Executive Director’s Letter
July 19, 2022
Summer Reads
Now that we are deep into summer, below you will find GBCA staff recommendations for your summer reading pleasure and edification. Enjoy!
The Deep by Rivers Solomon.
"The water-breathing descendants of African slave women tossed overboard have built their own underwater society—and must reclaim the memories of their past to shape their future." - Goodreads
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick
“The novel is set in a post-apocalyptic San Francisco, where Earth's life has been greatly damaged by a nuclear global war, leaving most animal species endangered or extinct. ” - Wikipedia
Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep
“This “superbly written true-crime story” (The New York Times Book Review) masterfully brings together the tales of a serial killer in 1970s Alabama and of Harper Lee, the author of To Kill a Mockingbird, who tried to write his story.” - Penguin Random House
The Stonewall Reader edited by the New York Public Library
“For the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, an anthology chronicling the tumultuous fight for LGBTQ rights in the 1960s and the activists who spearheaded it with a forward by Edmund White.” - Penguin Random House
Siddhartha By Hermann Hesse
“In this story of a wealthy Indian Brahmin who casts off a life of privilege to seek spiritual fulfillment. Hesse synthesizes disparate philosophies…into a unique vision of life as expressed through one man's search for true meaning.” - Goodreads
The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
“The first popular work to combine the spiritual and psychological insights of modern psychoanalysis with the archetypes of world mythology, the book creates a roadmap for navigating the frustrating path of contemporary life.” - Goodreads
The Precious Jules by Shawn Rocher
“After nearly two hundred years of housing retardants, as they were once known, the Beechwood Institute is closing the doors on its dark history, and the complicated task of reassigning residents has begun. Ella Jules, having arrived at Beechwood at the tender age of eight, must now rely on the state to decide her future. ” - Blackstone Publishing
A Promised Land by Barack Obama; The Presidential Memoirs–Volume I
“...Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency—a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil.” - Goodreads
Biography of Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by David W. Blight
“The definitive, dramatic biography of the most important African American of the nineteenth century: Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave who became the greatest orator of his day and one of the leading abolitionists and writers of the era.” - Simon & Schuster
Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles between Vision and Reality by Scott Belsky
“Ideas for new businesses, solutions to the world's problems, and artistic breakthroughs are common, but great execution is rare. According to Scott Belsky, the capacity to make ideas happen can be developed by anyone willing to develop their organizational habits and leadership capability.” - Amazon
Kindred by Octavia Butler
“Having just celebrated her 26th birthday in 1976 California, Dana, an African-American woman, is suddenly and inexplicably wrenched through time into antebellum Maryland. After saving a drowning white boy there, she finds herself staring into the barrel of a shotgun and is transported back to the present just in time to save her life.” - Goodreads
Find yourself a cozy place to read,
Jeannie
P.S. Congratulations to David Bielenberg who will succeed Andrea Burgoyne as Executive Director of Children's Chorus of Maryland. Please join me in welcoming David back to Baltimore from his most recent stint at The Men’s Gay Chorus in Philladelphia.
