Book Group
The latest pick of the Library's FYI Book Group, in partnership with the Kansas City Star, is Hanif Abdurraqib's new book A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance, a penetrating meditation on Black culture and creativity and its place in broader American culture. Read an interview with the author and learn more about the upcoming book discussion.
Juneteenth marks the emancipation of enslaved African-Americans on June 19, 1865, following the end of the Civil War. Just in time for 2021's Juneteenth, Congress passed long-discussed legislation making the date a federal holiday — the 12th in U.S. history. President Joe Biden signed the bill into law on June 17. In celebration of the newly official holiday, the Library offers a number of book recommendations, films, and a special event that highlight the history of the Black experience in America.
Passionate about pentameter? Really into rhyme and rhythm? Are you a stanza stan? The Library can help you get well-versed during National Poetry Month with a collection of reading recommendations, special online events, book discussions, and more!
Kansas has seen advances in LGBT acceptance and rights over the past decade and a half that belies perceptions of one of the country’s most famously red states. Progress has come fitfully, to be sure. But it has come nonetheless, and C.J. Janovy details the advances in both attitude and deed in the Library’s latest FYI Book Club selection, No Place Like Home: Lessons in Activism from LGBT Kansas.
Want a read on the progress women are making in society, on where they once stood or stand now in their centuries-long struggle for equal access and opportunity? “All you have to do,” Mallory O’Meara says, “is look into the bottom of a glass.” The Library’s latest FYI Book Club selection is Mallory O’Meara’s Girly Drinks: A World History of Women and Alcohol.
Stanley Banks' Blue Beat Syncopation: Selected Poems 1977-2002 is a frank meditation on the Black experience in Kansas City at that time – with remarkable resonance today, addressing street violence, untimely death and “never-to-be dreams” while also celebrating resilience and finding room for hope. It's the Library's latest FYI Book Club selection.
Is reading about art like dancing about architecture? If an artist sits in a vacant gallery, is it art? If an author writes a novel with a real person as a character is it fiction? An FYI Book Group discussion of Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose held at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art had book and art lovers pondering these very questions. Readers also had the chance to pose their questions to the author, who dropped in via Facetime from her home in Hobart, Tasmania.
The Kansas City Public Library partners with The Kansas City Star on the latest FYI Book Group discussion: Sarah Smarsh’s She Come by It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, March 4, 2021, via Zoom. Read an interview with Smarsh, learn more about the book, and get details on registering for the online conversation.
With the beginning of a new year comes the renewed commitment to shake up our usual routines. We tell ourselves we’re going to learn a new skill, take a class or two, strive to get exposed to diverse and different ideas, make healthier choices, take risks in personal and professional lives… an ambitious list of life-changing activities. Luckily, the Library is an ideal starting point to help you turn your New Year’s resolutions into real results.
In his new book Taste Makers: Seven Immigrant Women Who Revolutionized Food in America, James Beard Award-winning food writer Mayukh Sen explores that rich diversity in flavor and technique and profiles a handful of extraordinary individuals. Spanning in era from World War II to today, they are cooks, cookbook authors and cooking teachers who came from China and Mexico, from France and Italy, from Iran and India and Jamaica. Some had followings. Others weren’t as well known. The latest edition of the FYI Book Group discusses the stories featured in the book.
Nothing comes between readers and their books. Not even a pandemic. “One of the first things the Library did after closing our physical locations in response to COVID-19 was start looking for ways to maintain our connection with readers,” says Kaite Stover, director of readers’ services at the Kansas City Public Library. Read more about the Library's online book group offerings.
Pride Month in June commemorates the Stonewall riots in New York's Greenwich Village, which ignited the gay rights movement in the United States in 1969. The Library celebrates with LGBTQIA+ book recommendations, highlights from past programs, film offerings, and other resources.
Pride Month in June commemorates the Stonewall riots in New York's Greenwich Village, which ignited the gay rights movement in the United States in 1969. The Library offers a collection of book recommendations, events, films, and other resources that celebrate LGBTQIA+ voices and experiences.
Buki Papillon's award-winning debut novel, An Ordinary Wonder, is told through tense divisions — starting within the protagonist’s body. Otolorin is physically both male and female, intersex. Otolorin is a boy and a girl, raised as a boy while knowing she’s a girl. Otolorin is a twin.
If you love talking about books but aren’t quite ready to commit to joining a traditional book group, or if your schedule makes it hard to attend a regular gathering, our Whenever Book Club offers a convenient way for you to connect with other like-minded bibliophiles – no video needed, no set meeting times, no in-person obligations!