IRC Book Club
About our Book Club
The Islamic Resource Center is proud to host the Milwaukee Muslim Women’s Coalition book club with a diverse group of members from different faiths and career backgrounds.
Each book is selected by the club, giving everyone an equal voice in the decision. A wonderful group of enthusiastic readers explore ideas together and welcome new members to enliven the dialogue.
Meeting on the second Monday of every month, they discuss a chapter or two of the current selection until it is completed.
To be safe during the COVID-19 pandemic, book club meetings are currently virtual with Zoom. The zoom link and meeting information are emailed to club members the week prior to the meeting.
In the event we do wish to meet in person again, the space will be limited with masks and social distancing required.
List of books
MMWC book club has proudly hosted a wide variety of books for discussion. Listed below are some of their most recent selections.
If any of the titles interest you, for your convenience, we keep many of these at hand, either to purchase in our book store or to check out of the IRC library.
Please click here to contact us for more information.
NOTES ON A FOREIGN COUNTRY
By Suzy Hansen
‘Deeply honest and brave . . . A sincere and intelligent act of self-questioning . . . Hansen is doing something both rare and necessary’ – Hisham Matar, New York TimesIn the wake of the 9/11 attacks and the invasion of Iraq, Suzy Hansen was enjoying success as a journalist for a New York newspaper.
The Other Americans
By Lila Lalami
Late one spring night in California, Driss Guerraoui—father, husband, business owner, Moroccan immigrant—is hit and killed by a speeding car. The aftermath of his death brings together a diverse cast of characters: Guerraoui’s daughter Nora, a jazz composer returning to the small town in the Mojave she thought she’d left for good; her mother, Maryam, who still pines for her life in the old country; Efraín, an undocumented witness whose fear of deportation prevents him from coming forward; Jeremy, an old friend of Nora’s and an Iraqi War veteran; Coleman, a detective who is slowly discovering her son’s secrets; Anderson, a neighbor trying to reconnect with his family; and the murdered man himself.
As the characters—deeply divided by race, religion, and class—tell their stories, each in their own voice, connections among them emerge. Driss’s family confronts its secrets, a town faces its hypocrisies, and love—messy and unpredictable—is born. Timely, riveting, and unforgettable, The Other Americans is at once a family saga, a murder mystery, and a love story informed by the treacherous fault lines of American culture.
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
By Isabel Wilkerson
Wilkerson’s book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents argues that racial stratification in the United States is best understood as a caste system, akin to those in India and in Nazi Germany. A 2020 review in the New York Times described it as “an instant American classic and almost certainly the keynote nonfiction book of the American century thus far.”Publishers Weekly called Caste a “powerful and extraordinarily timely social history.”The Chicago Tribune wrote that the book was “among the year’s best” books. The book peaked at number one on The New York Times nonfiction best-seller list. On October 14, 2020, Netflix announced Ava DuVernay will write, direct, and produce a feature film adaptation of Caste.
The Abrahamic Religions: A very short introduction.
By Charles L. Cohen
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam share much- and dispute much. Treating them as an extended family of religions grounded in their veneration of the one God proclaimed by Abraham, this very short introduction explores their earliest efforts to define themselves in reference to each other up to their present antagonisms and mutual engagements. throughout, it pays particular attention to how political contexts continually reshaped the ways in which Jews, Christians, and Muslims thought about and treated each other.
MMWC invited DR Charles L. Cohen the autor of this book for a virtual discussion in September 2020. you can find the full introduction about this book here.
MUHAMMAD Phrophet of Peace amid the clash of Empires.
By Juan Cole
In the midst of dramatic seventh century war between two empires, Muhammad was a spiritual seeker in search of community and sanctuary.
Many observers stereotype Islam and its scripture as inherently extreme or violent- a narrative that has overshadowed the truth of its roots. in this masterfully told account, preeminent Middle East expert Juan Cole takes us back to Islam’s-and the Prophet Muhammad’s-origin story.