Tag: #book clubs

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Meena Harris Adds Phenomenal Book Club to Growing Multimedia Portfolio

Meena Harris attends the Los Angeles screening of “Women of the Movement”. The series is based on the true story of Mamie Till-Mobley, who in 1955 risked her life to find justice after her son Emmett was brutally murdered in the Jim Crow South. The six-episode series will air in three parts beginning Jan. 6, 2022 for three consecutive weeks on ABC.

For a 2021 literary lookback, we noticed Phenomenal Media mature this year with the addition of a book club focused on exposing readers to works by underrepresented authors, particularly women of color.

The four-year-old company founded by Meena Harris launched the Phenomenal Book Club in November with choosing The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story and its young readers’ companion The 1619 Project: Born on the Water as the inaugural picks and inviting author and editor Nikole Hannah-Jones and illustrator Nikkolas Smith to a virtual event. Phenomenal Book Club was the exclusive book club partner for the books based on The New York Times project named after the year enslaved Africans first came to the U.S.

A bona fide social media star, lawyer, and activist, Meena is best known for being the niece of our first female, first Black, and first Asian second-in-command, Vice President Kamala Harris. Her pro-vaccine Dec. 21 tweet announcing she has a breakthrough case of Covid-19 after receiving her booster shot went viral with over 70,000 likes. The success online, her family connections, and her entrepreneurial activism spirit has opened doors for her to grow her media company named after Maya Angelou’s famous poem “Phenomenal Woman.”

Besides her history-making aunt, Meena’s family tree also consists of her mother Maya Harris, who has also developed a reputation expressing her activism via Twitter as a lawyer and policy expert; her stepfather Tony West, the chief legal officer at Uber; and her late grandmother Shyamala Gopalan, a cancer researcher and civil rights activist whose story is told in Kamala’s 2020 memoir The Truths We Hold: An American Journey.

Expressing activism through books

Like her aunt, Meena has a publishing career. She wrote two children’s books: Ambitious Girl, published by Little, Brown Young Readers and illustrated by Marissa Valdez, about a girl finding her journey to overcome the “too ambitious” label; and Kamala and Maya’s Big Idea, published by HarperCollins’ imprint Balzer + Bray and illustrated by Ana Ramírez González, about the kid versions of her aunt and mother organizing their community. Both New York Times best-selling books came out in the last year and most likely served as inspiration for Phenomenal Book Club.

Meena’s company started in 2017 as Phenomenal Woman Action Campaign, a community-oriented organization focused on social causes mainly through message shirts. Top campaigns include the #PhenomenalVoter campaign to encourage voters to exercise their right in the 2018 midterm elections to the Justice for Breonna Taylor last year that manufactured shirts saying “Arrest the Cops Who Killed Breonna Taylor.”

So far, the merch maker’s interaction with over 1,000 celebrities, athletes, and activists has catapulted it into a multimedia venture that also includes Phenomenal Productions that’s described as having “a specific emphasis on communities of color and underrepresented voting blocs.”

Curating books for children

The mother of two daughters, Meena has voiced her opinion that anti-racism works need to be incorporated into children’s libraries through their parents since schools on average have failed to add these works to their curricula. She wrote in The Washington Post op-ed published Nov. 15:

Of course, for Black and Brown parents, this isn’t exactly a revolutionary concept. Many of us have already taken it upon ourselves to give our children the full, accurate history lesson we know they must hear — just as our parents did for us, and their parents for them. But it’s time all American families start taking time at home to discuss the injustices that shaped our nation’s past, the work still to be done in our present, and the values that should define our future.

The new book club will announce selections quarterly and highlight a book already published between those selections. One of the missions of the book club is to aid the publishing industry in upholding its commitments to anti-racism and equity after the George Floyd protests.

Community chats last week were featured on the book club’s Instagram for its first highlight, Severance by Ling Ma, and promoting a giveaway on social media for 50 editions. For the holidays, Phenomenal is selling sweatshirts with a reproductive rights message and cookbooks by women of color.

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Gold House Releases Second Book Club List Featuring Asian Pacific Islander Authors

On the heels of Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Gold House launched its second book club list on Tuesday selecting stories that explore identity written by Asian Pacific Islander authors.

A part of the largest nonprofit collective of top Asian and Pacific Islander cultural leaders, the book club list highlights works to emphasize this year’s “Resistance & Resilience” theme.

“Through the selection of books in our second Reading List, we will explore ways in which ‘Resistance and Resilience’ forges Asian American identity, particularly through the lens of grief, oppression, and cultural assimilation,” says Cindy Joung, Gold House’s Gold Records director, in a statement.

The book club list is as follows:

June 2021: Crying in H Mart: A Memoir by Michelle Zauner

July 2021: Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations by Mira Jacob

August 2021: On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

September 2021: The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts by Maxine Hong Kingston 

October 2021: America Is in the Heart: A Personal History by Carlos Bulosan

November 2021: This Is One Way to Dance by Sejal Shah

“At a time when many Asians and Asian Americans are feeling unsafe, unseen, and unwelcome in this country, the Gold House Book Club seeks to share stories that exemplify our strength, our contributions, and our multifaceted identities,” Cindy says. “Ultimately, we hope these books and our programming will bring the community together for moments of introspection and discussion while highlighting API representation in the literary landscape.”

The list was curated by Gold House’s advisory council of 22 API writers, activists, and professors, including celebrated authors Amy Tan, Helen Zia, and Viet Nguyen.

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Beach Reads, Memoirs Dominate the Summer: July 2020 Celebrity Book Club Picks

With the impact of the anti-Black racism protests last month, some of the celebrity-founded book clubs kept the focus on Black stories as others chose the top books of the summer including reads perfect for the beach (if it’s open) and texts exploring gender and sexual identity.

AMERIE’S BOOK CLUB

You Exist Too Much by Zaina Arafat

The debut novel features a Palestinian American girl who is yelled at by a group of men for showing her legs on a trip to Bethlehem. The experience eventually allows her to tell her mother she’s queer as she moves to different spaces to find her true self.

“I rooted for her and hurt for her as she tried to find her way through one bad decision after another,” Amerie wrote on Instagram. “The main character, whose name is never revealed, stayed with me long after I closed the book, as did her hope for yet another shot at love.”

BELLETRIST BOOK CLUB

The Dragons, The Giant, The Women: A Memoir by Wayétu Moore

The author of She Would Be King and founder of nonprofit One Moore Book has a new memoir about her experience living through the civil war in Liberia. At five years old, she’s waiting to be reunited with her mother, who’s studying in New York, then her world is turned upside down with the war. Her family flees on foot from their home and get smuggled across the border of Sierra Leone, where they get a chance to fly to the U.S.

Belletrist, founded by actress Emma Roberts and producer Karah Preiss, also chose the Black woman-owned Semicolon Bookstore in Chicago as its indie bookstore of the month.

GMA BOOK CLUB

Sex and Vanity by Kevin Kwan

The Crazy Rich Asians series creator’s new book takes place on the island of Capri with a half-Chinese, half-White woman trying to fall for the well-off White man her family likes while avoiding another man, who is Chinese, she keeps suppressing her feelings for.

“It’s a summer escape full of travel, food, fun and fashion,” Kevin told Good Morning America. “The outrageous characters will make your crazy families seem almost normal.”

KAIA GERBER’S BOOK CLUB

Darling Days: A Memoir by iO Tillett Wright

Born female, the author comes of age in downtown New York with a young widowed mother and adopts the persona of a boy amid the 1980s “intersection of punk, poverty, heroin, and art.”
“In talking to him about his experience publishing this book, he taught me that writers who happen to be queer too often are dismissed as ‘queer writers’ and their books, regardless of the topics they cover, end up exclusively stocked on ‘LGBT author’ shelves,” Kaia wrote in an Instagram post. “Darling Days goes far beyond this—it is a story about neglect, creativity, internalized homophobia, and the beauty you can make out of pain. it is a New York story of growing up and out of the life you are born into.” 

NONAME’S BOOK CLUB

Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Y. Davis

Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex by Eric A. Stanley and Nat Smith

Rapper Noname picks Are Prisons Obsolete?, a book that calls for the abolition of prisons and how it will benefit society as a whole. The homie pick, Captive Genders, comes from Che Gossett. It studies trans and gender-queer people in prison with the most recent version including a foreword from CeCe MacDonald, who was imprisoned for killing a transphobic attacker, and an essay by Chelsea Manning, the former U.S. Army soldier who transitioned amid getting sentenced for espionage.

OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB

Deacon King Kong by James McBride

This novel tells the story of a church deacon who shoots the neighborhood drug dealer point blank range in front of the community and the aftermath.

“In naming Deacon King Kong my latest Oprah’s Book Club selection, I am hoping readers will find in it what I did: sorrow, joy, resilience, humanity, and an understanding that while we struggle with pain and trauma, we can find shelter in one another—just as the characters in the Cause housing project in McBride’s Brooklyn do,” Oprah wrote in the Instagram announcement. 

READ WITH JENNA – TODAY SHOW BOOK CLUB

Friends and Strangers by J. Courtney Sullivan

Jenna Bush Hager’s book club via her Today Show gig is one of the hottest books of the season. The main character is a new mother who hires a college senior as a baby-sitter. As they grow close, the baby-sitter’s relationship with the mother’s father-in-law leads to a betrayal.

“I wanted to explore American life in the pre-Trump years and sort of how we got here,” the author said in an article introducing the book club pick. “The book very much digs into the gig economy, the shrinking safety net and the notion that privilege takes many different forms.”

REESE’S BOOK CLUB

I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown

The Guest List by Lucy Foley

After the book club delayed its selection announcement in June, actress Reese Witherspoon directed her book club to make two selections—a first to recognize current events. Both books will be read over June and July.

“Elevating women’s stories is at the core of Reese’s Book Club. I love how this community champions the narrative for women and we are just getting started,” the book club placed in a graphic on Instagram. “Unity and understanding through the lens of storytelling is how we will continue these meaningful conversations.”

Readers expressed their disappointment in the comments over the book club adding a book by a Black woman author last minute and not pushing back the book by a White woman author to another month.

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Recognizing Racial Injustice Delays and Defines Announcements: June 2020 Celebrity Book Club Picks

The deaths of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd and the subsequent worldwide protests to combat racial injustice affected the celebrity book clubs with many delaying their monthly book selection announcements.

Most book clubs make the official announcement on social media the first week of the month, but some news on the latest picks came the second week of June and highlighted works by black women authors.

AMERIE’S BOOK CLUB

My Vanishing Country by Bakari Sellers

“In his unapologetically emotional memoir, CNN analyst @BakariSellers shares what it is to grow up “Black, country, and proud,” Amerie wrote in the book club’s Instagram announcement. “From the tragic event that helped to shape his life though it occurred before his birth, to his rise in politics while pursuing his education, to his dedication to not allowing those in his rural South Carolina community to be forgotten, to his personal experiences with anxiety, Bakari Sellers’ story left me amazed while also leaving me to wonder just how he managed to fit so much life into such a short time.”

BELLETRIST BOOK CLUB

GMA BOOK CLUB

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

Actress Emma Roberts’ book club and Good Morning America‘s book club chose the same book again this month along with other major national book clubs. For May, both book clubs chose The Book of V. by Anna Solomon.

Belletrist shared that it delayed its announcement due to the civil unrest.

“We know we’re about a week later than usual, but we wanted to spend last week thinking about the ways in which we, as an online community, will be moving forward as we approach this seismic shift in our collective consciousness.”

“We have loved Brit’s book since we first got it a few months ago and are very excited to finally announce,” Belletrist stated in its message on Instagram. “Please stay tuned as we will have a more in depth conversation with Brit towards the end of the month, and look out for our weekly quotes, which are curated this month by this month’s author!”

“It’s a compelling read about twin sisters, inseparable as children, who ultimately choose to live in two very different worlds: one black, and one white,” Good Morning America‘s book club wrote in its post. “It’s a powerful story about family, compassion, identity and roots.”

KAIA GERBER’S BOOK CLUB

Kaia Gerber shares book selections every week for her book club on Instagram, but she decided to give her friend Janaya Future Khan, international ambassador for Black Lives Matter, a platform on her account with over 5.6 million followers. She bookstagrammed a pile including Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Danielle Allen’s Cuz: An American Tragedy, which follows the author’s journey in trying to rescue her younger cousin who dies after incarceration for a crime he commits as a teenager.

 

“in lieu of book club this week, i am honored that my friend and international ambassador of @blklivesmatter @janayathefuture will be going live on my page. they have been such a leader and powerful voice,” she wrote in her post. “they helped educate me on understanding the weight of privilege and the importance of these protests—and they have continuously and tirelessly worked to give people an understanding of what the mission of Black Lives Matter means for this country and for this world.”

NONAME’S BOOK CLUB

Blood in My Eye by George L. Jackson

Race Music: From Bebop to Hip-Hop by Guthrie Ramsey

Rapper Noname’s book club had selected one book last month, a change from its two-books-a-month template, but the book club returned to two books due to what’s going on in the world now.

“I felt it was important to go back to our old routine of picking two books a month,” Noname said on the book club’s Instagram profile. “In addition to reading Race Music I chose Blood In My Eye by George Jackson. Books about revolutionary action and resistance are vital during this time.” 

Blood In My Eye was written by George Jackson, who died days after completing the book in 1971 at the hands of San Quentin State Prison guards during an alleged escape attempt. He was serving a sentence for stealing $70 from a gas station.

The homie pick, Race Music: From Bebop to Hip-Hop, is from the book club’s project manager Shakira in honor of June being Black Music Month.

OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB

Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker

Oprah is finishing up Hidden Valley Road, according to her book club’s schedule though it may have been pushed back with giving space online for the current civil unrest. The book club has posted about anti-racism books to read for kids and young adults.

READ WITH JENNA – TODAY SHOW BOOK CLUB

A Burning by Megha Majumdar

The debut novel surrounds an ambitious Muslim girl from the slums who is accused of executing a terrorist attack because of a careless Facebook comment.

“I think books are a tool for empathy,” Jenna said in her announcement. “And now when we are stuck at home—and I definitely won’t be traveling to India this summer—this is a tool for all of us to learn more about the plight of people all over the world.”

“I started writing from a place of alarm and anger,” Majumdar told Today in the article. “India has been changing in frightening ways and growing more intolerant of minority communities, more extremist. I definitely hope that readers will see resonances in the U.S. as well.”

REESE’S BOOK CLUB

I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown

The Guest List by Lucy Foley

After the book club delayed its selection announcement, actress Reese Witherspoon directed her book club to make two selections—a first to recognize current events. Both books will be read over June and July.

“Elevating women’s stories is at the core of Reese’s Book Club. I love how this community champions the narrative for women and we are just getting started,” the book club placed in a graphic on Instagram. Unity and understanding through the lens of storytelling is how we will continue these meaningful conversations.”

Readers expressed their disappointment in the comments over the book club adding a book by a black woman author last minute and not pushing back the book by a white woman author to another month.

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February 2020 Celebrity Book Club Picks

AMERIE’S BOOK CLUB

Little Gods by Meng Jin

Singer-turned-book YouTuber Amerie plans to host the author at the end of the month on Instagram Live to discuss the novel.

“Quantum physics meets motherhood, love, and identity in this haunting portrayal of a daughter’s desperation to be seen and a mother’s desperation to disappear,” she wrote in the book club’s post. “@mengjinwrites creates characters who are at once vulnerable, caring, self-absorbed, and despicable, and through it all, utterly real. I rooted for them just as I was repelled by them; always, though, Ms. Jin put me so firmly in their heads, I couldn’t help but feel empathetic, even as I cringed.”

BELLETRIST BOOK CLUB

We Wish You Luck by Caroline Zancan

“An exhilarating novel about a group of students who take revenge on a wunderkind professor after she destroys one of their own—a story of collective drive to create, sabotage, and ultimately, to love,” the book club copied from publisher Penguin Random House in its announcement email and on Instagram.  ⠀

GMA BOOK CLUB

Good Morning America’s book club hasn’t named its February title yet. It’s celebrating Black History Month with a Feb. 19 appearance by Tomi Adeyemi of Children of Blood and Bone and Children of Virtue and Vengeance fame; Kiley Reid of Such a Fun Age; and award-winning young adult novelist Jason Reynolds.

NONAME’S BOOK CLUB

Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde

Magical Negro by Morgan Parker

“I’m so excited to start black history month by honoring two incredible black women. trust me you definitely want to read with us for the month of february!” rapper Noname tweeted when quote tweeting her book club’s two picks. She also reminded her followers to shop local bookstores, preferably black-owned, and avoid Amazon.com.

OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB

The book club is finishing its controversial January book, American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins, which added a spark to the conversation around diversity in publishing.

READ WITH JENNA – TODAY SHOW BOOK CLUB

The Girl With The Louding Voice by Abi Daré

“It’s about this young girl, Adunni, whose voice, from the time she is born, is strong, loud and clear but because of where she is born and the circumstances of her life, she doesn’t yet know how to use it,” said Today Show correspondent Jenna Bush Hager in an article.

REESE’S BOOK CLUB

The Scent Keeper by Erica Bauermeister

“The story centers around Emmeline, a young girl who lives on a remote island with her father and uncovers secrets of the natural world through her senses,” Hollywood bookwoman Reese Witherspoon’s book club explained on Instagram. “As she gets older, she becomes even more curious about the scents in the drawers of their cabin.”

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Emma Watson Steps Back From Our Shared Shelf Book Club

Instagram

Emma Watson, the celeb bookwoman of Harry Potter film fame who made a recent appearance in the latest Little Women rendition, announced she will be stepping away from her public book club.

Last week, Our Shared Shelf put up a message on Goodreads from founder Emma, who said instead of having book club moderators she will return to recommending titles on social media.

“My wish is that this community continues to share and announce their own book recommendations with this hashtag keeping what we’ve built together alive and well for the future,” she wrote in the message. “I am excited to see it continue to grow and mature. I might just be reading along with you! Keep your eyes peeled as I announce other books later this year.”

Emma joins Florence Welch of alt rock pop group Florence + The Machine who announced a hiatus in July with her book club, Between Two Books. It also had the same format as Our Shared Shelf of selecting two books at a time.

Our Shared Shelf almost has 231,000 members on Goodreads.

The celebrity-helmed book clubs seem to be popular, but some celebrities have been honest about the hardships of managing a book club despite their star power and resources. Oprah just revived her book club in a new format with the backing of Apple. Kim Kardashian and Chrissy Teigen admitted in 2018 they had chosen an initial book and interviewed the author the prior year but couldn’t follow through with the concept.

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Noname’s Book Club Has Declared National Fuck Amazon Day

Amazon.com has developed a reputation in the book industry as a monstrous e-retailer sapping profits for indie bookstores. Consumers can’t help but get addicted to the effortless ordering and two-day shipping, but the socially conscious Noname’s Book Club is celebrating National Fuck Amazon Day aka Library Card Registration Day—a day to support the free literary resources such as libraries already in our communities.

Today on Jan. 11, readers of color are encouraged to sign up for library cards to access free books in their communities. Some libraries may charge $1 for a card, but users can access a number of books for usually three weeks in person or on their e-readers. Some people are even canceling their Amazon memberships since the corporation has long had a reputation for snatching business away from indie bookstores, including those owned by entrepreneurs of color in communities of color.

Noname says it’s not only about supporting local libraries and indie bookstores but really a “stance against corporate greed.”

With more literary groups, especially those serving communities of color, joining the fight against Amazon, 2020 could be a year of readers looking for alternative ways to access books without supporting the corporation.

If you’ve given up on Amazon in the name of books, then let us know in the comments.

Personally, I’m not ready to forfeit my Amazon membership. I like my two-day shipping on my specialized beauty products and vitamins that are hard to find in brick-and-mortar stores. Also, in college, Amazon was a godsend for many students looking for cheaper textbooks. It’ll be difficult to check out necessary textbooks from libraries for an entire semester and pay full price when a lower price with shipping is available on Amazon. But Amazon probably bought out the smaller used textbook sellers long ago, so there’s another example of corporate takeover.

The top book publishers could be considered as corporations. Libraries pay authors for their books, and publishers are getting a cut of that check.

MIXED BAG OF PLACES TO BUY BOOKS

Years ago, I had already changed my bookish spending habits by buying most new books from indie bookstores such as The Ripped Bodice and Skylight Books in Los Angeles and Vroman’s in Pasadena. I bought a few from Amazon via used book outfits who work with Amazon to make a profit online.

Some self-published authors I meet in the field want you to buy their books on Amazon because of the chunk of sales the corporation promises them. Amazon has improved its self-publishing platform over the years, making it somewhat of a haven for authors who want to control their book sales. In short, when you’re an avid reader, you buy and rent books from all over. Most of my books are from Goodwill Industries, a nonprofit that could be seen as acting as a corporation, and other thrift stores.

I check out tons of library books in person and on my Kindle. Through Kindle on three active library cards, I use Overdrive which connects you to all your libraries in one place. How e-books are shaping the book industry has also been a topic of conversation, especially with Amazon dominating in that sphere, too. My neighborhood library blocks away from my home is always crowded, but when it comes to the books, it seems underutilized because I usually get the hottest books of the moment easily. With libraries being a public space and used for quiet time, I wonder if enough patrons are checking out the books the libraries invested in.

AUTHOR EVENTS AT CORPORATE AND INDIE BOOKSTORES

I’m into meeting authors for a second and getting their autographed books. I’ve bought a few books from Barnes & Noble at the Grove for author events. That’s another issue: authors, regardless of fame, who should partner with indie bookstores to be their main bookseller or venue when they come to your city.

One great example is Elaine Welteroth, millennial media maven who released More Than Enough last year. During her stop in Los Angeles, she chose to have the event at the California African American Museum and the main bookseller was Eso Won Books, the only black-owned indie bookstore in the area. Another example is Marie Forleo, author of Everything is Figureoutable, who came to the Skirball Cultural Center with her Book Soup as the preferred bookseller.

AMAZON’s HANDS ON THE BOOK INDUSTRY

Noname and her book club are making waves with spreading the message of corporations establishing their own book businesses on top of taking a lion’s share of overall book sales. Amazon is building a book empire with signing on celebrities as authors and delivering Audible titles at record speeds, for example. Hopefully, the movement will bring more dollars back to our local libraries and the literary entrepreneurs of color who’ve opened businesses to purposely serve their communities.

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2019 Literary Lookback: The Rise of Noname’s Book Club

Noname

Rapper Noname started a book club this past summer and has amassed a strong following with mostly millennial readers looking to discover a variety of books from authors of color.

With its August launch, the book club selected two books: Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire and We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby. Two books remained a constant over the months, with the latest twin picks being The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon and Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi.

The book club blossomed on social media—now having almost 67,000 followers on Twitter and over 38,000 followers on Instagram—and then moved to in-person meetings in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Cincinnati, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. Photos from the meetings and from members make up most of the timelines on the two social media networks as well as vintage and stock photos of black people reading books. Letting members know they are seen and supporting their reading goals shift the book club, though helmed by a celebrity, away from the celebrity book club model that usually keeps the conversations online and seldom acknowledges members.

From cult classics to the words of emergent authors, Noname’s Book Club highlights books that speak on human conditions in critical and original ways.

That’s Noname’s Book Club’s mission statement, and it shows in the actions the group has taken to make an impact on the diverse consumers the literary industry tends to ignore.

supporting black-owned bookstores

The book club sends members to black-owned bookstores in seven cities to purchase the picks and some holding in-person meetings. One example is The Reparations Club in Los Angeles, which has quickly become home to many black creatives since opening earlier this year.

boycotting Amazon

Buying from the independent bookstores came from the book club’s stance on not buying books from Amazon. The boycott movement, popular with many indie booksellers and especially black literary groups, is to bring money back to those booksellers, especially the ones catering to consumers of color since they are usually not the top indie bookseller in their regions. Amazon has been blamed for taking necessary book sales from indie booksellers, especially with the e-retailer giant gaining a stronghold in the publishing industry creating its own books and other media based on books.

connecting with public LIBRARies

This month, the book club partnered with the Los Angeles Public Library to help members find the selected books free of charge. The book club posed the question of what should be its next partnership, and many followers chimed in, with Binghamton, New York getting a lot of votes.

In less than six months, the book club has made a major impact in magnifying the visibility of readers and authors of color, so the next year may bring more advancements in celebrating these literary stakeholders.

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Singer Amerie Kicks Off New Book Club With ‘The Water Dancer’

Amerie announces her new book club / Instagram

Amerie, best known for her 2000s R&B singles Why Don’t We Fall In Love? and 1 Thing, announced on YouTube she will be launching her new social media book club with making The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates this month’s inaugural pick.

Over the past few years, Amerie has been reinventing herself as a literary talent with her video book, beauty, and lifestyle blog. She contributed to the forthcoming black girl magic anthology, A Phoenix First Must Burn, that’s being called “Beyoncé’s Lemonade for a teen audience.” Her editing credits include another young adult anthology, Because You Love To Hate Me, and she has plans in the works to release a debut novel. She made a surprise return to music last year with the twin albums, 4AM Mulholland and After 4AM.

“For so long, I know you’ve been wanting the book club, and I’ve been reading the comments, but I didn’t know how I exactly want to do it and I believe I figured it out,” Amerie said in her announcement video.

She said her book club will “feature books by authors sent to us an array of different perspectives, voices, and I hope we can come together and learn from each other, listen to one another, also be heard, and embrace and celebrate our differences, and come away from the whole thing somewhat changed.”

Instagram and YouTube will be the main outlets for the book club conversation. The selections will be announced on the first Wednesday of the month with reminders throughout the month and final conversations at the end of the month.

Oprah’s Book Club famously chose The Water Dancer as its first pick in its Apple-backed reincarnation.

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Celebs Help Oprah Promote Book Club Revival With ‘The Water Dancer’

Audiences can watch “Oprah’s Book Club,” a new exclusive series on Apple TV+, starting November 1, with the first installment featuring an interview with “The Water Dancer” author Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Angela Bassett, Mindy Kaling and Lena Waithe are a few of the celebrities who have shown support for Oprah Winfrey’s book club comeback through social media posts posing with the latest selection.

Oprah, who announced her new book club will be on Apple TV+ in March, has named author and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates’ The Water Dancer as her first pick on Instagram with the hashtag #ReadWithUs. Queen Sugar‘s Dawn-Lyen Gardner and Mixed-ish’s Tika Sumpter also shared photos of them casually reading the book.

Tuesday’s episode of The View, surrounded by co-hosts Whoopi Goldberg, Abby Huntsman, Joy Behar, Sunny Hostin, and Meghan McCain, Ta-Nehisi discussed the premise of his novel.

“The story is about an enslaved man in antebellum Virginia by the name of Hiram Walker. His father, in fact, is the master of the plantation, his enslaver, who has sold off his mother who was enslaved obviously. It really is the story of Hiram wanting what all enslaved people wanted at the time: freedom, but coming to understand that freedom actually means a confronation with some past, really really horrible memories specifically what happened to his mother. He’s gifted with a preternatrual memory. He can remember everything except the things that are most intimate and most important to him, specifically what happend to this mother. His freedom, as it turns out, is actually tied to his memory.”

The last book to make Oprah’s club selection was Michelle Obama’s Becoming last November.

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Indie Rapper Noname Enters the Book Club Game

Noname / Billboard

Rising Chicago rapper Noname has announced she’s starting a nationwide book club that will have meetings at local bookstores owned by people of color.

Noname, aka Fatimah Nyeema Warner, made the announcement July 14 via Twitter, that Noname’s Book Club will feature works by women of color and LGBTQIA+ writers. The two August book selections are Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire and We Are Never Meeting In Real Life by Samantha Irby. In a tweet Thursday, she said she’s looking for bookstore affiliates to hold meetings.

In a world of celebrity book clubs mostly led by white women non-authors, Noname is the second prominent black woman this month to start a public book club. Novelist and memoirist Roxane Gay had her first book club meeting last week discussing Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys that’s being televised on HBO and online at Vice.

Earlier this month, Noname was reminiscing on how her mother, Desiree Sanders, at 25 in 1990 was the first black woman to own a bookstore in downtown Chicago with sharing a business profile on Twitter. According to the profile, the bookstore sat in the back of a beauty supply store with counting celebrities such as Maya Angelou, Chris Rock, and Damon Wayans as visitors.

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With recent singles like “Song 32,” Noname had canceled the majority of her summer tour due to ongoing health issues. She still has concerts in Los Angeles, where she currently lives, and Chicago, her hometown, set in August.

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Well-Read Black Girl Founder Glory Edim On ‘Cultivating Joy’ In Her Growing Book Club

Well-Read Black Girl holds an event at Reparations Club in Mid-City, Los Angeles, to discuss the book club coming to the city.

Renowned Black women’s book club Well-Read Black Girl is coming to Los Angeles, with the New York-based founder welcoming the local affiliate last Sunday at the Reparations Club in the Mid-City neighborhood.

Book Soup, the West Hollywood indie bookstore, will house the LA book club as a part of the organization’s program with the American Booksellers Association to create local affiliates to support Black women readers and writers. The first book is fantasy young adult novel Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi for July and the second book will be The Travelers by Regina Porter for August.

Glory Edim, the founder of Well-Read Black Girl, joined Tameka Blackshir of Book Soup and Jazzi McGilbert of the new Black artisan boutique Reparations Club to discuss the book club’s partnership with indie booksellers across the country and how it was important for the group to maintain its safe space status for Black women.

“I felt really particular about going to LA and not knowing the community. Since I don’t live there, does that mean it’s going to be less real, less authentic?” Glory said, adding she needed the local affiliates to be run by local supporters. “Does it mean I’m not investing in the way that I need to? … It just means we need conversations, and it needs to be done where it’s authentic and real and not me just popping in like, ‘Hey, guys! I’m here!’ So when the opportunity going about partnering with independent bookstores [came up], it was ‘OK, boom! You know your bookstore, you know what’s important.'”

With the base in Brooklyn, Glory said she started the book club with promoting a free space where all women from mothers to college students can afford and enjoy the book club. She also said she wants the organization’s annual festival in Brooklyn—which has featured award-winning authors Jacqueline Woodson and Tayari Jones in the past—to be a “family reunion,” uniting Black women from other cities in one place. Besides LA, these cities so far include Washington, D.C.; Portland, Oregon; and Seattle.

“We’re not excluding people, but this is a space for Black women. That question has been coming up a lot, especially in small cities that are not as diverse,” Glory said about expanding the group. “Another thing I’ve been working through is the idea of how we cultivate joy in these spaces.”

She said cultivating joy is a priority though most of the books selected for the meetings contain traumatic themes.

“When I was curating the anthology [Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves], I was very clear about I want to hear both sides of the story. I want to know the things that are troubling and have shaped an identity but also how you were able to overcome that because when you go through something that’s not the only thing that defines you,” she said. “It helps to uplift you out of that. It’s that experience and the challenge that pulls you into another space that allows you to be brighter and bolder for sharing your story without reservation.”

The first book club meeting in LA will be at Book Soup on Sunday, July 28 at 4 p.m.

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Celeb Bookwomen Announce Their June Book Club Picks

Reese Witherspoon / Hello Sunshine

Here’s a quick roundup of the celebrity-helmed book clubs and their June books:

Actress and producer Reese Witherspoon chooses The Cactus by Sarah Haywood for Hello Sunshine.

“Susan, our main character, navigates a love triangle, family drama, and being pregnant for the first time at 45. Hope y’all love Susan as much as I do!,” Reese said in the announcement.

 

Sarah also wrote an exclusive essay for Hello Sunshine about the themes resonating through her novel.

 

NBC correspondent and former first daughter Jenna Bush Hager chooses Searching for Sylvie Lee by Jean Kwok for Today Show Book Club.

“It’s a mystery,” Jenna said in the announcement. “Sylvie Lee is the main character and she’s a golden child. She disappears. The story unfolds as her family copes and discovers all the secrets surrounding her life.” She added the team unveiled the book club pick later than usual because the book was released on June 4.

Belletrist, the book blog administered by actress Emma Roberts and producer Karah Preiss, also chose Searching for Sylvie Lee for June with its branded digestible interview with the author.

Actress Emma Roberts’ Our Shared Shelf on Goodreads is still reading Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, a book the bimonthly book club chose in May. The book also is a National Book Award Finalist and now available in paperback.

“Min Jin Lee is unabashedly a feminist and her resilient female characters propel this riveting story,” the book club wrote in its announcement. “Lee has written a moving, historical saga that is also a timeless masterpiece; almost 500 pages long, and we didn’t want it to end. This brilliant, eye-opening novel is about outsiders, minorities, the disenfranchised and yet somehow embraces us all.”

Indie rock pop band Florence + The Machine is reading three books for its Between Two Books club: Read and Riot by artist, activist, and Pussy Riot founder Nadya Tolokonnikova; My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter by Aja Monet; and The Terrible by Yrsa Daley-Ward.

 

“The title of Yrsa Daley-Ward’s book, ‘The Terrible,’ can mean different things to each reader. It can be a feeling you can’t quite word. It can describe depression. It can refer to the things you fear,” the book club tweeted June 6.

 

Side note: Florence + The Machine’s 2011 album Ceremonials is a wonderfully lyrical and musical album for a writing session.