Ad: Gapers Block TextAds reach thousands for just $35 a week! That's $5 a day! Learn more... [ ? ]
Book Club

Quotable Fri Jun 27 2008

Quotable Friday

Every Friday is Quotable Friday on the book club blog, where we highlight a notable passage from a book with a Chicago connection. This week's quotable is from Our America: Life and Death on the South Side of Chicago by Lealan Jones and Lloyd Newman. The authors were 13 years old when they conducted two award-winning National Public Radio documentaries in 1993 and 1995 about their experiences growing up in Chicago's Ida B. Wells Homes. This book is comprised of unused material from those broadcasts.

"Our neighborhood is a fun neighborhood if you know what you're doing. If you act like a little kid in this neighborhood, you're not gonna last too long. 'Cause if you play childish games in the ghetto, you're going to find a childish bullet in your childish brain. If you live in the ghetto, when you're ten you know everything you're not supposed to know. When I was ten I knew where drugs came from. I knew about every different kind of gun. I knew about sex. I was a kid in age, but my mind had the reality of a grown-up, 'cause I seen these things every day!

"Like when I was eight years old, my cousin Willy had a friend named Baby Tony and another friend, Little Cecil. They used to hang out—watch TV, go to the park and hoop, sell drugs. They all went to jail. When Baby Tony acme out he was walking through the park when a boy lit him up and blew his face off. His face was entirely blown off. And then a couple of days later Little Cecil sold somebody a dummy bag of plaster from off the walls, so the man who was using it came back and asked for his money back. Little Cecil took off running and the man shot him. And Cecil was dead. That was both of my cousin's friends that died in one week!"

- Alice Maggio

Back to the Top
This Month's Selection:

September 2008

Native Son

by Richard Wright

Native SonBigger Thomas is a young black man in 1940s Chicago who accidentally kills Mary, the daughter of the wealthy, white Dalton family, for whom he works as a chauffeur. Bigger's attempts to preserve his innocence go horribly awry when the public and the press decide his guilt even before he is caught and tried.

Meet & Discuss

Join us at The Book Cellar at 4736-38 N. Lincoln Ave. (map) to discuss the book. We'll meet on Monday, September 8, at 7:30pm. New members are always welcome!

Upcoming Books

September 8
Native Son
by Richard Wright

October 13
Dirty Sugar Cookies
by Ayun Halliday

November 10
Sin in the Second City
by Karen Abbott


Past Books

August 11
The Wizard of Oz
by L. Frank Baum

July 14
Free Burning
by Bayo Ojikutu

June 9
Naked
by David Sedaris

May 19
The Grass Dancer
by Susan Power

April 14
Middlesex
by Jeffrey Eugenides

March 10
Fire Sale
by Sara Paretsky

February 11
The Enchanters Vs. Sprawlburg Springs
by Brian Costello

January 14
Never a City So Real
by Alex Kotlowitz

~*~

2007 Book List

2006 Book List

2005 Book List


About the GB Book Club

The Gapers Block Book Club is a reading group dedicated to reading fiction by Chicago area authors and nonfiction works about our city. We read a new book every month, and new members are always welcome.

In Person
The book club meets on the second Monday of the month at The Book Cellar bookstore in Lincoln Square (map).

&c.
Sign up for the book club mailing list to receive reminders about upcoming meetings and other special announcements.


To get in touch with Alice and Veronica, the book club moderators, email us at bookclub{at}gapersblock.com.


© 2006 - 2008 Gapers Block. All Rights Reserved. Content may not be reproduced without express permission. The GB Book Club is a Gapers Block production. Advertise with us.