Bridging Differences Bookclub Launched

Maybe there is a different way into our conversations about difference. What we are doing isn't working.

Can literature help? The new "Bridging Differences" bookclub will find out. Launched by Asheville resident Patti Digh, the bookclub will meet on the first Monday evening of each month at Malaprop's bookstore at 55 Haywood Street in downtown Asheville, beginning in April 2007.

• Explore realities different from your own
• Hear new voices
• Understand how we create identity and form “tribes”
• Delve into “us” and “them”

We’ll read fiction, nonfiction, and memoir addressing issues of race and racism, ethnicity, gender identity, religion, ageism, culture clashes, immigration, tribalism, sexual orientation, disability, classism, and more...

Our intention is to explore in fiction and nonfiction a wide variety of diversity dimensions and issues to accomplish four main goals: 1) to hear the voices of writers we might not otherwise know; 2) to broaden our own perspectives of people and cultures different from our own; 3) to learn how to have dialogue across difference; and 4) to relate those issues we read about to diversity issues in our own community.

Our first book will be Richard Powers' The Time of Our Singing, called "one of the best novels ever written about race in America..."

WHEN: 1^st Monday of every month at 7pm, beginning April 2007
WHERE: Malaprop’s Bookstore (55 Haywood St. in downtown Asheville)
WHO:  OPEN TO ALL and hosted by Patti Digh & The Circle Project
WHY: We need a new way into conversations about difference. Perhaps books offer that new road…
INFO:  patti@thecircleproject.com or 828.280.5766