Book Club Discussion Post: The 1619 Project

Welcome to our Banned Books book club! This go round we’ve selected three books that have been banned or challenged for various reasons. Each of our books – All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson, The 1619 Project edited by Nikole Hannah-Jones, and The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas – have their own Discussion Posts. Even if you weren’t able to get your review written yet, don’t worry – all are welcome here in this post’s comments or our Social Media platform discussions. In our Facebook group, Cannonball Read Book Chat we’ll have some additional prompts so please join us there as well.

Registered participants in this year’s Cannonball Read 14 can join the #CannonBookClub Zoom Book Club on Saturday September 17 at 2 pm EDT/ 11 am PDT. Those Cannonballers should have already received connection details by email. (Contact us if you haven’t!) If you’re not registered, but would like to; please drop us a line to get signed up and receive the Zoom details. 

For those of you returning or who might be joining in for #CannonBookClub for the first time (hello new friends!) all are welcome, you don’t have to be registered for CBR14. The topics are numbered, so please refer to them below by that number to help people find the conversations they are looking for; and only respond to one topic per comment to help keep things clear. If you are responding to someone else’s thoughts, please try to reply directly to that comment.

Onto the questions:

1. What was your first experience with a banned or frequently challenged book? What did you take away from that reading experience?
2. What harm can be caused by denying readers realistic, timely, and topical stories?
3. How do the stories presented in The 1619 Project compare to the stories you grew up hearing about the origins of slavery and its modern day impacts? 
4. How does the origin story of the U.S. change if we mark the beginning of U.S. history in 1619 instead of 1776?
5. What is national memory? How do we create it? How can we change it?
6. What does the divisive rhetoric surrounding The 1619 Project tell us about how Americans experience, discuss, and process the history of racism in America?
7. I’ve got something to talk about that isn’t covered above, meet me in the comments!