June 2020 Nominations

[Charlene]

It's time for June's nominations! There is no theme this month. Books we haven't read in the past three years are eligible for nomination. They must be written by a woman and published at least 50 years ago. Please let me know if you can lead.

Nominations ends April 14th

Here is the link to the read bookshelf if needed: https://www.goodreads.com/group/books...

[☯Emily , The First]

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison was first published in June 1970, so this month it will be 50 years old. I can lead.

[Carol]

The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey. I can lead.

[Anastasia Kinderman, The Only]

Oooh, Bluest Eye would be fun to read.

[☯Emily , The First]

I'm not sure 'fun' is the word I would use.

[Charlene]

I would like to nominate Charlotte Bronte's Shirley. I can lead.

[Charlene]

5 more days for nominations.

[Charlene]

Today is the last day. Tomorrow I will send out the e-mail for voting.

[Marilyn]

I nominate The Reef by Edith Wharton. Published in 1912. I can lead.

[Anastasia Kinderman, The Only]

Anastasia Kinderman wrote: "Oooh, Bluest Eye would be fun to read."

Maybe I should've said "I'll be happy to tick this off my TBR list" instead lol.

[Charlene]

The e-mail was just sent out. If you are eligible to vote, please send it by April 22 to me.

Email sent:

The nominees are:

1. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
2. The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey
3. Shirley by Charlotte Bronte
4. The Reef by Edith Wharton

Members are eligible to vote if they have participated in any book discussions over the past year. The following members can presently vote:

Lisa
Susan in Perthshire
Ginny
Carol She's So Novel
Indeneri
Carol
Charlene,
Carolien,
Marilyn,
Kathleen
Cam
Mizzou
Viv
Emily
Suki,
Anastasia Kinderman,
Hannah
Elaine
Natty S
Eileen
Andrea Catsos Person

If I have missed anyone, please let me know!

PLEASE SEND YOUR VOTE BY APRIL 22.

[Charlene]

It was a tie between Bluest Eye and Franchise affair.

Here is the link to the tie breaker poll: https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/2...

The poll is only up until April 25.

[Suzann]

Hi Charlene,
My name wasn't on the eligible to vote list although I participated in the Red Pottage discussion. I was allowed to vote in the run-off, but didn't receive notice of the poll.
Thanks. Suzann

[Charlene]

Suzann wrote: "Hi Charlene,
My name wasn't on the eligible to vote list although I participated in the Red Pottage discussion. I was allowed to vote in the run-off, but didn't receive notice of the poll.
Thanks...."

I am so sorry that I missed your name on the list. I will get it added for next month.

Eligible members send their vote via Goodreads e-mail. The moderator in charge will send the Goodreads e-mail.

[☯Emily , The First]

The Bluest Eye is the group's selection for June. It will be 50 years since the book was published. I have only read one other Toni Morrison book and I wasn't crazy about it. I hope that we can all help each other read and discuss this classic as it celebrates the big 5-0.

[Carol]

I know that I read The Bluest Eye and Sula back in the day, but cannot recall either. I look forward to this read, although I seem to be late for everything these days, so may lag a little.

For anyone that needs or would like a little inspirational place setting for Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison's first novel, here's an excerpt from a NYT article published in 2015, entitled, "The Radical Vision of Toni Morrison." (Neither this excerpt nor the article include any spoilers .... this is context setting). Link follows.

For years, dozens upon dozens of prominent black writers — people like Amiri Baraka, Maya Angelou, Jayne Cortez, Nikki Giovanni and John Edgar Wideman — were in orbit with one another. Some of these black writers had no formal affiliations, but many others organized themselves under efforts like Baraka’s Black Arts Movement, where they could share the duty of not only making art but also writing themselves into the world. They were not just producing poems, plays and novels, they were also considering the obligations of their specific genre — black literature — and its defining aspects and distinct functions. We no longer connect Morrison to that earlier, loosely defined constellation of black writing, but she was there, and she was there long before she was a novelist. During the years that she worked at Random House, she published books by Muhammad Ali, Henry Dumas, Angela Davis, Huey P. Newton, Toni Cade Bambara and Gayl Jones, whom she discovered in the 1970s. Jones’s manuscript was so impressive that when Morrison read it for the first time, uppermost in her mind, she once wrote, was “that no novel about any black woman could ever be the same after this.” It was Morrison who helped promote Ali’s book and who once hired members of the Fruit of Islam to work security for him. She also reviewed a biography of Angela Davis for The New York Times in 1972, slamming the author for being “another simpatico white girl who felt she was privy to the secret of how black revolutionaries got that way.”

And when the poet Henry Dumas went to his death, the way so many black boys and men do, it was Morrison, who never had a chance to meet him and published his work posthumously, who sent around a book-party announcement that was part invitation, part consolation, which read: “In 1968, a young black man, Henry Dumas, went through a turnstile at a New York City subway station. A transit cop shot him in the chest and killed him. Circumstances surrounding his death remain unclear. Before that happened, however, he had written some of the most beautiful, moving and profound poetry and fiction that I have ever in my life read.”

Two years after Dumas’s death, Morrison published her first novel, at 39. In many ways, she had prepared the world for her voice and heralded her arrival with her own editorial work. And yet the story of Pecola Breedlove, a broken black girl who wants blue eyes, was a novel that no one saw coming. Morrison relished unexpectedness. The first edition of “The Bluest Eye” starts Pecola’s story on the cover: “Quiet as it’s kept, there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941. We thought, at the time, that it was because Pecola was having her father’s baby that the marigolds did not grow.”...

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/12/ma...

[☯Emily , The First]

If it is possible, everyone might want to view the documentary The Pieces I Am where Toni Morrison reviews her life. She spends quite a bit of time talking about her work at Random House. The documentary came out last year, a few months before she died.

[Carol]

☯Emily wrote: "If it is possible, everyone might want to view the documentary The Pieces I Am where Toni Morrison reviews her life. She spends quite a bit of time talking about her work at Random House. The docum..."

Thanks for suggesting this, Emily. I hadn't heard of it and will go find and view it.

[Lisa]

I have had this book in my TBR pile for a while. Looking forward to it.

[Charlene]

The Bluest Eye e-book is on sale today.