Get to Know our Clubs: Black Men Read

In this series we will hear directly from some very inspiring clubs using Bookclubz in order to get to know their stories and learn how they are using our platform to build uplifting and meaningful communities! 

 

Get to know the Black Men Read, and how they have used their book club to explore their many different walks of life through deep literary discussions.

 

How did your book club start? 

 

Black Men Read started when I was reading one particular book, and I wanted to have a conversation with other folks about it. I’ve been an avid reader since I could read, but never participated in a book club. I knew that most of the book clubs that existed were female based and they generally read female-focused books. So on a whim, I decided to set up a group and I called it Black Man Read for the sake of contrast, really. I knew there were guys out there like myself who liked to read and may be interested in participating. The original idea was if I get a few people involved and we meet a couple times a year that would be great. It quickly garnered a ton of interest and four and a half years later here we are. A core group of loyalists committed and wanted to meet monthly, and we’ve covered 50+ books to date. 

 

What was the first book your club read? Who selected it, and what was the response like? 

 

The first book was The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for The Ivy League. This was a book that I had just finished, and I was thoroughly fascinated by the story, because it represented this complex existence for a black man in this country. No matter how strong or intelligent we are, it often seems that there’s something always lurking, no matter if we’re in ivy league environments, visible and leading in the boardroom, or at the highest level of a variety of professional spectrums, there are constant threats to our existence, and sometimes those threats exist even within ourselves. It was a great book to start with and set the tone for many of our discussions to come. 

 

How has your relationship to reading changed since you started/joined a book club? (This is one that a few members can answer individually, or you can have a collective answer.)

 

Prior to starting Black Men Read, I would naturally read books that I thought were interesting and confirm the things that I believe. The growth of this group has opened up a new portal for me to be more open to entertaining ideologies that may disrupt or challenge what I have always thought to be true. So now, I am much less discriminatory in the types of books that I read. I am now open to reading a book that challenges my core ideals and beliefs because otherwise, I'm only looking at the things that prove what I believe. When you take a look at a list of all the books that we have read, you will see that there are books that we read where certain authors would inevitably spiral into a heated debate where we put them in a room together to have a discussion on anything, let alone the topic that they are experts in. I think this is one of the most powerful shifts that has happened for me, is to be more open-minded about context, and the way in which we interact with the world and digest content, especially books. 

 

If your club started before lockdown: how has it changed the way you read/meet/discuss? If after: how has a book club helped you stay connected?

 

We were able to garner some additional interest from around the country by hosting Zoom meetings virtually versus the meetings that we held in person, including heavy participation from Chicago, and other parts of the country. It allowed for us to be able to connect with and include people that we normally may not have been able to attend an in-person session. 

 

How do you select what book your club is reading?

 

The majority of the books are selected through a voting process. Anyone who attends a session can recommend a book, and we quickly develop a shortlist that is voted upon by the folks that attend that particular session. Sometimes (a few times a year), I will discretionarily select a book for us to read, but most books that we select have been recommended by someone who attended a session, regardless of if it is their 1st or 10th time attending a session. This allows us to really get into books that individually, we otherwise would not read, and forces us to stretch outside of our comfort zone. 

 

How has reading together has affected your relationships with one another? Has it brought you together in a new way, provided opportunities for conversations you may not have had, etc.?

 

One of the things that I have seen in this constant dialogue - even among black men of different backgrounds, interests, and occupations, where we see things substantially differently. This is not a homogeneous group. It seems simple enough, but I think that often we get put into a box. There are guys in my group that are almost twice my age and they have shared their different perspectives on life where I have had to look at things in a different way and vice versa. We talk about everything from politics to religion, to social media, to technology, the plight of being a black man in America, how to drive change, and so many other different discussions.