Summer Book Club Kicks Off June 28!

Hello everyone!

I'm in England this month visiting my girlfriend and am therefore on something resembling summer vacation. I will have longer and more interesting thoughts to share with you all about this intense, exhausting summer of fascist overreach and citizen activism at a later date, and you can catch up here on some of what's kept me busy all spring (namely, the Trump administration's efforts to destroy federal arts and humanities funding, and Oregon ArtsWatch's refusal to let them do it quietly). But most importantly . . .

IT'S BOOK CLUB TIME!

The first selection of our 8th House Summer Book Club was announced last month to everyone who filled out the Google Form to vote, but it's open to anyone who wants to participate! If you've read this book already, or just want to drop in and listen, or you want to grab it from the library and read along with us, all are welcome.

Here's the information! Below the book cover I've put the full description and author bio from Reparations Club, which I've also linked as a suggested place to purchase.

(They also have our July and August books - Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care by Kelly Hayes & Mariam Kaba and Be a Revolution: How Everyday People Are Fighting Oppression and Changing the World—And How You Can, Too by Ijeoma Oluo - if you want to grab 'em all at once!)

Can't wait to see you all there!

Love,
Claire

JUNE BOOK CLUB

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
By Omar El Akkad

June 28, 2025
12 - 2 pm PST
Zoom (link here)

From award-winning novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad comes a powerful reckoning with what it means to live in the heart of an empire that doesn't consider you fully human.

On October 25th, 2023, after just three weeks of the bombardment of Gaza, Omar El Akkad put out a tweet: "One day, when it's safe, when there's no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it's too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this." This tweet was viewed more than ten million times.

One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This chronicles the deep fracture that has occurred for Black, brown, Indigenous Americans, as well as the upcoming generation, many of whom had clung to a thread of faith in Western ideals, in the idea that their countries, or the countries of their adoption, actually attempted to live up to the values they espouse.

This book is a reckoning with what it means to live in the West, and what it means to live in a world run by a small group of countries--America, the UK, France, and Germany. It will be The Fire Next Time for a generation that understands we're undergoing a shift in the so-called "rules-based order," a generation that understands the West can no longer be trusted to police and guide the world, or its own cities and campuses. It draws on intimate details of Omar's own story as an emigrant who grew up believing in the Western project, who was catapulted into journalism by the rupture of 9/11.

This book is El Akkad's heartsick breakup letter with the West. It is a breakup we are watching all over the United States, on college campuses, on city streets, and the consequences of this rupture will be felt by all of us. His book is for all the people who want something better than what the West has served up. This is the book for our time.

Omar El Akkad is an author and journalist. He was born in Egypt, grew up in Qatar, moved to Canada as a teenager and now lives in the United States. He is a two-time winner of both the Pacific Northwest Booksellers' Award and the Oregon Book Award. His books have been translated into 13 languages. His debut novel, American War, was named by the BBC as one of 100 novels that shaped our world.