Harvard sociologist Matthew Desmond follows eight families in Milwaukee as they struggle to keep a roof over their heads in this New York Times bestseller and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction. It is devastating and infuriating and a necessary read.” – Roxane Gay “My God, what that book lays bare about American poverty. Despite his fear of a dull marriage to May, Archer goes through with the ceremony - persuaded by his own sense of honor, family, and societal pressures.Įvicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond Newland Archer, a restrained young attorney, is engaged to the lovely May Welland but falls in love with May’s beautiful and unconventional cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska. The Age of Innocence, for which Wharton won the Pulitzer Prize in 1920, is one of her most memorable novels. 1 go-to book is ‘The Age of Innocence,’ by Edith Wharton.” – Roxane Gay
“For inspiration, I go back to my favorite books, the ones I wish I had written. From tales of the struggles to fit in to sexualized reworkings of classic television shows and comic books, Geddes’s stories are examinations of adolescent sexuality or the sexualization of youth culture. This collection of short stories explores American pop cultural archetypes from the 1950s to the 1980s. It’s amazing and also so sexy.” – Roxane Gay I will reread that story every chance I get. The highlight is the story ‘Betty and Veronica,’ about the Archie Comics characters as lovers in a high school. “One of my favorite books few people have heard of is ‘I Am a Magical Teenage Princess.’ It’s this amazing collection of short stories that is sharp and dark and mostly about teenage girls. I Am a Magical Teenage Princess by Luke Geddes Spending summers together in Virginia, the Keating and Cousins children forge a lasting bond based on a shared disillusionment with their parents and the strange and genuine affection that grows between them. Spanning five decades, Commonwealth explores how a chance encounter reverberates through the lives of the four parents and six children involved. “She is one of my favorite writers, and I loved the ambitious, almost too ambitious, narrative structure of the novel and these little worlds she kept building and tearing down to move the story forward.” – Roxane Gay Here are just a few of her recommendations. In a By the Book feature in The New York Times, Gay shared her latest book picks. Her memoir, Hunger, was recently listed among Washington Post‘s 5 Best Memoirs of 2017. Watch the Weekly Updates and the WIM website/calendar for meeting dates, times and locations and for this month’s offerings.Roxane Gay is best known for her troubled, headstrong, and unconventional women in Bad Feminist and most recently, Difficult Women.
These gatherings are open to all members of the USC community and are informal, no cost opportunities to meet with and get to know colleagues while reading and discussing a range of topics (from fiction to non).
Coordinated by WIM members, the WIM Book Club meet nearly every month on both the HSC and UPC.