Join us the second Tuesday of each month f or great books and discussion. We'll be meeting online until it is safe to meet in-person. This month\, we'll be discussing Children of the Land by Marcelo Hernandez Castillo. Download this month's book on the Hoo pla app or pick up a copy curbside. Email hharlan@plaincitylib.org or call 614-873-4912 ext. 130 with questions.
\nTo join the meeting\, copy and paste this link into your browser: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87826023825
\nWhe n Marcelo Hernandez Castillo was five years old and his family was prepari ng to cross the border between Mexico and the United States\, he suffered temporary\, stress-induced blindness. Castillo regained his vision\, but q uickly understood that he had to move into a threshold of invisibility bef ore settling in California with his parents and siblings. Thus began a new life of hiding in plain sight and of paying extraordinarily careful atten tion at all times for fear of being truly seen. Before Castillo was one of the most celebrated poets of a generation\, he was a boy who perfected hi s English in the hopes that he might never seem extraordinary.
\nWit h beauty\, grace\, and honesty\, Castillo recounts his and his family&rsqu o\;s encounters with a system that treats them as criminals for seeking sa fe\, ordinary lives. He writes of the Sunday afternoon when he opened the door to an ICE officer who had one hand on his holster\, of the hours he s pent making a fake social security card so that he could work to support h is family\, of his father&rsquo\;s deportation and the decade that he spen t waiting to return to his wife and children only to be denied reentry\, a nd of his mother&rsquo\;s heartbreaking decision to leave her children and grandchildren so that she could be reunited with her estranged husband an d retire from a life of hard labor.
\nChildren of the Land distills the trauma of displacement\, illuminates the human lives behind t he headlines and serves as a stunning meditation on what it means to be a man and a citizen.
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