What Can A Book Club Do for the Community?

Ohio Reading Teacher, Fall 2008 by Huber, Susan U

Raising Cultural Awareness through Interactive Discussion about The Secret Life of Bees

In the following example of a young women's book club discussion, Joan was encouraged by the facilitator to share her thoughts. The discussion focused on African-American harassment in The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd (2003), a powerful coming-of-age story that takes place in the American South during 1964, the year of the Civil Rights Act, and intensified racial unrest (see Figure 1 for a synthesis of the story).

Joan: Rosaleen pours spit on the white men's shoes because she is being harassed. The Civil Rights Act was passed the day before, giving many rights to African- Americans. Rosaleen was feeling very secure and was proud of her race for this advancement and improvement for the lives of African-Americans in the United States.

This example is from a Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) Diversity Book Club in Youngstown, Ohio. The books this group reads cover timely and often controversial topics like politics, poverty, family bonds, betrayal, ethnicity, gender equity, censorship, and race. Each month, this YWCA Book Club publishes the book title and date of its next meeting in the local newspapers to encourage and invite all readers to participate. Readers select books about a variety of cultural experiences from current best seller lists or based on someone's recommendation, and meet with a brown bag lunch to discuss the books during noontime lunch breaks.

This article examines comments from the YWCA Book Club interactions when individual members shared multicultural insights through discussions of Sue Monk Kidd's (2003), The Secret Life of Bees. The comments serve as examples of how a book club can serve as a venue to express and reflect upon personal reactions to and perceptions about different cultures based on a framework for literacy transaction (Gambrell & Almasi, 1996). While this article focuses on an adult book club, this qualitative analysis can easily be replicated to examine children's multicultural sensitivity, particularly with upper elementary, middle or high school students. In addition, this article suggests why teachers may want to organize a multicultural book for themselves as a way of deepening their own understanding of different cultures.

Background

In recent years, the dramatic changing demographics of the United States have resulted in a significant influx of ethnic and racial groups that characterize America in new ways. Hence, it is important that Americans become sensitive to, and appreciative of the variety of cultures that comprise our increasingly diverse population (Sanchez, 1995). Opportunities for citizens, students, and teachers to contemplate issues related to multiculturalism and diversity are essential as all of us learn to accept, respect, and understand those from diverse backgrounds.

In addition, multicultural awareness and respect for diversity are issues that need to include critical thinking about topics, such as racism and prejudice (Latting, 1990). An emphasis on discussion and exploration of these issues in learning communities through literature discussion has the potential to help society, including students and teachers, to understand and value cultural diversity.

Book Clubs

Book clubs in the United States date back to the early nineteenth century, when interested New England women met to converse about the issues addressed in serious poetry, nonfiction and publications of the day (Laskin & Hughes, 1995). By the turn of the century, book clubs were thriving (Daniels, 2002). In fact, Daniels clarifies that literary societies and book clubs evolved from women's reform groups, church groups and other discussion groups, because of women's shared desire to improve themselves and for opportunities to socialize.

Today, book clubs vary in format and purpose. There are work and neighborhood-based book clubs, all-female and all-male book clubs, library clubs, online clubs, as well as parentchild and spouse book clubs. The typical book club today meets monthly to talk about a specific book; participants find it motivational to talk about the books as they acquire new ideas from others. Traditional Book Clubs offer the benefit of having all members in the same room, which makes for a much more personal and intimate experience. In some ways, Book Clubs are reading seminars and social groups all rolled up into one.

Vygotsky (1978) explained that the more opportunities learners have to use language to construct and communicate meaning, the greater the development of higher order thinking. Book clubs provide "learners" of all ages with opportunities to use language to construct meaning with friends around shared books. As more readers discover this satisfying experience, book clubs are growing in numbers (Putnam, 2000).

Readers, Texts and Meaning Making

Louise Rosenblatt (1938, 1978) defined the reader-text relationship as a transaction, in which readers draw upon their experiences and social context to actively construct meaning. A reader response approach to literature thus provides a wide variety of ways and means to personally connect and interact. Furthermore, a book club provides a unique opportunity for the enhancement of reading and literature coaching. Rosenblatt's (1938, 1978) transactional model and the ideals of reader response provide a practical means for implementation for facilitators of multicultural literature. She demands that the facilitator develop an awareness of the transaction between the reader and the text. The text is not static, but dynamic! Upon reading the text, the reader undergoes a transformation, which affects the way he/she transacts with the passage. It is a never-ending cycle of reader and text interaction. The give and take between the text and the reader forms the basis for Rosenblatt's transactional theory of reading.