October Not Fiction Book Discussion

 

Join us for a virtual discussion of The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You by Dina Nayeri, winner of the UNESCO City of Literature Paul Engle Prize and finalist for the Kirkus Prize in Nonfiction, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Rome Prize. 

What is it like to be a refugee? Nayeri, who fled Iran with her mother and brother at the age of 8, and was eventually given asylum in America, gives readers insight into the experience of the world's more than 25 million refugees through her own story and the stories of other refugees and asylum seekers. She asks us to reconsider the stereotypes we hold about people who emigrate and immigrate and to try to understand their motivations and the challenges they face.

When? Tuesday, October 6, at 6:30 p.m.

Where? Not Fiction Book Discussion has moved to Zoom! We will most likely hold all of our discussions on Zoom through the end of the year. 

Here is the invitation to register on Zoom. The meeting code you receive will work for the remainder of the discussions this year.

Hi there, 

You are invited to a Zoom meeting. 

When: Sep 1, 2020 06:30 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada) 

Register in advance for this meeting:

https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAud-2gqjIvE9UoDxD6kM7PgZkdGwWP1FF2 

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

We hope you will join the discussion.

Readalikes: If you enjoyed September's selection . . .

 If you liked The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border by Francisco Cantú, then you might also enjoy these books suggested by our discussion group members:

The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America by Greg Grandin

Lost Children Archive: A Novel by Valeria Luiselli

Separated: Inside an American Tragedy by Jacob Soboroff

And in a 2019 interview for The New School, Melanie Odell asked, 

"What authors can you recommend who are writing about the border now?"

Cantú replied,

"I think a lot of the best writing about the border has been coming from poets. The poet Natalie Scenters-Zapico and her book The Verging Cities. The Mexican poet Sara Uribe, whose work is referenced in The Line Becomes a River. The essayist Cristina Rivera Garza’s forthcoming book, Dolerse, is one of the most important collections of essays and thinking about the violence happening in Mexico. Reyna Grande’s memoirs and Javier Zamora’s book of poetry, Unaccompanied. One of the most important books I read last year was Gore Capitalism by Sayak Valencia. She is a thinker and intellectual living in Tijuana. She writes a lot about the intersections of drug war violence in Mexico and US capitalism, and how the spectacle of violence feeds the process of de-humanization."