Events Calendar

Thursday, April 21 2022

April 21, 2022 - 7:00pm - 8:30pm

4 sessions:
Thursday, January 20, 2022
Thursday, February 17, 2022
Thursday, March 17, 2022
Thursday, April 21, 2022

Click here to download the reading guide.

Fee: Free.
Registration: This discussion takes place via Zoom; advance registration required. Click here to register.

The Lynden/HOME Refugee Steering Committee book discussion group, moderated by Lynden’s Kim Khaira, is for those interested in firsthand accounts of displacement. We consider works of non-fiction and fiction, including autobiographical and semi-autobiographical works, by writers who have faced or are facing forced displacement as refugees, asylum seekers, and immigrants. Where stories of persecution, historical trauma, and loss of livelihood are effortlessly conveyed by storytellers, journalists, and humanitarians who search out or stumble upon the lives of refugees, we seek out the words of those to whom these stories belong: the narrators who are the closest to their own stories, and the stories of their people, friends, family and, of course, refugees. In January, we will be embarking on a new book, Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Admiring Silence. Newcomers welcome!

Gurnah, the 2021 Nobel Prize laureate in literature, depicts in his fifth novel, Admiring Silence, a native Zanzibar man who flees to England for political safety and meets an English woman whom he builds a life with. After years pass, the protagonist returns to his homeland only to be confronted with a changed landscape. Tanzanian-born Gurnah who is known for his eloquent speech and as one of the most important contemporary postcolonial novelists writing in Britain today, illustrates through fiction, issues of identity and belonging, and in Admiring Silence, the grief and loss of leaving.

We encourage you to read each book in advance (see information below on acquiring the current selection). Then join us for a virtual discussion moderated by Lynden’s Kim Khaira. We expect the group to meet monthly, and we will be seeking the input of group members on titles to consider in the future.

As part of our HOME work at Lynden, we are making the book available without charge to book discussion group participants. If you would like us to purchase a copy of the book for you, please indicate this when completing the registration form. We will contact you when the book is available and you will be able to pick it up at the Lynden Sculpture Garden, 2145 West Brown Deer Road, Milwaukee, WI 53217.

If you prefer to support your local public library by borrowing the book, you can find Milwaukee County libraries here or other local libraries here. If you would like to purchase the book yourself, Boswell Books will be offering it at a 10% discount to book group participants. The book can be purchased at the store (you will find it among the book club selections) or on the Boswell website with the 10% book club discount already applied. We will post that link as soon as we have it. Please check Boswell’s website to check the availability of the book, and to confirm hours and delivery options.

PREVIOUS READINGS
Dina Nayeri's The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You January-February, 2021
Kao Kalia Yang's Somewhere in the Unknown World: A Collective Refugee Memoir March-May, 2021
Emmanuel Mbolela's Refugee: A Memoir June-August, 2021
The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives September-December 2021


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