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Informed Community Book Club
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Welcome to The Informed Community Book Club, a space dedicated to exploring and discussing pertinent social, economic, and political issues. If you are interested in participating in our democratic institutions or just making friends, join us! New members are welcome at any time. We'll meet every other month, once in February and once in April. The discussion will be hosted by former Los Gatos Planning Commissioner and current president of the Los Gatos Anti-Racism Coalition Jeff Suzuki.
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The Black Jacobins : Toussaint L'ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution by C. L. R. JamesA powerful and impassioned historical account of the largest successful revolt by enslaved people in history: the Haitian Revolution of 1791–1803
“One of the seminal texts about the history of slavery and abolition.... Provocative and empowering.” —The New York Times Book ReviewThe Black Jacobins, by Trinidadian historian C. L. R. James, was the first major analysis of the uprising that began in the wake of the storming of the Bastille in France and became the model for liberation movements from Africa to Cuba. It is the story of the French colony of San Domingo, a place where the brutality of plantation owners toward enslaved people was horrifyingly severe.
And it is the story of a charismatic and barely literate enslaved person named Toussaint L’Ouverture, who successfully led the Black people of San Domingo against successive invasions by overwhelming French, Spanish, and English forces—and in the process helped form the first independent post-colonial nation in the Caribbean.
With a new introduction (2023) by Professor David Scott.
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Conditional citizens : on belonging in America by Laila LalamiA New York Times Editors' Choice • Finalist for the California Book Award • Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction • Best Book of the Year: Time, NPR, Bookpage, Los Angeles TimesIn this brilliantly argued and deeply personal work, Pulitzer Prize finalist Laila Lalami recounts her unlikely journey from Moroccan immigrant to U.S.citizen, using her own story as a starting point for an exploration of the rights, liberties, and protections that are traditionally associated with American citizenship. Tapping into history, politics, and literature, she elucidates how accidents of birth—such as national origin, race, and gender—that once determined the boundaries of Americanness still cast their shadows today, poignantly illustrating how white supremacy survives through adaptation and legislation. Weaving together her experiences with an examination of the place of nonwhites in the broader American culture, Lalami illuminates how conditional citizens are all those whom America embraces with one arm and pushes away with the other.
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Los Gatos Library
100 Villa Avenue, Los Gatos, California 95030 (408) 354-6891 |
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