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For general questions about reservations or event details, please contact the DC Public Library location you are planning to visit. For those in need of disability services related to event registration or room reservation, please reach out to the Center for Accessibility at 202-727-2142 or DCPLaccess@dc.gov. |
Our February Book, for Black History Month is The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride.
James McBride's book has been top of mind for literary prizes and book critics for the last couple of years and has been in heavy circulation in DC's Public Libraries as well. If you haven't read it, now is definitely your chance!
The book takes place in 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania were digging the foundations for a new development, and the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe's theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe. As these characters' stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town's white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community--heaven and earth--that sustain us. Bringing his masterly storytelling skills and his deep faith in humanity to The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, James McBride has written a novel that is incredibly compassionate and starkly inventive.
We hope you'll join us to discuss the book if you're available; books will be available a month before the event for pick-up upon request to third-floor MLK staff.
AGE GROUP: | Seniors | Adults |
EVENT TYPE: | Book Club | Black History Month |