August Not Fiction Book Discussion

We hope you will join us August 5 at 7:00 p.m. in Meeting Room A of the Main Library on Calhoun Street for our discussion of Bliss Broyard's memoir One Drop: My Father's Hidden Life--A Story of Race and Family Secrets. With this memoir, the Not Fiction Book Discussion group begins an exploration of identity that we will continue with each book through December. Broyard's father, influential New York Times book critic Anatole Broyard, concealed from his children until his death the fact that he was of mixed race ancestry, that he was black. Broyard examines not only her own response to her father's choice, but also what his choice could have meant to him, and she provides a social and historical view of her family's 250-year history in America. While intensely personal, Broyard's narrative is also a broader consideration of racial identity in America and the basic human urge to "know" who we are.