese name, but his English one? What follows is a vivid, humorous, and raw account of coming to the United States as an immigrant and the long journey of finding his place.

The book takes us through Tran’s formative years. From stealing Topps trading cards to publishing an essay in the school paper on racism in his town. From running from the police on skateboards to losing himself in the stacks of a library. He navigates the unforgiving demands of finding friends along with the strict standards imposed by his parents. (The latter come with violent consequences if disobeyed.)

We watch his awareness grow: the awareness of his difference from others, how his parents interact with their adopted homeland, the prejudices carried by neighbors and institutions, and the simple and powerful kindness of strangers.

We follow his quest to fit in, because as he writes, “Vietnamese got me teased. Vietnamese got me into fights. Vietnamese meant non-American.” A quest that means survival for Tran, who takes guidance where he can find it: pop culture, punk music, and books.

Lifetime Reading

Tran’s father insists on his son’s place on the school honor role, sacrifices his training as a lawyer to work in a tire factory in Carlisle, and is prone to violent outbursts. He also introduces Tran to the public library, which will become an essential part of his self-education.

The memoir organizes each chapter around a book that had powerful meaning for Tran. The Metamorphosis, The Importance of Being Ernest, The Iliad, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and others. The discovery of each book tracks his life and his changing sense of identity, from his relationship to family, desire, assimilation, and racism. Much like the most important books in many readers’ lives, they appear when they’re most needed.

Consider his discovery of The Lifetime Reading Plan by Clifton Fadiman. Discovered by chance for 50 cents in a library basement, the book outlines a classic canon of Western literature. It gives him a guide to the pursuit he loves most (besides punk rock): reading. And places it in a context that he longs for: a manual for this country. It’s one moment among many that will make readers remember their own experience and essential appreciation of books. A reminder as well of how the lessons within still give us guides for how to live and navigate unfamiliar territory.

The Currency of Culture

Pop culture saturates Sigh, Gone. Phuc Tran captures the era of the late 70s, 80s, and 90s with books, music, film, and television. Tran moves from searching from Wookie in an English dictionary to learning how to pronounce the name of Camus and other French Existentialists. He swaps mix tapes and music and buys armloads of old flannel shirts to take on a punk identity. Since he’s already different, his initial goal with punk is deliberately looking as different as possible.

Fitting in ultimately comes down to cultural references, which is currency on the streets and in the schools of America. Belonging means sharing favorite Star Wars characters on a neighbor’s playground. That’s how a new culture is transmitted, and where Tran turns to learn more about his new home. The books and music come with a desire to be accepted, to belong. And all end up delivering a more profound result: helping us become not what others want us to be, but who we are.

Discover more and read an excerpt from Sigh, Gone.

Visit the author’s website.

The post Coming of Age in America: Sigh, Gone appeared first on Reading Group Choices.

Mary Pipher is the author of several New York Times bestsellers, including books that explore the lives of women and girls, and the unique challenges of youth and aging.

Reviving Ophelia, written while her daughter was a teenager, explored the lives of teenage girls and the stresses and anxieties they face. Originally published in 1994 to great acclaim, the 25^th anniversary edition, updated for the 21^st century, appeared in 2019. Another Country focuses on the challenges adults confront when caring for people in the later stages of life. Pipher wrote it while caring for her elderly mother. And her latest book, Women Rowing North, discusses the issues women face when aging, and the experience of getting older. Being in her 70s, once again Pipher draws from her own life.

Rowing North

In the introduction to Women Rowing North, Pipher defines the foundation for happiness, even if it does not come easily. Key traits include resilience, positive attitude, gratitude, and intentionality. She provides examples of aging from a variety of female perspectives, offering a window into the realistic reactions and challenges of women. And the book shows how being older and being female provides the emotional resiliency and capacity to deal with aging.

The firsthand anecdotes and examples offer guidelines for women to navigate their later years. These guidelines have helped the women in the book, as well as the author, to lead more enriching lives. And she hopes the same lessons will help the reader. Yet instead of a self-help book with steps to follow, Women Rowing North shows through personal experiences how you can get more out of your life even when it becomes more limited. It also shows how you can find joy and happiness with what you already have. Pipher explored this last point in her recent New York Times article.

Ideal for Discussion: Women and All Readers

This book is terrific for discussion because it offers a chance to talk about broad ideas like approaching the later stages of life, caring for friends and family, and caring for oneself and overcoming personal challenges. But it also offers a chance to talk about related ideas that might not appear so obvious. For example, Pipher shows how most older women are actually happier than their younger selves. This finding also provides an opportunity to discuss the definition of happiness, how it relates to contentment, and how it can be redefined at different points in our lives.

While the book aims to reach a specific aging audience, the content is relevant to readers of all ages and gender. Not only can anyone relate to many of the feelings and experiences, but they can also benefit from exploring the stereotypes and challenges of getting older. Younger audiences can gain more appreciation and understanding for older generations. And they will also be better prepared for the next phases in their own lives.

This book provides a range of sincere and inspiring first-hand accounts. These range from single women to those caring full-time for grandchildren. From women in the workforce to women who can no longer work due to health reasons. The book also offers practical and hopeful advice, and there’s a lot to fuel an engaging conversation. But the very personal nature of the book calls on readers to make their own connections and share their stories. This can lead to longer discussions that may drift from the topic. Members can be mindful to find a balance between everyone being heard and everyone feeling comfortable. Groups can find discussion questions for the book here to help guide the meeting.

Women Rowing North is well worth the effort, a relevant and insightful lens into a common but under-discussed life experience.

Further Reading

To read more by Mary Pipher: Reviving Ophelia

For more about women navigating different phases of life: Why We Can’t Sleep by Ada Calhoun

To read more about aging: Being Mortal by Atul Gawande, Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast, Essays After Eighty by Donald Hall

Books about caring for others: I Found My Tribe by Ruth Fitzmaurice and It’s Not Yet Dark by Simon Fitzmaurice

The post Rowing North: Lessons on Aging for Women… and Everyone appeared first on Reading Group Choices.

Evan Hansen dreads the new school year. He’ll be a senior, and his arm is strapped with a cast from when he fell from a tree over the summer. His father left for Colorado and lives with a new wife, while his mother works as a nurse and takes classes, and so is rarely around. Evan has social anxiety and takes Atavan to calm down. His therapist, Dr. Sherman, waits for his weekly assignment, a letter to himself that begins “Dear Evan Hansen” and ends “Sincerely, your best and most dearest friend, Me.” And it all adds up to Evan wondering:

I mean, let’s face it: would anybody notice if I disappeared tomorrow?

This letter will end up fatefully in the hands of another misunderstood student at school, Connor Murphy. And when Connor takes his own life, it becomes evidence of a friendship between him and Evan — which soon propels Evan into school popularity, into the arms of the girl he loves, into a social media phenomenon. Even if that friendship never existed.

You Will Be Found

The novel Dear Evan Hansen comes on the heels of the acclaimed Broadway show. It tackles the feeling of isolation that can affect young people who struggle to fit in, make friends, and deal with mental health difficulties like depression. For example, Evan carries his own feelings of loneliness and a lack of confidence. But Connor’s suicide serves as a tragic reminder of what can happen when people feel invisible.

September marks Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, and Evan’s story brings the perfect message for young people who struggle with isolation and mental health challenges: You are not alone.

As one of the musical’s popular anthems expresses it:

So let the sun come streaming in
‘Cause you’ll reach up and you’ll rise again
Lift your head and look around
You will be found

Help Is Here

Here are several great resources devoted to mental health awareness and encouraging those who feel lost or in crisis to reach out. Because however difficult a feeling or situation, someone can help!

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline

This lifeline is staffed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to provide support to people in crisis. Anyone can call this free and confidential service:

1-800-273-8255

The website features resources for young people, survivors of loss, LGBTQ+, veterans, and more.

Use the tag #BeThe1To on social media to share the message of hope and help this September during National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, which includes World Suicide Prevention Day on September 10th!

Child Mind Institute

This independent, national nonprofit remains committed to increasing awareness and advocacy for mental health issues related to children and young adults. The website includes a Symptom Checker and a variety of resources for parents to handle topics such as bullying and helping a child to socialize. Teachers can find strategies to recognize learning and mental health disabilities and respond to traumatic events, among other issues. The Institute also leads brain research to better understand mental health disorders. They operate an in-person clinic as well.

Crisis Text Line

Text from anywhere in the USA to reach a trained Crisis Counselor, 24/7:

Text HOME to 741741

The Crisis Text Line aims to reach people when and where they need it. Unlike phone calls, individuals can text silently and from any location. This confidential service has received more than 100 million messages, not only related to suicide prevention but any crisis or call for help. The line has branched out to Canada and the UK, and seeks volunteers to be trained as counselors.

The Trevor Project

Founded in 1998 by the creators of the Academy Award-winning short film Trevor, The Trevor Project is the leading national organization that provides crisis intervention for LGBTQ young people under 25.

To find a non-judgmental, safe, and strictly confidential space to talk, 24/7, with trained counselors, call the TrevorLifeline:

1-866-488-7386

The service also offers chat and texting.

Their online Support Center features FAQs and resources about a variety of gender and sexuality-related topics, such as coming out, HIV/AIDS, and healthy relationships.

Turn the Page

So you’ve read Dear Evan Hansen. Next check out these other books for young readers related to emotional and mental health challenges, with the same positive focus on finding strength and help, and being true to yourself!

(Don’t) Call Me Crazy: 33 Voices Start the Conversation about Mental Health

Edited by Kelly Jensen

Actors, athletes, writers, and artists offer essays, lists, comics, and illustrations that explore a wide range of topics:

– their personal experiences with mental illness,
– how we do and don’t talk about mental health,
– help for better understanding how every person’s brain is wired differently,
– and what, exactly, might make someone crazy.

If you’ve ever struggled with your mental health, or know someone who has, come on in, turn the pages… and let’s get talking.

Ivy Aberdeen’s Letter to the World

By Ashley Herring Blake

When a tornado rips through town, twelve-year-old Ivy Aberdeen’s house is destroyed and her family of five is displaced. Ivy feels invisible and ignored in the aftermath of the storm–and what’s worse, her notebook filled with secret drawings of girls holding hands has gone missing.

Mysteriously, Ivy’s drawings begin to reappear in her locker with notes from someone telling her to open up about her identity. Ivy thinks–and hopes–that this someone might be her classmate, another girl for whom Ivy has begun to develop a crush. Will Ivy find the strength and courage to follow her true feelings?

Turtles All the Way Down

By John Green

It’s quite rare to find someone who sees the same world you see.

Aza is trying. She is trying to be a good daughter, a good friend, a good student, and maybe even a good detective, while also living within the ever-tightening spiral of her own thoughts.

In his long-awaited return, John Green, the acclaimed, award-winning author of Looking for Alaska and The Fault in Our Stars, shares Aza’s story with shattering, unflinching clarity in this brilliant novel of love, resilience, and the power of lifelong friendship.

Read an excerpt, find discussion questions, and learn more about Dear Evan Hansen the novel here!

The post You Will Be Found: Dear Evan Hansen & Suicide Prevention Awareness Month appeared first on Reading Group Choices.

The Original Rom-Com

Pride and Prejudice has been called the original romantic comedy, pitting the witty and headstrong Elizabeth Bennet against (and ultimately with) Fitzwilliam Darcy. The novel established the ground rules for how these romantic stories play out:

Two characters share a dislike of each other, born of an awkward or disastrous first encounter.

Their negative opinions grow from both internal obstacles (pride, judgment) and external ones (class, social pressure).

Circumstance forces them into contact again and again, moving between moments of connection and friction.

Compatibility seems hopeless, even after one character makes a grand declaration.

But then misunderstandings are re-understood and the two end up together.

The unlikely courtship of Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy begins with distasteful overheard remarks at a ball. And then comes a misunderstanding: Darcy’s acquaintance, George Wickham, wrongly claims to Elizabeth that Darcy has deprived him of his living. Add to this Darcy’s disapproval of the marriage of Elizabeth’s sister to his friend Bingley, and the two seem destined to despise each other.

But over the course of balls and surprise encounters, intentions are explained and truths revealed. After two marriage proposals by Mr. Darcy, Elizabeth accepts.

The “comedy” part of the rom-com equation is equally important. Austen is known for her sharp wit and satiric take on the social conventions of her day, captured by Pride’s famous opening line: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”

These ingredients have created a long line of Austen-inspired adaptations, books, and films. And now a novel that adds new “flavors”.

Classic Recipe, New Flavors

Sonali Dev’s novel honors these rom-com conventions. Dr. Trisha Raje is hailed as a genius for her skills as a neurosurgeon in San Francisco, and her innovative work has just landed her department a 10-million dollar grant. Her roots as Indian royalty have given her the pride and privilege to pursue her dreams. And yet she can’t seem to earn the approval of her demanding father, known to the family as HRH, or His Royal Highness. And she remains overshadowed by her older brother Yash, a candidate for California governor.

Enter DJ Caine (given name “Darcy”), an up-and-coming chef hired to cook at a political dinner for Yash. DJ needs this client and the work. He’s a recent transplant to the city, where his sister Emma awaits an operation to remove a fatal tumor, the surgery performed by no one other than Trisha.

The first encounter in the kitchen of the Raje family home presents a classic clash of personalities and misunderstanding. Trisha, famished and pressured by work and family affairs, nearly ruins an all-important dessert just before DJ is about to serve it. Add an overheard remark with a touch of class judgment, and these romantic sparring partners face a rocky start.

But DJ’s exceptional talent in the kitchen will slowly soften Trisha, and her determination to help save DJ’s sister will work its way past his prejudice. The two have a long road of self-discovery ahead of them (including a troublemaker named Wickham), straight out of Austen.

But this is 2019, not 1813, and much has changed in the world.

A Pride & Prejudice for Our Time

Readers of Pride, Prejudice and Other Flavors won’t be mistaken about the time period. The novel falls squarely into the diverse social and political world of racial tension and the #MeToo era.

Women in Austen’s day faced social and economic ruin if they didn’t find a reputable mate from a respectable social class. Class distinctions still exist in Dev’s novel, but they take on a whole new complexity. Trisha is descended from Indian royalty, while DJ is born to Rwandan and Indian parents, raised in England in a low-income, single-parent family.

Both work equally hard and carry a strong pride in their fields. Trisha’s comments about DJ as the “hired help” will force her to broaden her ways — much as DJ must do with his preconceived notions about her privilege.

Dev brings nuance to the discussion of race. When DJ accuses her of “acting white”, Trisha considers the difference between that claim and owning your own identity. The story also deals with the patriarchy, as Trisha’s male boss assumes automatic authority while discussing treatments for Emma. And after locking their keys in the car, Trisha and DJ’s attempt to break in attracts a nervous police officer. The moment of racial tension that follows quickly threatens to escalate.

The rom-com has traveled a long way, straight into modern problems and modern times.

An Endless Feast

And Other Flavors includes many references to the work that inspired it, from plot points to character names. Dev’s novel confirms the lasting appeal of Pride and Prejudice and Austen’s popularity, which ranges from spin-offs to festivals. Authors and readers continue to flock to the romantic story her work defined. What keeps them coming back? The classic themes of love and courtship? Or a craving for the familiar ways the plot unfolds?

Great questions for your next group discussion! In the meantime, feast on the latest incarnation that adds a 21st-century spin to the 19th-century rom-com original.

Read an excerpt from Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors here!

Looking for more introductions to great authors? Check out the featured interviews on our blog!

The post Updating the Rom-Com: Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors appeared first on Reading Group Choices.

The novel tells the story of 16 year-old Starr Carter, an African-American teen who witnesses the fatal shooting of her unarmed friend Khalil by the police. The death sparks protests and debate among Starr’s family, friends, and community, challenging her to find her voice and tell the true story.

The novel is already being read by most Madison-area schools, but recently class discussion went one step further when Angie Thomas paid a visit to Madison for two days of workshops, presentations, and a reading. It was a rare opportunity for students to meet the author behind one of today’s most relevant books.

Reading Group Choices and 702WI coordinated the tour in partnership with local schools and Goodman Community Center (GCC). Thomas began with a presentation and Q&A at the GCC’s Lussier LOFT. Students from the Girls Inc Programs at East High School, Lussier Community Center, and GCC, as well as members of GCC’s other after-school programs, listened to Thomas’ message about the difficulty and importance of finding the courage to speak up.

“It took me my whole life to realize that I had any power at all,” Thomas told them. “You matter, and you have value. You got power — well, how do you use it?”

Thomas shared her own journey from being a teen rapper to becoming a writer. The killing of Oscar Grant, an unarmed African-American, by police in Oakland in 2009 along with the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement shifted her into activism.

Students responded to her message of speaking out against injustice. They also commented on the connection between her book and her life—and the similarities to their own lives. “I thought it was a book she just wrote,” one student said, “but she experienced some of the things in it. I felt like I really was her.”

In the evening, Thomas spoke to a crowd from more than 20 area schools and community centers that came together at Goodman Community Center. More than 100 students received a copy of the book, made possible by Reading Group Choices.

Thomas spent the following day talking to sophomore English classes at Madison West High School, followed by a visit to La Follette High School, where students from Whitehorse, Sennet, and Sun Prairie Middle Schools also attended.

At this last event, Thomas was introduced by senior Sharita Holden, who performed an original poem that shared themes with the novel.

“It’s the idea that you’re more than what you might be perceived by society,” Holden explained. More than 100 students received a copy of the book, made possible by a grant from La Follette’s Student Support Foundations and Reading Group Choices.

The visit allowed students to witness the connection between literature and real life. As one attendee mentioned afterward: “It was cool how she came to us.” Thomas also left her audience with a clear message. “Speak up and speak out when things, or the things people say, make you uncomfortable,” she said. “I have one big request. I want you to change our world.”

Thomas’ next novel, On the Come Up, is scheduled for release in 2019.

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