NewGround Book Club 2024

We're excited to announce our NewGround 2024 Book Club, featuring four compelling novels and memoirs.

Our first talk will be with Stephanie Saldaña, author of What We Remember Will Be Saved: A Story of Refugees and the Things They Carry. Stephanie is a writer, teacher and journalist who specializes in religious diversity in the Middle East, with a focus on refugees. We're looking forward to speaking with her about all these topics on September 30 at 7 PM at St Paul's Commons, 840 Echo Park Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90026. This conversation will be available to attend both in-person and virtually via Zoom.

Second, we'll speak with Sandy Tolan, author of The Lemon Tree, which tells the story of the al-Khairi and Eshkenazi families and their separate and intertwined histories to a single house and the lemon tree in its garden. Sandy is a best-selling author, and an award-winning radio and print journalist who reports on and comments frequently about Palestine and Israel. We will speak with him on October 28, 5 PM PST on Zoom.

On November 18, 12 PM PST, we'll talk with Ibtisam Barakat about Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood. Set in Ramallah during the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War, her memoir captures what it is like to be a child whose world is shattered by war. Ibtisam is a Palestinian-American author and poet whose work centers on healing social injustices, especially in the lives of young people.

We'll also read Albert Memmi's The Pillar of Salt, a semi-autobiographical novel about a young boy growing up in French-colonized Tunisia who must contend with his identities as Jew, Arab, and African at the advent of World War II. Albert Memmi's novels and nonfiction explored his complex identity as an anti-imperialist, Zionist, and self-described "Jewish Arab." Memmi passed away in 2020, so we will watch a short film on Memmi's perspective on identity in the context of colonialism and then have a conversation about our responses to his book and the film. This will be on November 13 on Zoom.

We hope you can join us for all of these illuminating conversations.

This project was made possible with support from California Humanities, a non-profit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Visit www.calhum.org.