Half the Sky, Friday, February 25, Noon

By Nicholas Kristof and Cheryl WuDunn

With Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn as guides, the book undertakes an odyssey through Africa and Asia to meet the extraordinary women struggling there, among them a Cambodian teenager sold into sex slavery and an Ethiopian woman who suffered devastating injuries in childbirth. Drawing on the breadth of their combined reporting experience, Kristof and WuDunn depict our world with anger, sadness, clarity, and, ultimately, hope. The authors show how a little help can transform the lives of women and girls abroad, and ultimately support human rights for all people.

Iran Awakening, Fri, Apr. 19 & Mon, May 2 

By Shirin Ebadi

In her book, Ebadi recounts her public career and reveals her private self: her faith, her experiences, and her desire to lead a traditional life, even while serving as a rebellious voice in a land where such voices are muted and even silenced by brute force. Ebadi describes her girlhood in a modest Tehran household, her education, and her early professional success as Iran’s most accomplished female jurist in the mid-1970s. She speaks eloquently about the ideals of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, and of her deep disillusionment with the direction Iran has taken since.

Waiting for Snow in Havana, Fri, June 24 & Mon, June 27

By Carlos Eire

Noted religion scholar Carlos Eire's idyllic and privileged childhood in Havana came to an end in the wake of Castro's revolution. In this memoir, he reveals an exotic, magical Cuba and an eccentric family: his father - a municipal judge and art collector - believed that in a past life he had been King Louis XVI. In 1962, Carlos Eire's world changed forever when he and his brother were among the 14,000 children airlifted off the island, their parents left behind. In chronicling his life before and after his arrival in America, Mr. Eire's personal story is also a meditation on loss and suffering, redemption and rebirth.

Say You’re One of Them, Mon, Aug. 22 & Fri, Aug. 26

By Uwem Akpan

Each story in this acclaimed collection pays testament to the wisdom and resilience of children, even in the face of the most agonizing circumstances. A family living in a makeshift shanty in urban Kenya scurries to find gifts of any kind for the impending Christmas holiday. A Rwandan girl relates her family’s struggles to maintain a facade of normalcy amid unspeakable acts. A young brother and sister cope with their uncle’s attempt to sell them into slavery. Aboard a bus filled with refugees—a microcosm of today’s Africa—a Muslim boy summons his faith to bear a treacherous ride across Nigeria. Through the eyes of childhood friends the emotional toll of religious conflict in Ethiopia becomes viscerally clear.  Author Uwem Akpan was born in southern Nigeria. After studying philosophy and English at Creighton and Gonzaga universities, he studied theology for three years at the Catholic University of Eastern Africa. He was ordained as a Jesuit priest in 2003 and received his MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan in 2006.

Do They Hear You When You Cry?, Fri, Oct. 28 & Tues, Nov. 1 

By Fauziya Kassindja

The youngest daughter of a prosperous Muslim businessman in Togo, a tiny nation in West Africa, author Fauziya Kassindja lived a charmed life. She was adored and spoiled by her father, who encouraged her precocious nature and intellect, allowed her privileges denied his other daughters and sons and sent her to high school in Ghana, just across the border, not a traditional upbringing for girls in Togo. Yet it was not only about matters of education that Kassindja's father defied tradition. He married outside his tribe and declined to take more than one wife. He forced neither his wife nor his five daughters to wear the traditional veil. And he defied the custom of his own tribe and allowed none of his daughters to be circumcised. After he father’s death and in the face of a forced marriage and circumcision, Fauziya Kassindja ran away from home and, like so many immigrants before her, came to America in search of freedom.

Sarah’s Key, Fri, Dec. 16 & Mon, Dec. 19 

By Tatiana de Rosnay

Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten year-old girl, is brutally arrested with her family by the French police in the Vel’ d’Hiv’ roundup, but not before she locks her younger brother in a cupboard in the family's apartment, thinking that she will be back within a few hours. Paris, May 2002: On Vel’ d’Hiv’s 60th anniversary, journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article about this black day in France's past. Through her contemporary investigation, she stumbles onto a trail of long-hidden family secrets that connect her to Sarah. Julia finds herself compelled to retrace the girl's ordeal, from that terrible term in the Vel d'Hiv', to the camps, and beyond. As she probes into Sarah's past, Jarmond begins an inquiry that raises issues of healing, truth, and recovery from mass atrocity. Author Tatiana de Rosnay offers a subtle, compelling portrait of France under occupation and reveals the taboos and silence that surround this painful episode.

Please click here to RSVP.