The Healing and Anti-Racism Book Group

In celebration of our 5^th year anniversary meeting as a book group over zoom, we thought we’d post some info on our book group and the books we’ve been reading. Please join us anytime!

About our Book Group…

The Healing and Anti-racism book group at St. Paul’s began during the pandemic, meeting for the first time in July 2020. We have met regularly since then on a monthly basis. We meet the 4th Wednesday of the month, via zoom at 7pm. All are welcome to join in any month whether or not they have read the book for that month.

We’re not just from St. Paul’s…

Our book group is made up of participants from five churches: St. Paul’s in Vergennes, All Saints in South Burlington, St. Stephen’s in Middlebury, St. Thomas & Grace in Brandon, and All Saints in Worcester, MA. We’ve also welcomed and included participants from the community, outside of these churches. Even though we draw from all of these churches, the zoom meetings in any given month, average around 6-8 people and often are smaller, so it’s an intimate gathering. You can depend on the meeting to be a safe place to discuss and reflect on what can often be disturbing information.

We don’t meet every month…

We often take a break in July and August for summer reading, usually assigning a longer book for reconvening in September. Sometimes the schedule has worked out so that we do not meet during December due to Christmas or similarly around Easter. We are flexible. Not everyone comes every month that we meet, and that’s ok!

We don’t always read a book…

We don’t always read a book for the month, although mostly we do.

There have been some months where other activities have replaced assigning a book.

For example, some members of the book group joined the Diocesan study group in January and February 2022 as we read and discussed The Church Cracked Open: Disruptions, Decline, and New Hope for Beloved Community by Rev. Canon Stephanie Spellers, who was Bishop Michael Curry’s Canon for Evangelism and Reconciliation. We later read that book in our book group. In May 2021, we joined a zoom, sponsored by the Rutland NAACP, with UVM History professor, Emily Benard, to hear her presentation on her book, Black Is the Body: Stories from My Grandmother’s Time, My Mother’s Time and Mine. We had read that book a few months before, so we were thrilled to have the opportunity to hear her presentation.

We have guest speakers…

Bill Bergen, Rev. Lucy Pellegrini’s brother, has presented to our book group a few times. Bill is a Civil War historian and a retired guide at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he resides. While Bill conducted several different tours at Monticello, he developed a particular expertise in giving outdoor walking tours focused on the experiences of the enslaved people who lived and labored on the Monticello plantation.  https://www.monticello.org/visit/tickets-tours/slavery-at-monticello-tour/.

We participate in some other anti-racist educational opportunities.…

A number of our regular attendees have participated in the Episcopal church’s Sacred Ground training as well, so that background can influence reading selections and reflection.

We’ve read 38 books…

From July 2020 through the June 2025 book group meeting, we’ve read 38 books.  A list has been provided here (below).

Comment from a participant as to what it has meant to be part of this group:

I have really appreciated being part of this book group. The book selections are awesome, the leader is amazing (thanks Lenore), and the discussions are engaging. We always are learning about history, ourselves, and our society in deep ways. I feel like we’re a group of friends going through something together and making our own individual discoveries. I always look forward to the reading selections for the months ahead. I come when I can.

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Antiracism Book List July 2020 — June 2025

2025 books are highlighted in yellow

Alexander, Michelle   The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness

Baldwin, James  The Fire Next Time 

Beck, Jane C.  Daisy Turner’s Kin: An African American Family Saga

Bernard, Emily   Black Is the Body: Stories From My Grandmother’s Time, My Mother’s Time, and Mine

Berry, Wendell   The Hidden Wound 

Blum, Edward J. and Paul Harvey  The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America.

Budde, Mariann Edgar, How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive Moments in Life and Faith

Coates, Ta-Nehisi   Between the World and Me

Coates, Ta-Nehisi  The Water Dancer

Curry, Michael  Love Is the Way: Holding On to Hope in Troubling Times 

DeWolf, Thomas Norman and Sharon Leslie Morgan   Gather at the Table: The Healing Journey of a Daughter of Slavery and a Son of the Slave Trade.

Eustace, Nicole  Covered With Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America

Everett, Percival  James 

Gates, Henry Louis, Jr.   Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow 

Gordon-Reed, Annette   On Juneteenth

Harding, Vincent   Martin Luther King: The Inconvenient Hero 

Harris, Barbara C.  Hallelujah, Anyhow: A Memoir 

Hurston, Zora Neale  Their Eyes Were Watching God 

Kendi, Ibram X. and Keisha Blain (editors)  Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019 

Kidd, Monk Sue  The Invention of Wings 

Levine, Ellen   Freedom’s Children: Young Civil Rights Activists Tell Their Own Stories

Lewis, John   Across That Bridge: A Vision for Change and the Future of America

Matthews, Westina  This Band of Sisterhood: Black Women Bishops on Race, Faith, and the Church (and study guide)

McGhee, Heather  The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together 

Meeks, Catherine  The Night Is Long But Light Comes in the Morning: Meditations for Racial Healing 

Morrison, Toni  The Bluest Eye

Norris, Michele  Our Hidden Conversations: What Americans Really Think About Race and Identity 

Perry, Imani   South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation 

Reynolds, Jason and Ibram X. Kendi  Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You

Seidule, Ty   Robert E Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning with The Myth of the Lost Cause 

Shane, Scott  Flee North: A Forgotten Hero and the Fight for Freedom in Slavery's Borderland 

Smith, Clint   How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America 

Spellers, Stephanie  The Church Cracked Open: Disruption, Decline, and New Hope for Beloved Community 

Stevenson, Bryan   Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption 

Thurman, Howard  Jesus and the Disinherited 

Tye, Larry  Rising From the Rails: Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class

Wilkerson, Isabel   The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration

Whitehead, Colson   The Underground Railroad: A Novel