Update 7.2.20: Thanks to an amazing response, all five book clubs have reached membership capacity. If you weren’t able to join a club this time, please stay tuned for news about our next series. 

This summer, BSC invites faculty, staff, alumni, and the larger community to be part of our first-ever Summer Virtual Book Clubs, which aim to inspire a deeper understanding of race, racism, and equal justice.

Five books – each with a Birmingham connection or context – have been chosen to help us explore critical elements of American society, history, and culture. Choose the book (or books) you wish to read and then join your book club for an online meeting hosted by BSC-selected facilitators.

There is no charge for this program. All you need to do is choose a book (purchase, borrow, or check out from your local library), agree to ground rules for the discussion, and commit to finishing the book before the virtual meeting. To allow for discussion, book clubs will be limited to 12 participants each.

• Sign up online through Friday, July 3.
• Reading period ends July 31.
• Virtual Book Club meetings will be held the week of August 2.
• When you sign up, we’ll add you to a private Facebook group with the facilitators and members of your club. (If you’re not on Facebook, you can still join the club and participate in the online meeting the week of August 2.)

Our Summer Virtual Book Club books are:

“Four Spirits” by Sena Jeter Naslund ’64

Facilitators: Rachel Estes, director of outreach and missions, Canterbury United Methodist, and Andrea McCaskey, director of programs, Momentum

Weaving together the lives of blacks and whites, racists and civil rights advocates, and the events of peaceful protest and violent repression, Sena Jeter Naslund creates a tapestry of American social transformation at once intimate and epic.

In Birmingham, twenty-year-old Stella Silver, an idealistic white college student, is sent reeling off her measured path by events of 1963. Combining political activism with single parenting and night-school teaching, African American Christine Taylor discovers she must heal her own bruised heart to actualize meaningful social change. Inspired by the courage and commitment of the civil rights movement, the child Edmund Powers embodies hope for future change. In this novel of maturation and growth, Naslund makes vital the intersection of spiritual, political, and moral forces that have redefined America.

The “Four Spirits” book club is full.

“The Grace of Silence: A Memoir” by Michele Norris

Facilitators: Dr. Kristie Williams, BSC Director of Student Diversity and Inclusion, and Dr. Amy Cottrill, Denson N. Franklin Associate Professor of Religion

While exploring the hidden conversation on race unfolding throughout America in the wake of President Obama’s election, National Public Radio host Michele Norris discovered that there were painful secrets within her own family that had been willfully withheld. These revelations — from her father’s shooting by a Birmingham police officer to her maternal grandmother’s job as an itinerant Aunt Jemima in the Midwest — inspired a bracing journey into her family’s past, from her childhood home in Minneapolis to her ancestral roots in the Deep South.

“The Grace of Silence” book club is full.

“Homegoing” by Yaa Gyasi

Facilitators: Virginia Gilbert Loftin, BSC Vice President of Advancement and Communications, and Melanie Bridgeforth, CEO of The Women’s Fund of Greater Birmingham

A riveting kaleidoscopic debut novel and the beginning of a major career: Yaa Gyasi’s “Homegoing” is a novel about race, history, ancestry, love and time, charting the course of two sisters torn apart in 18th century Africa through to the present day. Stretching from the tribal wars of Ghana to slavery and Civil War in America, from the coal mines in the north to the Great Migration to the streets of 20th century Harlem, Yaa Gyasi (raised in Huntsville by her Ghanian immigrant parents) has written a modern masterpiece, a novel that moves through histories and geographies and — with outstanding economy and force — captures the intricacies of the troubled yet hopeful human spirit.

The “Homegoing” book club is full.

“Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption” by Bryan Stevenson

Facilitator: Linda Flaherty-Goldsmith, 15th President, Birmingham-Southern College

Bryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending those most desperate and in need: the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children trapped in the farthest reaches of our criminal justice system. One of his first cases was that of Walter McMillian, a young man who was sentenced to die for a notorious murder he insisted he didn’t commit. The case drew Bryan into a tangle of conspiracy, political machination, and legal brinksmanship — and transformed his understanding of mercy and justice forever.

“Just Mercy” is at once an unforgettable account of an idealistic, gifted young lawyer’s coming of age, a moving window into the lives of those he has defended, and an inspiring argument for compassion in the pursuit of true justice.

The Just Mercy book club is full. 

“The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row” by Anthony Ray Hinton

Facilitators: Mary Kate Waters-Wright ’15, co-founder of Hoover City Schools Cultural Leadership Team, and Terrence Ingram ’09, founder and CEO of LegacyWorks

At age 29, Anthony Ray Hinton was wrongfully charged with robbery and murder, and sentenced to death by electrocution for crimes he didn’t commit. The only thing he had in common with the perpetrator was the color of his skin. He spent the next 28 years of his life on death row, watching fellow inmates march to their deaths, knowing he would follow soon. Hinton’s incredible story reveals the injustices and inherent racism of the American legal system, but it is also testament to the hope and humanity in us all.

“The Sun Does Shine” book club is full.