Dr. Sarah Park Dahlen and I decided to hold another online book discussion! Our discussions are like book group meetings, so order your copy of the book, get you tea and cookies ready and join us as we discuss A Sitting at St. James by Rita Williams-Garcia (HarperCollins, 2021).

To build your background about the book, take the time to read Uma Krishnaswami’s conversation with Williams-Garcia. The discussion will be on Monday 21 June at 7pmET/4pmPT via Zoom. The link will be sent out 2 hours prior to the event. If you think you’re interested, go ahead and sign up so that you can receive reminders.

While you’re reading, please keep track of your questions and place them in the comments, email or DM to me or Sarah and we’ll be sure to incorporate them into our discussion.

from the publisher:

A tour-de-force from three-time National Book Award finalist Rita Williams-Garcia, this story of an antebellum plantation—and the enduring legacies of slavery upon every person who lives there—is essential reading for both teens and adults grappling with the long history of American racism.

1860, Louisiana. After serving as mistress of Le Petit Cottage for more than six decades, Madame Sylvie Guilbert has decided, in spite of her family’s objections, to sit for a portrait.

While Madame plots her last hurrah, stories that span generations—from the big house to out in the fields—of routine horrors, secrets buried as deep as the family fortune, and the tangled bonds of descendants and enslaved.

This astonishing novel from award-winning author Rita Williams-Garcia about the interwoven lives of those bound to a plantation in antebellum America is an epic masterwork—empathetic, brutal, and entirely human.

link to register: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/virtual-book-discussion-a-sitting-in-st-james-tickets-156779047351

link to purchase the book (my affiliated link): https://bookshop.org/a/25263/9780062367297