Book Club Retrospective
A Look Back on the First Year of the O'odham History Book Club
Whelp, we are about to pass the one year mark of doing this book club. It has been an awesome ride.
I originally started the book club because I had a conversation with Dr. Anthony Newkirk about how much I love reading O’odham history books and I wish there were more people to talk about them with. His answer was “so … go do that”.
So that is pretty much where it started. I pondered it a few months and with Anthony’s support I got it started.
Our first meeting was out in Phoenix - Newkirk let me use his building at Warrior’s Code to have a few meetings, I bounced around and did some meetings in Sacaton at “The Ranch” to get more folks involved.
And… the rest is history. Here we are a year later and still going strong. We have read 10 total books together, I’ve had about 30 unique attendees and ~75 total attendees come and chat about books.
Sometimes the session is about the book itself, sometimes we skirt around the book and talk more about the time in history or the people named in the book and their place in the Community. Sometimes we get an elder who tells an amazing story, sometimes it’s just me and a few folks online…
But either way, it has been a great ride that I’ve learned so much from.
I want to close out the year by writing a “Thank You” to all the folks on my mailing list for their interest in the idea. I know many of you follow along with the books we read, even if you can’t make the meetings.
I also want to thank District 4 for being my partner for the past few months and allowing us to have our meeting in their space.
A huge thank you to all the amazing people who have made it out to one or more sessions and engage in the content. Appreciate you taking the time to come out and for the time you are spending with the reading. An extra double thank you to Ramona Sabori and Belinda Nelson who have been to nearly every meeting in D4 so far. Appreciate the hometown support.
Finally - I want to give a big shout out with my appreciation to Jackie Thomas out in D6. She has come to every session online since we started. She has also been very good at keeping me on schedule with sending out information on the books and study guides.
I’m excited to look forward to next year and another full schedule of amazing books to learn more about our ancestors and our Community.
If you are interested in learning more about the book club you can sign up for the mailing list HERE
Or - if interested to see more of what we have been reading you can find our past books at this link HERE.