Black Voices Book Club
What does it look like for a predominantly white church to work toward racial justice and reconciliation?
It begins with humbly listening to the voices of our Black brothers and sisters. The Black Voices Book Club is an attempt to do just that.
Each month, from October to May, we’ll engage with a different book by a Black author and come together to discuss what we’re learning. Come to one or come to all—let’s learn together.
April 1
Your Plantation Prom is Not Okay by Kelly McWilliams
Harriet Douglass lives with her historian father on an old plantation in Louisiana, which they’ve transformed into one of the South's few enslaved people’s museums. Together, while grieving the recent loss of Harriet’s mother, they run tours that help keep the memory of the past alive.
Harriet's world is turned upside down by the arrival of mother and daughter Claudia and Layla Hartwell—who plan to turn the property next door into a wedding venue, and host the offensively antebellum-themed wedding of two Hollywood stars.
Harriet’s fully prepared to hate Layla Hartwell, but it seems that Layla might not be so bad after all—unlike many people, this California influencer is actually interested in Harriet's point of view. Harriet's sure she can change the hearts of Layla and her mother, but she underestimates the scale of the challenge…and when her school announces that prom will be held on the plantation, Harriet’s just about had it with this whole racist timeline! Overwhelmed by grief and anger, it’s fair to say she snaps.
Can Harriet use the power of social media to cancel the celebrity wedding and the plantation prom? Will she accept that she’s falling in love with her childhood best friend, who’s unexpectedly returned after years away? Can she deal with the frustrating reality that Americans seem to live in two completely different countries? And through it all, can she and Layla build a bridge between them?
Wednesday, April 1
6:30-8pm
H2 Classroom [across from the Welcome Center]
Led by: Holly VanderYacht
RSVP HERE
May 6
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
In Morrison’s acclaimed first novel, Pecola Breedlove—an 11-year-old Black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others—prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment.
Wednesday, May 6
6:30-8pm
H2 Classroom [across from the Welcome Center]
Led by: Holly VanderYacht
RSVP HERE