This piece is a sneak peek from the "Reading, Writing & Richmond" feature in our September issue.
Author, University of Richmond English professor and book club member Bert Ashe (Photo by Jay Paul)
We won’t claim that Richmond is superior to other cities in the quality and variety of its book clubs. We know that, just like everywhere else, people pretend to read the book every month but don’t, or the get-together is little more than a high-minded excuse to eat and drink.
But the exceptions — well, they’re exceptional, offering a true measure of the immense richness, vitality and strangeness of the city.
Take the group that gathers in, yes, a garage. Founded five years ago by Hope Whitby, an Air Force vet and poet who manages the Village Exxon on Patterson Avenue, the 20 members descend on the station for a reading from an author, followed by a lively, flowing discussion. This month’s selection: “And Then There Was Me” (pictured) the third novel from Richmonder Sadeqa Johnson.
The Church Hill Book & Supper Club brings together intellectual sustenance with actual, literal sustenance. Members say the dishes they cook, prepared in conjunction with the current selection, help to deepen their connection to the work. Up next: Mark Bixler’s “The Lost Boys of Sudan.”
The club that calls itself Fusion doesn’t deliver an experience; it is itself an experience. The group has been meeting for nearly a quarter century. The group recently read Amos Oz’s “A Perfect Peace,” about a generation gap on an Israeli kibbutz, which led to a freewheeling discussion about gender identity questions in contemporary America.
A desire to connect past and present underlies the group begun by Bert Ashe, a professor of English at the University of Richmond and author of “Twisted: My Dreadlock Chronicles,” called Black Men Read?! The name slyly plays with perceptions both inside and outside black Richmond, and reflects the group’s socially conscious focus. Ashe says the chance to talk about books like Colson Whitehead’s novel “The Underground Railroad” with “smart, adult brothers whom I don’t have to grade” has filled a need in him. And others, too. “It’s why we keep coming back.”
