Chaparral 2022-2023: 31.2 What Are You Reading?

I just read We Do This ‘Til We Free Us by Mariame Kaba. It’s a book about restorative justice and prison abolition, diving into the many ways in which incarceration compounds harm for everyone. The author examines how treating people as disposable—which is immoral to begin with—does not address the root causes of crime or help change behavior, and therefore does nothing to increase public safety. Our current punitive system also rarely brings repair to those who are harmed by crime. This is an incredible read about envisioning a very different society.

Abigail Sider
Noncredit ESL

I recently read An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States for Young People by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (adapted by Jean Mendoza and Debbie Reese)—available in our library! If you, like me, received a heavily whitewashed primary and secondary education, particularly in history and social studies, you'd benefit from reading this book. It's an adaptation of the author's 2014 history of the U.S. as told from the perspective of Indigenous peoples. While written for middle and high schoolers, it's still a good and important read for adults, especially as it fills in the gaps with everything we weren't taught about how settler colonialism and the policies of Native American genocide have formed our national identity. If you want to read the original text, it's in our library too!

Margaret Lopez
Library

I read There There by Tommy Orange. I recommend it! It’s the stories and voices of Native Americans living in Oakland. How they see themselves, how others see them, and how societal choices have affected their identity and life experiences.

Paola Reeser
Photography

Fairy Tale by Stephen King. I recommend it.

A boy and his dog travel to another world? Yes, please. A great read that examines classic fairy tales in a very Stephen King kind of way. Loved it.

Andy Stires
Learning Center

I am reading The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray.

A novel base on true story of Belle da Costa Greene, J.P. Morgan's personal librarian who become one of the powerful women in New York.

I am recommending the book as it is relevant to Women's History Month and it is written by a famous author Marie Benedict who specializes in writing about hidden historical stories of women.

Shogher Baghdasarian
Math Discovery Center

I found this book in my neighborhood's Little Free Library, and, when I read the description, saw that in addition to his groundbreaking work in Physics and winning the Nobel Prize, Feynman was also involved in curriculum.

Well... as GCC's humble Curriculum Coordinator, I was curious.

Turns out Feynman was passionate about making Physics accessible to all students and was instrumental in selecting texts that were instructional but also understandable. He was involved in a letter-writing campaign to publishers asking them to justify charging so much for textbooks that were so difficult to read.

Feynman also reviewed Physics curriculum at many universities and high schools.

If that isn't enough to hook you, dear Reader, I found his letters, regardless of the topic, to be witty, passionate, and surprisingly moving.

A wonderful surprise of a book.

Francien Rohrbacher
English