Discover the World of Books with Our Engaging Book Club

The Afric Caribbean Book Club was started by Rev. Vincent Smith in 2010 to “celebrate the invincibility of the human spirit“. It meets four times each year, to discuss books chosen in advance.

Schedule

Jan 28, 2024
New Genres: Personal Choice: Cookbook or Poetry!

It’s a new year, so let’s play with some new genres. Cookbooks would not be traditional picks for a book club, but they are an indispensable part of our lives. Food tells stories over generations. What’s your favourite cookbook? Bring it to the meeting and tell us why you love it.

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Apr 7, 2024
The Girl who Smiled Beads by Clemantine Wamariya and Elizabeth Weil

Clemantine Wamariya was six years old when her mother and father began to speak in whispers, and when she heard the loud, ugly sounds her brother said were thunder. In 1994, she and her fifteen-year-old sister, Claire, fled the Rwandan massacre and spent the next six years migrating through seven African countries, searching for safety. They did not know whether their parents were dead or alive. When Clemantine was twelve, she and her sister were granted refugee status in the United States. This memoir is “a story of war and what comes after”.

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May 26, 2024
Barracoon: The Last of the Black Cargo by Zora Neale Hurston

In 1927, Zora Neale Hurston went to Plateau, Alabama, just outside Mobile, to interview eighty-six-year-old Cudjo Lewis. Of the millions of men, women, and children transported from Africa to America as slaves, Cudjo was then the only person alive to tell the story of this integral part of the nation’s history.

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Jul 28, 2024
The Grover School Pledge by Wanda Taylor

This book is geared towards children in Grades 3-8, and is a good read for grown-ups too. This meet-up is planned to be in-person in Waterloo for the CCAWR’s summer picnic. We would love to see you there for this multi-generational gathering. Bring your little ones – siblings, children, grandchildren, cousins, nieces and nephews too!

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Sep 22, 2024
Becoming a Matriarch by Helen Knott

Having lost both her mom and grandmother in just over six months, forced to navigate the fine lines between matriarchy, martyrdom, and codependency, Knott realizes she must let go, not just of the women who raised her, but of the woman she thought she was. Woven into the pages are themes of mourning, sobriety through loss, and generational dreaming.

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Nov 24, 2024
No Bootstraps When You’re Barefoot: My Rise from a Jamaican Plantation Shack to the Boardrooms of Bay Street by Wes Hall

From one of Canada’s most successful business leaders, the founder of the BlackNorth Initiative and the newest and first Black Dragon in the Dragon’s Den comes a rags-to-riches story that also carries a profound message of hope and change.

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