Online Queer Book Club (formerly East Bay Queer Book Club)

(*** Meetings are always on the 2nd Sunday of the month)

This month we will read and discuss "Hijab Butch Blues: A Memoir" by Lamya H.

Book Description:
"A queer hijabi Muslim immigrant survives her coming-of-age by drawing strength and hope from stories in the Quran in this daring, provocative, and radically hopeful memoir.

When fourteen-year-old Lamya H realizes she has a crush on her teacher--her female teacher--she covers up her attraction, an attraction she can't yet name, by playing up her roles as overachiever and class clown. Born in South Asia, she moved to the Middle East at a young age and has spent years feeling out of place, like her own desires and dreams don't matter, and it's easier to hide in plain sight. To disappear. But one day in Quran class, she reads a passage about Maryam that changes everything: when Maryam learned that she was pregnant, she insisted no man had touched her. Could Maryam, uninterested in men, be . . . like Lamya?

From that moment on, Lamya makes sense of her struggles and triumphs by comparing her experiences with some of the most famous stories in the Quran. She juxtaposes her coming out with Musa liberating his people from the pharoah; asks if Allah, who is neither male nor female, might instead be nonbinary; and, drawing on the faith and hope Nuh needed to construct his ark, begins to build a life of her own--ultimately finding that the answer to her lifelong quest for community and belonging lies in owning her identity as a queer, devout Muslim immigrant.

This searingly intimate memoir in essays, spanning Lamya's childhood to her arrival in the United States for college through early-adult life in New York City, tells a universal story of courage, trust, and love, celebrating what it means to be a seeker and an architect of one's own life."

***

Please join us for some good discussion and social time. The night of the event you will be able to access the discussion using the provided link. Please be advised that you will need to have a Zoom account set-up and logged in to participate. We encourage all attendees to experiment with the platform before the event, if you have any questions please contact one of the organizers in advance and we will do our best to assist you.

There is never any pressure to have the book completed (or read at all) in order to participate. We would just love to have you, and it can be enjoyable to hear about the book and talk to some cool people.

***

Book Selection:

At this meeting we will take recommendations for future book club reads. Please spend some time beforehand thinking of any books that might be appropriate for the group to read. The only criteria is that any book recommended should be written by a queer individual and/or contain queer subject matter and/or characters. However, it is highly encouraged that books offered for consideration be representative of diverse perspectives and communities.

Before making a suggestion, please take a moment to check the list of books previously read by this group to make sure your selection can be considered:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1aN4BaPn1buIHZ1lryih4lMduPt4ShEIdaQLCyea3okQ/edit?usp=sharing

(*** Meetings are always on the 2nd Sunday of the month)

This month we will read and discuss "True Biz: A Novel" by Sara Novik.

Book Description:
"NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK • A “tender, beautiful and radiantly outraged” (The New York Times Book Review) novel that follows a year of seismic romantic, political, and familial shifts for a teacher and her students at a boarding school for the deaf, from the acclaimed author of Girl at War

“For those who loved the Oscar-winning film CODA, a boarding school for deaf students is the setting for a kaleidoscope of experiences.”—The Washington Post

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: NPR, The Washington Post, Publishers Weekly, Booklist

True biz (adj./exclamation; American Sign Language): really, seriously, definitely, real-talk

True biz? The students at the River Valley School for the Deaf just want to hook up, pass their history finals, and have politicians, doctors, and their parents stop telling them what to do with their bodies. This revelatory novel plunges readers into the halls of a residential school for the deaf, where they’ll meet Charlie, a rebellious transfer student who’s never met another deaf person before; Austin, the school’s golden boy, whose world is rocked when his baby sister is born hearing; and February, the hearing headmistress, a CODA (child of deaf adult(s)) who is fighting to keep her school open and her marriage intact, but might not be able to do both. As a series of crises both personal and political threaten to unravel each of them, Charlie, Austin, and February find their lives inextricable from one another—and changed forever.

This is a story of sign language and lip-reading, disability and civil rights, isolation and injustice, first love and loss, and, above all, great persistence, daring, and joy. Absorbing and assured, idiosyncratic and relatable, this is an unforgettable journey into the Deaf community and a universal celebration of human connection."

***

Please join us for some good discussion and social time. The night of the event you will be able to access the discussion using the provided link. Please be advised that you will need to have a Zoom account set-up and logged in to participate. We encourage all attendees to experiment with the platform before the event, if you have any questions please contact one of the organizers in advance and we will do our best to assist you.

There is never any pressure to have the book completed (or read at all) in order to participate. We would just love to have you, and it can be enjoyable to hear about the book and talk to some cool people.

***

Book Selection:

At this meeting we will take recommendations for future book club reads. Please spend some time beforehand thinking of any books that might be appropriate for the group to read. The only criteria is that any book recommended should be written by a queer individual and/or contain queer subject matter and/or characters. However, it is highly encouraged that books offered for consideration be representative of diverse perspectives and communities.

Before making a suggestion, please take a moment to check the list of books previously read by this group to make sure your selection can be considered:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1aN4BaPn1buIHZ1lryih4lMduPt4ShEIdaQLCyea3okQ/edit?usp=sharing

(*** Meetings are always on the 2nd Sunday of the month)

This month we will read and discuss "She Who Became the Sun" by Shelley Parker-Chan.

Book Description:
"She Who Became the Sun reimagines the rise to power of the Ming Dynasty’s founding emperor.

To possess the Mandate of Heaven, the female monk Zhu will do anything

“I refuse to be nothing…”

In a famine-stricken village on a dusty yellow plain, two children are given two fates. A boy, greatness. A girl, nothingness…

In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family’s eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family’s clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected.

When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses her brother's identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice. There, propelled by her burning desire to survive, Zhu learns she is capable of doing whatever it takes, no matter how callous, to stay hidden from her fate.

After her sanctuary is destroyed for supporting the rebellion against Mongol rule, Zhu takes the chance to claim another future her brother's abandoned greatness.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied."

***

Please join us for some good discussion and social time. The night of the event you will be able to access the discussion using the provided link. Please be advised that you will need to have a Zoom account set-up and logged in to participate. We encourage all attendees to experiment with the platform before the event, if you have any questions please contact one of the organizers in advance and we will do our best to assist you.

There is never any pressure to have the book completed (or read at all) in order to participate. We would just love to have you, and it can be enjoyable to hear about the book and talk to some cool people.

***

Book Selection:

At this meeting we will take recommendations for future book club reads. Please spend some time beforehand thinking of any books that might be appropriate for the group to read. The only criteria is that any book recommended should be written by a queer individual and/or contain queer subject matter and/or characters. However, it is highly encouraged that books offered for consideration be representative of diverse perspectives and communities.

Before making a suggestion, please take a moment to check the list of books previously read by this group to make sure your selection can be considered:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1aN4BaPn1buIHZ1lryih4lMduPt4ShEIdaQLCyea3okQ/edit?usp=sharing

(*** Meetings are always on the 2nd Sunday of the month)

This month we will read and discuss "Cook and the Carpenter: A Novel by the Carpenter" by June Davis Arnold.

Book Description:
"Women's liberation sought to transform every sector of U.S. society--its educational system, culture, language, politics, and, importantly, the delivery of social services. To enable this movement, women all over the country began to establish women's centers.

In New York City, women from almost every local women's liberation group took over an abandoned building in lower Manhattan on New Year's Eve, 1970. They named the building The Fifth Street Women's Building and renovated it to feed, clothe, shelter, and educate women in need. The take-over was a huge success, attracting hundreds of activists and community members. Thirteen days later, the New York City Tactical Police stormed the building, expelled the women, and ended the action. The City then tore the building down and built a parking lot on the site.
June Arnold was one of the original planners and an active participant in this episode. When she got out of jail, she went home and wrote this novel about what happened. The Cook and the Carpenter, which quickly gained fame for its use of a non- gendered language, remains one of the best representations of the time period that berthed modern feminism and paved the way for lesbian communities."

***

Please join us for some good discussion and social time. The night of the event you will be able to access the discussion using the provided link. Please be advised that you will need to have a Zoom account set-up and logged in to participate. We encourage all attendees to experiment with the platform before the event, if you have any questions please contact one of the organizers in advance and we will do our best to assist you.

There is never any pressure to have the book completed (or read at all) in order to participate. We would just love to have you, and it can be enjoyable to hear about the book and talk to some cool people.

***

Book Selection:

At this meeting we will take recommendations for future book club reads. Please spend some time beforehand thinking of any books that might be appropriate for the group to read. The only criteria is that any book recommended should be written by a queer individual and/or contain queer subject matter and/or characters. However, it is highly encouraged that books offered for consideration be representative of diverse perspectives and communities.

Before making a suggestion, please take a moment to check the list of books previously read by this group to make sure your selection can be considered:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1aN4BaPn1buIHZ1lryih4lMduPt4ShEIdaQLCyea3okQ/edit?usp=sharing