New Book Discussion Group, SPARK Announced

SPARK Recommends. . . .

The local community advocacy group SPARK (Supporting Public Action and Reliable Knowledge) announces the first meeting of a new reading and discussion group, “SPARK Recommends. . . .” The group will meet on a regular basis, beginning on Wednesday, February 28th, from noon to 2, on the third floor of Ross Library.

Hoping to foster discussion in the community, the reading group will be open to the public and will choose books that focus on issues of diversity. “We hope to explore challenging questions in order to better understand the issues that often separate us from one another. Our discussions may not always be comfortable, but they will, we hope, allow us to see that the divides that separate us are really bridges we can cross,” states Karen Elias, member of SPARK.

The first meeting will explore Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance. In his memoir, Vance describes an often painful childhood growing up as a “hillbilly” in Appalachia. His honest, unsparing examination presents an Appalachia riddled with personal and familial chaos, dysfunction, drug abuse, and violence, the effect of which is often to produce lives that are permanently shattered before they have a chance at self-definition. As an elegy, the book laments the loss of this world, a world he still considers “home,” but that he understands he had to leave in order to save his own life. In the final chapters Vance offers his own experience as a way to understand the wounding that gets passed between generations as a kind of inheritance in communities such as his. The questions he asks are pertinent to all of us. How do we ensure that everyone has the emotional and financial resources needed to create a stable life? How is the American Dream defined? What role should government play in shaping / protecting the lives of its citizens? How do we balance promotion of the common good with protection of individual liberties?

According to SPARK member Pam Dillett, “We are starting with this book as a way of exploring our own relationship to place, looking not only at how place shapes us personally but also at how we derive from it a larger sense of group identity, one that has implications that reach far beyond our individual lives.”
Ross Library has a copy of the book, or you can order it through Interlibrary Loan or purchase a copy. We hope you will read it and join us for a simulating discussion on February 28th.