E-mail Exchange Re The Short Quiz

[johnkarls]

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Subject: Re: Short Quiz – Oprah Book Club Selection “Caste: The Origins Of Our Discontents” by Isabel Wilkerson – June 15
Date: 2022-05-30 12:39
From: readingliberally-saltlake@johnkarls.com
To: V

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Dear V,

I hope all is well with you.

For our 16.5 years of existence, the monthly Short Quiz has ALWAYS tried to be a promotional piece to get our members interested in the focus book.

And few are the questions over that span for which the answer wasn't either a "yes" or a "What Do You Think - Let's Discuss."

Yes, I did teach part time for NYU School of Law - which is why (as you correctly suspected) many of this month's Short-Quiz questions pertained to matters not mentioned in the book.

In other words, like Law School 101, they were designed to try to get the reader to think.

I hope you’re enjoying the holiday.

Your friend,

John K.



Subject: Re: Short Quiz – Oprah Book Club Selection “Caste: The Origins Of Our Discontents” by Isabel Wilkerson – June 15
Date: 2022-05-28 10:42
From: V
To: readingliberally-saltlake@johnkarls.com

J-

Having read Caste, I opened your Quiz. I thought the questions would focus on the book.

A few did. Disappointingly however, many required (your) outside knowledge of related matters.

Am I remembering correctly that you once taught tax law at NYU's law school?

V



-----Original Message-----
From: readingliberally-saltlake@johnkarls.com
To: “V”
Sent: Sat, May 28, 2022 9:31 am
Subject: Short Quiz – Oprah Book Club Selection "Caste: The Origins Of Our Discontents" by Isabel Wilkerson – June 15
.


To Each of Our 205 Members One-By-One – for reasons explained in the 4
postings in Sec. 2 of www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org.

Dear Friends,

Our next meeting is June 15 – 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm MDT via Zoom.


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The Short Quiz

Available at
viewtopic.php?f=694&t=2194&sid=5580e360 ... a310d2c0f9.


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OUR JUNE 15 FOCUS BOOK

Our focus book is Oprah Book Club Selection "Caste: The Origins Of Our
Discontents" by Isabel Wilkerson (Random House 8/4/202 – 388 pages sans
notes and index – $12.21 + shipping or $13.99 Kindle from Amazon.com).

The Salt Lake COUNTY Library has available 4 of 4 print copies (and 0 of
11 AUDIO E-books with 49 holds) and the Salt Lake CITY Library has
available 10 of 16 print copies (and 0 of 6 AUDIO E-books with 12 holds)


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BOOK DESCRIPTION Per Amazon (usually from the dust jacket)

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK • NATIONAL BOOK
AWARD LONGLIST • "An instant American classic and almost certainly the
keynote nonfiction book of the American century thus far."—Dwight
Garner, The New York Times

The Pulitzer Prize–winning, bestselling author of The Warmth of Other
Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and
shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human
divisions.

NAMED THE #1 NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR BY TIME, ONE OF THE TEN BEST
BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY People • The Washington Post • Publishers Weekly
AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review
• O: The Oprah Magazine • NPR • Bloomberg • Christian Science Monitor •
New York Post • The New York Public Library • Fortune • Smithsonian
Magazine • Marie Claire • Town & Country • Slate • Library Journal •
Kirkus Reviews • LibraryReads • PopMatters

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize• National Book Critics Circle
Award Finalist• Dayton Literary Peace Prize Finalist • PEN/John Kenneth
Galbraith Award for Nonfiction Finalist • PEN/Jean Stein Book Award
Longlist

"As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a
darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our
assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about
feelings or morality. It is about power—which groups have it and which
do not."

In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait
of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an
immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people,
how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden
caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.

Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system
that influences people's lives and behavior and the nation's fate.
Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson
explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations,
including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting
stories about people—including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball's
Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself,
and many others—she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste
is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial
systems in America to plan their outcasting of the Jews; she discusses
why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for
those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the
surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and
the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she
points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and
destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common
humanity.

Beautifully written, original, and revealing, Caste: The Origins of Our
Discontents is an eye-opening story of people and history, and a
reexamination of what lies under the surface of ordinary lives and of
American life today.


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BOOK REVIEWS EXCERPTS Per Amazon

"Magnificent . . . a trailblazing work on the birth of inequality . . .
Caste offers a forward-facing vision. Bursting with insight and love,
this book may well help save us."
—O: The Oprah Magazine

"This book has the reverberating and patriotic slap of the best American
prose writing. . . . Wilkerson has written a closely argued book that
largely avoids the word 'racism,' yet stares it down with more humanity
and rigor than nearly all but a few books in our literature. . . . It's
a book that changes the weather inside a reader."
—Dwight Garner, The New York Times

"A surprising and arresting wide-angle reframing . . . Her epilogue
feels like a prayer for a country in pain, offering new directions
through prophetic language"
—Bilal Qureshi, The Washington Post

"A transformative new framework through which to understand identity and
injustice in America."
—Justin Worland, Time

"Magisterial . . . Her reporting is nimble and her sentences exquisite.
But the real power of Caste lies tucked within the stories she strings
together like pearls. . . . Caste roams wide and deep, lives and deaths
vividly captured, haloed with piercing cultural critique. . . . Caste is
a luminous read, bearing its own torch of righteous wrath in a
diamond-hard prose that will be admired and studied by future
generations of journalists."
—Hamilton Cain, Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Brave, clear and shatteringly honest in both approach and delivery . .
. Extrapolating Wilkerson's ideas to contemporary America becomes an
unsettling exercise that proves how right she is and how profoundly
embedded into society the caste system is. . . . Her quest for answers
frames everything and acts as the perfect delivery method for every
explanation."
—Gabino Iglesias, San Francisco Chronicle

"Caste draws heavily on the powerful mingling of narrative, research,
and visionary, sweeping insight that made Wilkerson's The Warmth of
Other Suns the definitive contemporary study of African Americans'
twentieth-century Great Migration from the Jim Crow South to northern,
midwestern, and western cities. It deepens the resonance of that book (a
seemingly impossible feat) by digging more explicitly into the pervasive
racial hierarchy that transcends region and time."
—Steve Nathans-Kelly, New York Journal of Books

"Caste will spur readers to think and to feel in equal measure."
—Kwame Anthony Appiah, TheNew York Times Book Review

"Wilkerson's book is a powerful, illuminating and heartfelt account of
how hierarchy reproduces itself, as well as a call to action for the
difficult work of undoing it."
—Kenneth W. Mack, The Washington Post

"Should be required reading for generations to come . . . A significant
work of social science, journalism, and history, Caste removes the
tenuous language of racial animus and replaces it with a sturdier
lexicon based on power relationships."
—Joshunda Sanders, The Boston Globe

"[Caste] should be at the top of every American's reading list."
—Jennifer Day, Chicago Tribune

"An expansive interrogation of racism, institutionalised inequality and
injustice . . . This is an American reckoning and so it should be. . . .
It is a painfully resonant book and could not have come at a more urgent
time."
—Fatima Bhutto, The Guardian

"Full of uncovered stories and persuasive writing . . . Opening up a new
bank of language in a time of emboldened white supremacism may provide
her readers with a new way of thinking and talking about social
injustice. . . . A useful reminder to India's many upper-caste
cosmopolitans . . . that dreams of resistance are just one part of the
shared inheritance of the world's oldest democracy, and the world's
largest."
—Supriya Nair, Mumbai Mirror

"It is bracing to be reminded with such precision that our country was
built through genocide and slavery. But Ms. Wilkerson has also provided
a renewed way of understanding America's longest, fiercest trouble in
all its complexity. Her book leaves me both grateful and hopeful. I
gulped it down."
—Tracy Kidder, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Mountains Beyond
Mountains

"Like Martin Luther King, Jr. before her, Isabel Wilkerson has traveled
the world to study the caste system and has returned to show us more
clearly than ever before how caste is permanently embedded in the
foundation and unseen structural beams of this old house called America.
Isabel Wilkerson tells this story in prose that is so beautiful, the
only reason to pause your reading is to catch your breath. You cannot
understand America today without this book."
—Lawrence O'Donnell

"This enthralling exposé deserves a wide and impassioned readership."
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Similar to her previous book, the latest by Wilkerson is destined to
become a classic, and is urgent, essential reading for all."
—Library Journal (starred review)

"This is a brilliant book, well timed in the face of a pandemic and
police brutality that cleave along the lines of a caste system."
—Booklist (starred review)


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JUNE 15 MTG INFO –

Wed June 15 – 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm MDT via Zoom.

Please RSVP by hitting your Reply Button and typing RSVP.

There is nothing further you need to do such as any special Zoom
training. We will send all RSVP's a few days in advance a URL and
meeting name/password.


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We look forward to seeing/hearing each of you on Wed June 15!!! Please
be well!!!

Your friend,

John K.

PS -- To un-subscribe, please press "reply" and type "deletion
requested."



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