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ready. set. read. Alumni Book Club Mixes Good Reads, Good Conversation
In January 2021 an online book club was launched, geared specifically for the globally diverse Shattuck-St. Mary’s alumni base. The club offers a flexible, low-commitment way for alums to not only stay engaged with the School, but also expand their networks by connecting with other members of the SSM community all over the world. The concept for the SSM-ABC was formed by Head of School Matt Cavellier and longtime Shattuck-St. Mary’s educator Jan Gould-Martin ’75. Both passionate about lifelong learning, they wanted the book club to be a space where alumni could enjoy thought-provoking discussions on a wide variety of books related to social issues, leadership, literature, and more. “Books are selected in several ways,” Jan explains. “They are recommended by regular book club attendees, they are works read in SSM classes, and Matt and Courtney [Cavellier] and I bring them from our own individual and collective reading.” She adds, “These Sunday gatherings are a snapshot of what we do, but also of who we are. We share experiences, what we have read and have not read, memories. We also listen. And we learn.” During its inaugural year, the club explored Kurt Vonnegut’s darkly comic 1969 novel Slaughterhouse-Five and Shakespeare’s final play The Tempest, discussed To Live by contemporary Chinese author Yu Hua with students in the current AP Literature class, and delved into Dare to Make History: Chasing a Dream and Fighting for Equity, authored by alumni sisters Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson ’08 and Monique Lamoureux-Morando ’08. The SSM-ABC meets virtually on the third Sunday of every month, at 1 p.m. CST. Membership is open and free to all alumni. You can sign up at any time, choose which books you want to read, and which meetings you wish to participate in, based on your own individual schedule.
To learn more about the Shattuck-St. Mary’s Alumni Book Club and how to participate, visit:
bit.ly/ssm-alumnibookclub
Are you an alumni author? We want to hear from you! If you have written a book which was published within the last three years, or is due to be released soon, please vist bit.ly/ssmauthors to fill out the alumni author form!
SSM-ABC’s curated titles reflect timely topics and explore multiple genres—fiction and nonfiction, memoir and history, emerging writers and established authors. Book club facilitator Jan Gould-Martin ’75 shares, “In ABC, as in the SSM English curriculum, we look for diverse, even disparate, rich voices from all over the world.”
Here’s what’s on deck for Summer 2022! JUNE: Brother, I’m Dying by Edwidge Danticat This personal family story crosses lines—memoir to fine literature, Haiti to the USA, life to death—and it does so with honesty, fear, and love. Published in 2007, Brother, I’m Dying is Edwidge Danticat’s nonfiction family story that centers around her father, her uncle, and the events that linked them in the last months of their lives. Danticat explores her family’s troubled history in Haiti and the United States and her experience of having to leave the only home she had ever known. JULY: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari Chosen by ABC participant Steve Barrager, Ph.D. ‘59, this book was first published in Hebrew in 2011, and is based on a series of lectures Harari taught at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Bold, wide-ranging, and provocative, Sapiens challenges everything we thought we knew about being human: our thoughts, our actions, our power ... and our future. AUGUST: Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens Nominated by Helen Francis ‘01, The New York Times hails this novel as “painfully beautiful.” Author Delia Owens is a wildlife scientist from Idaho with an impressive bookshelf full of nonfiction works, but it is this story, about a young woman named Kya who’s abandoned at a young age and left to raise herself in the marshes of North Carolina, that has spent more than 150 weeks on the best seller list.
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