Add These To Your Winter Reading List

Featuring: Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi and White Teeth by Zadie Smith

Louisville Book Babes Book Club
WHEN: Meets monthly
WHERE: Meeting virtually on Zoom

The new year is a great time to start a new habit like reading a book each month, and joining a local book club is a great way to keep you on track to meet your goal. Carmichael’s Community Book Club meets once a month to discuss the great books that the group is reading together. Check out some of their recent picks for inspiration. In September, the group discussed Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, and the book for October was White Teeth by Zadie Smith.

What do these books have in common?

At their core, Homegoing and White Teeth are both about colonized people and the harmful effects of it. They are also about the deep roots of family, and how family is a driving force in all of our lives. White Teeth was published in 2000, while Homegoing came out in 2017, but they feel very relevant both to each other as well as to the time we are living in now, when we are having this significant cultural moment focused on human rights and the intrinsic value of human life.

Is that why you chose these books?

The group tends to choose relatable books, often about family, and some of the themes in these books are more relatable now than ever, with everything that is going on in our city and our world. It’s important to the group to choose a wide variety of books with diverse characters.

If you could hang out with one character, who would it be?

This is hard. Each of these characters is so strong and Effia and Esi in Homegoing almost feel like two halves of the same person. No one would want to go through the things that any of these characters have gone through, and bringing them into our modern world would be an almost impossible thought.

What other titles would you recommend to people looking for books to read?

Homegoing is very influenced by Toni Morisson. You can feel it as you’re reading it. So, if someone has managed to make it this far without reading Beloved or The Bluest Eye, they should definitely pick those up. As far as books that people likely haven’t read, Rachel’s Blue by Zakes Mda, Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie, and Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

What else should potential new members to the book club know?

The group is now meeting on Zoom until further notice. The Zoom link is on Carmichael’s website, along with the dates of the next couple of meetings. We love new members, and Carmichael’s offers a 20% off deal on whatever book the club is reading in a given month.