FMV Book Club–Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson.

Date: 26.08.2024
Time: 18:00-21:00
Host: Female Minority Voices



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Welcome to the seventh The Female Minority Voices Book Club meeting of the year! For August, our book pick is Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson.

About the book:
The Pulitzer Prize–winning, bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions.

“As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power—which groups have it and which do not.”

In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.

Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people—including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball’s Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others—she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their out-cast of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.
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OFFER: Our team member Rodolfo Baldinotti will be able to order the book for those of you who want to use this offer. He will give a list to the bookstore (Norli Strandgaten) and you will be contacted when the book is ready to be picked up (payment then and there).

Send an email with your full name and contact information to femaleminorityvoices@gmail.com until the 26th of July at 14:00.
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And as always, if you don't get the chance to read the book, come anyway!
The book functions as a conversation starter, so just read up on the theme/topic of the book, and join us for a good conversation - and bring a friend!
See you there!

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