Book Club at the Center Discussion
Sponsored by the Office of Access and Compliance
The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Discussion Date: February 29, 2024, via Zoom
Prior to each discussion, our office holds a random drawing to give away 5 free copies of the upcoming selection. You are encouraged to attend even if you do not have the opportunity to finish the book prior to the discussion. The giveaway winners will be emailed January 16th, 2023. Please register for the discussion by January 15, 2024 to be entered into the book club drawing. The registration link will stay open until the day of the discussion.
Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage. When his mother was sold away, Hiram was robbed of all memory of her – but was gifted with a mysterious power. Years later, when Hiram almost drowns in a river, that same power saves his life. This brush with death births an urgency in Hiram and a daring scheme: to escape from the only home he’s ever known.
So begins an unexpected journey that takes Hiram from the corrupt grandeur of Virginia’s proud plantations to desperate guerrilla cells in the wilderness, from the coffin of the Deep South to dangerously idealistic movements in the North. Even as he’s enlisted in the underground war between slavers and the enslaved, Hiram’s resolve to rescue the family he left behind endures.
This is the dramatic story of an atrocity inflicted on generations of women, men, and children – the violent and capricious separation of families – and the war they waged to simply make lives with the people they loved. Written by one of today’s most exciting thinkers and writers, The Water Dancer is a propulsive, transcendent work that restores the humanity of those from whom everything was stolen.