Category Archives: ¡Adelante!

Many AAUW members share a love of reading, and that love, partnered with a desire to seek out books written from diverse perspectives, launched a component of AAUW’s diversity outreach program in 1996 — AAUW’s ¡Adelante! Book of the Month Club.

October Branch Program: Edgar Allan Poe–Buried Alive October 30

Online members will watch PBS program American Masters: Edgar Allan Poe–Buried Alive on Monday, October 30, 8 pm on KNME. Portales PBS usually has same night time programming. Programming will be repeated November 1 (check local listing for time). Comment after watching.

Kathleen Turner narrates the real story of the author of The Raven, The Tell Tale Heart, and Pit and the Pendulum. Long misrepresented as a drug-addled madman, Poe was a modern author who tapped into what it means to be human in a modern and sometimes frightening world.

Author Online Talk May 2, 2017 at 5:30 MDT

Join author Patricia Park, 2013-2014 AAUW American Fellow, as she discusses her first novel Re Jane: A Novel.
For Jane Re, a half-Korean, half-American orphan, the place she’s wanted to escape her whole life is Flushing, Queens. The novel “grapples with real issues of identity, race, and culture from global and historical perspectives.” Register at www.aauw.org.

Online Author Talk March 28, 2017 at 6:00 pm

Join the National Adelante Book Club Discussion Group to hear the author of Sisters in Law, Linda Hirshman speak about her dual biography of Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the nation’s first female supreme court justices. Register at www.aauw.org

Online Author Talk January 10 at 5:30 pm

The Poisoned Table, “historical novel” written by AAUW member Diane Michael Cantor is based on the writings of renowned British Actress Fanny Kemble and her life in 19th century England and the American South. The Poisoned Table portrays a passionate rivalry between fictional actress Isàbel Graves and real-life Shakespearean stage sensation Kemble. A tale of ambition, romance, and betrayal, the novel traces their unconnected adventures and acting careers in the Old and New Worlds, as well as their introduction to the horrors of American slavery. Kemble was an ardent abolitionist who penned Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839 which is sometimes credited with dissuading Britain from aiding the Confederacy.

Join AAUW’s Online Author Talk Decembet 1, 2016

November is Native American Heritage Month. Take a stand by joining AAUW’s Author Talk with Sarah Deer, author of “The Beginning and End of Rape” December 1, 2016 at 5:30 pm MT. Register at www.aauw.org or listen to the taped interview later.

In a book that’s described as a “blunt trenchant expose on the history and impact of sexual violence on indigenous tribal nations,” Deer, an attortney and law professor, confronts the problem of violence and human trafficking against Native women head-on.

Finding Time: The Economics of Work-Life Conflict Book Discussion

Come learn about the issues facing working women today! Join AAUW’s Gloria Blackwell, Vice President of Fellowships and Grants, on October 20th at 7:30pm ET as she talks to former AAUW American Fellow Heather Boushey about her new book, Finding Time: The Economics of Work-Life Conflict, which was hailed by Vogue as “the feminist econ book you never knew you needed.” Boushey, the executive director of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, will use her economist’s lens to make the case for why earned sick leave, paid family and medical leave, affordable child care, and flexible schedules – all key AAUW policy priorities – will improve work-life balance, benefit the economy and families, and provide businesses with better-quality employees. She’s been hailed as one of the “most vibrant voices in the field” by the New York Times, so you won’t want to miss this!

The Ones I Bring with Me/Los Que Llevo Conmigo Book Discussion Sept. 28

In honor of National Hispanic Heritage Month, we are pleased to invite you to join AAUW’s ¡Adelante! Book of the Month Club for our upcoming discussion with Carol Spaulding-Kruse and Kelsey Lepperd, authors of The Ones I Bring with Me/Los Que Llevo Conmigo: Iowa’s Latinas on Education, Identity, and Success.
This bilingual English and Spanish book explores the experiences of young Latinas who take part in Al Éxito, an educational program originally established by AAUW of Iowa with support from an AAUW Community Action Grant. The book tells the story of overcoming barriers that keep Latinas from completing school.
The Ones I Bring with Me/Los Que Llevo Conmigo shows the character and determination of students and their young adult mentors who tell about their struggles with identity and experiences as people of color. The foreword is by Maria Hinojosa, award-winning journalist and the anchor and executive producer of Latino USA on NPR, a radio show devoted to Latino issues.
Join AAUW New Mexico Online Branch and other national members as we read the September ¡Adelante! Book of the Month Club selection The Ones I Bring With Me and register at www.aauw.org for the book discussion by September 26th. The event will be held September 28rd at 7:30pm ET.
Please help us make these events a success, enabling us to feature other authors in the future.
Happy reading, — in memory of Gloria Cordova!

Join AAUW’s Book Discussion with Author of Soldier Girls

Join AAUW’s online book discussion of “Soldier Girls: The Battles of Three Women at Home and at War” July 28, 2016 at 5 pm MDT. We’ll talk with the author Helen Thorpe. Register at www.aauw.org and submit your questions for the author with your registration.

January Book Group Discussion on The Worst Hard Times

The dust storms that terrorized America’s High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before or since, and the stories of the people that held on have never been fully told. Pulitzer Prize–winning New York Times journalist and author Timothy Egan follows a half-dozen families and their communities through the rise and fall of the region, going from sod homes to new framed houses to huddling in basements with the windows sealed by damp sheets in a futile effort to keep the dust out. He follows their desperate attempts to carry on through blinding black blizzards, crop failure, and the deaths of loved ones. Drawing on the voices of those who stayed and survived—those who, now in their eighties and nineties, will soon carry their memories to the grave—Egan tells a story of endurance and heroism against the backdrop of the Great Depression.

Summer Reading 2014–Motherhood and Dreams

The Wednesday Sisters by Meg Waite Clayton (recommended by Sheila Portillo, branch president).

When 5 young mothers first meet in a neighborhood park in the late 1960s, their conversations center on marriage, raising children, and a shared love of books. Then one evening, as they gather to watch the Miss America Pageant, Linda admits that she aspires to write a novel and the Wednesday Sisters Writing Society is born. In the process of filling journals, they explore the changing world around them: the Vietnam War, the race to the moon, the women’s movement, and AAUW. The friends also support each other through life changes—infidelity, longing, illness, failure, and success. The Wednesday Sisters show us the power of dreaming big.

Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda Somer’s life is everything she imagined it would be—she’s newly married and has started her career as a physician in San Francisco—until she makes the devastating discovery she never will be able to have children.

The same year in India, a poor mother makes the heartbreaking choice to save her newborn daughter’s life by giving her away. It is a decision that will haunt Kavita for the rest of her life, and cause a ripple effect that travels across the world and back again.

Asha, adopted out of a Mumbai orphanage, is the child that binds the destinies of these two women. We follow both families, invisibly connected until Asha’s journey of self-discovery leads her back to India.

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett Dr. Marina Singh, a research scientist with a Minnesota pharmaceutical company, is sent to the Amazon to find her former mentor, Dr. Annick Swenson, who seems to have disappeared while working on a new drug. No one knows where Dr. Swenson is, and the last person sent to find her died before completing his mission. Plagued by trepidation, Marina embarks on an odyssey in hopes of finding answers.

Now in her seventies, the uncompromising Dr. Swenson dominates her research team and the natives with the force of an imperial ruler. But while she is as threatening as anything the jungle has to offer, the greatest sacrifices are those Dr. Swenson asks of herself, and will ultimately ask of Marina, who finds she is still unable to live up to her teacher’s expectations.