Are you a reader who cares about building a vibrant and equitable community in Southern Arizona? If so, this book club is for you! Local journalist Caitlin Schmidt is teaming up with the Tucson Tome Gnome and the Community Foundation for Southern Arizona to host a solutions-focused community book club starting in June 2023. This book club aims to bring together interested community members from all walks of life to bond over a shared desire to make our community better for all – and be inspired by a shared reading experience! We can’t promise we can solve all the world’s (or Southern Arizona’s) problems, but we can connect, learn from each other, and build momentum toward positive change.
When: June 22, 2023 | 5:30 to 7:00 PM
Where: Community Foundation Campus
Book: I Never Thought of It That Way by Monica Guzman
Please RVSP using the form below. Light refreshments will be provided.
About The Book
Journalist Mónica Guzmán is the loving liberal daughter of Mexican immigrants who voted—twice—for Donald Trump. When the country could no longer see straight across the political divide, Mónica set out to find what was blinding us and discovered the most eye-opening tool we’re not using: our own built-in curiosity.
Partisanship is up, trust is down, and our social media feeds make us sure we’re right, and everyone else is ignorant (or worse). But avoiding one another is hurting our relationships and our society.
In this timely, personal guide, Mónica, the chief storyteller for the national cross-partisan depolarization organization Braver Angels, takes you to the real front lines of a crisis that threatens to grind America to a halt—broken conversations among confounded people. She shows you how to overcome the fear and certainty that surround us to finally do what only seems impossible: understand and even learn from people in your life whose whole worldview is different from or even opposed to yours.
Drawing from cross-partisan conversations she’s had, organized, or witnessed everywhere from the echo chambers on social media to the wheat fields in Oregon to raw, unfiltered fights with her own family on election night, Mónica shows how you can put your natural sense of wonder to work for you immediately, finding the answers you need by talking with people—rather than about them—and asking the questions you want, curiously.