Books

I had a photo of books we have read but tonight as we were sitting on the deck watching the beautiful sunset and this little Douglas squirrel caught my attention with the light on his tail. You'll just have to imagine how it looks in the west.

As I had said before , our book club uses the summer camp meeting to discuss a book by an African American author, partly to remember our dear V. who loved coming here to the island and died in 1997. We generally read novels, both contemporary and classic but for this annual tradition, we've read a mixture, including James Baldwin, Walter Moseley, Gloria Naylor, Earnest Gaines, Henry Louis Gates, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Anne Moody, Ralph Ellston, Octavia Butler, Charles Johnson, Frederick Douglas, Joel Chandler Harris (Uncle Remus) Harriett Beecher Stowe, Malcolm X, W.E.B. Du Bois, Maya Angelow, Anne Moody, Hannah Crafts,( ed. by Gates), Zora Neale Hurston among others --and today after a wonderful eggs florentine, we spent hours discussing The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson. The book is about the migration of blacks from the south to the north to get away from the Jim Crow "laws" from 1915-1970. Everyone in our group had personal stories from where they were in the 50s and 60s : the south, Chicago, Washington D.C. Wisconsin, and Seattle. Most of us were clueless about this major movement. Martin Luther King spoke in Chicago and I didn't go. Only one of us got to hear him, in Madison, Wisconsin. I wish I could talk to the "colored" nanny we had for our 1st son while I worked in Chicago in 1966- to find out if she or her parents had come from the south to find a better life. It's a very moving book following 3 people to different areas of the country, Chicago, NYC, and LA. And well told. But the best part of reading a book is the experiences and ideas everyone brings to the discussion. We're not done yet. :-) We continued while pulling Scot's broom later - it turned into a nice day in the late afternoon. Some of us had a sauna, and of course another fabulous dinner.
Sorry if this is a bit disjointed, but there is lots of talking and card playing going on.... more tomorrow.......