Book Circle
The Office of Equality and Diversity invites you to The Book Circle at the James E. Marks Intercultural Center. The Book Circle provides participants with a place to engage in a facilitated dialogue about various cultural, intercultural, and identity issues in a respectful environment that encourages openness and humility.
The Book Circle meets four times a year from 12:00 – 1:30 p.m. (A complimentary lunch is provided.)
A limited number of complimentary books will be available on a first-come-first-served basis at the Office of Equality and Diversity one month prior to the scheduled Book Circle. Copies of the books may also be available at Hagerty Library, Barnes and Noble Drexel and at the Free Library of Philadelphia.
If you have a disability and need an accommodation, please contact the Office of Equality & Diversity.
For more information about The Book Circle, contact Janeile Johnson, OED Programs Coordinator at 215-571-3839 or by email at JJohnson@drexel.edu.
The following books have been chosen for the 2011 – 2012 academic year.
My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey by Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D. (September 28, 2011)
"Fascinating . . . . Bursts with hope for everyone who is brain-injured (not just stroke patients) and gives medical practitioners clear, no-nonsense information about the shortcomings of conventional treatment and attitudes toward the brain- injured... But to my mind, what makes My Stroke of Insight not just valuable but invaluable—a gift to every spiritual seeker and peace activist—is what I would describe as Taylor's fearless mapping of the physiology of compassion, the physiology of Nirvana. This book is about the wonder of being human."
— Robert Koehler, Tribune Media Services
Further Reading and Resource Information:
- Drexel University College of Medicine resources on stroke
- Drexel University Office of Disability Services
She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders by Jennifer Finney Boylan (October 25, 2011)
"Beautifully crafted, fearless, painfully honest, inspiring and extremely witty. Jennifer Finney Boylan is an exquisite writer with a fascinating story and this combination has resulted in one of the most remarkable, moving and unforgettable memoirs in recent history."
- Augusten Burroughs, author of Running With Scissors
Further Reading and Resource Information:
Drexel's Program for LGBTQA Health
Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work by Edwidge Danticat (March 14, 2012)
"Danticat is at her best when writing from inside Haiti. . . . As [her] recollections show, her singular achievement is not to have remade the actual Haiti, but to have recreated it. She has wound the fabric of Haitian life into her work and made it accessible to a wide audience of Americans and other outsiders. . . . Danticat's tender new book about loss and the unquenchable passion for homeland makes us remember the powerful material from which most fiction is wrought: it comes from childhood, and place. No matter her geographic and temporal distance from these, Danticat writes about them with the immediacy of love." - Amy Wilentz, New York Times Book Review
Special Edition Book Circle (February 8, 2012)
The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore and
Wrong Place, Wrong Time: Trauma and Violence in the Lives of Young Black Men by Dr. John Rich
"The Other Wes Moore highlights the transformative influence of caring adults… Moore vividly and powerfully describes not just the culture of the streets but how it feels to be a boy growing up in a world where violence makes you a man, school seems irrelevant, and drug dealing is a respected career choice."
— O Magazine Review
"John Rich, who has devoted so much of his career to the study of violence – especially in men of color – challenges us to see beyond the injuries and the anger and to hear and appreciate the plight of these men and to understand that they, like us, seek a place of safety in their lives."
- (David Satcher, M.D., Ph.D., 16th Surgeon General of the United States January 2010)
Further Reading and Resource Information:
Drexel's Center for Non Violence and Social Justice