Events

The April selection for our monthly book club is His Only Wife by Peace Adzo Medie, read with us! Meeting date to be determined.

About the Book:

“Elikem married me in absentia; he did not come to our wedding.”

Afi Tekple is a young seamstress whose life is narrowing rapidly. She lives in a small town in Ghana with her widowed mother, spending much of her time in her uncle Pious’s house with his many wives and children. Then one day she is offered a life-changing opportunity—a proposal of marriage from the wealthy family of Elikem Ganyo, a man she doesn’t truly know. She acquiesces, but soon realizes that Elikem is not quite the catch he seemed. He sends a stand-in to his own wedding, and only weeks after Afi is married and installed in a plush apartment in the capital city of Accra does she meet her new husband. It turns out that he is in love with another woman, whom his family disapproves of; Afi is supposed to win him back on their behalf. But it is Accra that eventually wins Afi’s heart and gives her a life of independence that she never could have imagined for herself.

A brilliant scholar and a fierce advocate for women’s rights, author Peace Adzo Medie infuses her debut novel with intelligence and humor. For readers of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Candice Carty-Williams, His Only Wife is the story of an indomitable and relatable heroine that illuminates what it means to be a woman in a rapidly changing world.

Building Bonds through books and conversation. Our club reads a wide range of authors and genres. Books that Bind is the official Book Club of the Interchurch Center located in the Morningside/ Harlem area of New York City, NY. The club was established in 2011 to build bonds and friendship through a shared love of books among the various tenants of the building and neighbored. Due to the Pandemic the Club is currently meeting on Zoom until further notice.

New members are always welcome! Click here to join the club.

The March selection for our monthly book club is The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave.

We’ll be meeting March 18, 2021 at 6:30 p.m. via Zoom, join us!

About the Book:

After a storm has killed off all the island’s men, two women in a 1600s Norwegian coastal 

village struggle to survive against both natural forces and the men who have been sent to rid the community of alleged witchcraft.

Finnmark, Norway, 1617. Twenty-year-old Maren Bergensdatter stands on the craggy coast, watching the sea break into a sudden and reckless storm. Forty fishermen, including her brother and father, are drowned and left broken on the rocks below. With the menfolk wiped out, the women of the tiny Northern town of Vardø must fend for themselves.

Three years later, a sinister figure arrives. Absalom Cornet comes from Scotland, where he burned witches in the northern isles. He brings with him his young Norwegian wife, Ursa, who is both heady with her husband’s authority and terrified by it. In Vardø, and in Maren, Ursa sees something she has never seen before: independent women. But Absalom sees only a place untouched by God and flooded with a mighty evil.

As Maren and Ursa are pushed together and are drawn to one another in ways that surprise them both, the island begins to close in on them with Absalom’s iron rule threatening Vardø’s very existence.

Inspired by the real events of the Vardø storm and the 1620 witch trials, The Mercies is a feminist story of love, evil, and obsession, set at the edge of civilization.

Building Bonds through books and conversation. Our club reads a wide range of authors and genres. Books that Bind is the official Book Club of the Interchurch Center located in the Morningside/ Harlem area of New York City, NY. The club was established in 2011 to build bonds and friendship through a shared love of books among the various tenants of the building and neighbored. Due to the Pandemic the Club is currently meeting on Zoom until further notice.

New members are always welcome! Click here to join the club.

The April selection for our monthly book club is His Only Wife by Peace Adzo Medie, read with us! Meeting date to be determined.

About the Book:

“Elikem married me in absentia; he did not come to our wedding.”

Afi Tekple is a young seamstress whose life is narrowing rapidly. She lives in a small town in Ghana with her widowed mother, spending much of her time in her uncle Pious’s house with his many wives and children. Then one day she is offered a life-changing opportunity—a proposal of marriage from the wealthy family of Elikem Ganyo, a man she doesn’t truly know. She acquiesces, but soon realizes that Elikem is not quite the catch he seemed. He sends a stand-in to his own wedding, and only weeks after Afi is married and installed in a plush apartment in the capital city of Accra does she meet her new husband. It turns out that he is in love with another woman, whom his family disapproves of; Afi is supposed to win him back on their behalf. But it is Accra that eventually wins Afi’s heart and gives her a life of independence that she never could have imagined for herself.

A brilliant scholar and a fierce advocate for women’s rights, author Peace Adzo Medie infuses her debut novel with intelligence and humor. For readers of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Candice Carty-Williams, His Only Wife is the story of an indomitable and relatable heroine that illuminates what it means to be a woman in a rapidly changing world.

Building Bonds through books and conversation. Our club reads a wide range of authors and genres. Books that Bind is the official Book Club of the Interchurch Center located in the Morningside/ Harlem area of New York City, NY. The club was established in 2011 to build bonds and friendship through a shared love of books among the various tenants of the building and neighbored. Due to the Pandemic the Club is currently meeting on Zoom until further notice.

New members are always welcome! Click here to join the club.

The May selection for our monthly book club is The Nakano Thrift Shop by Hiromi Kawakami, read with us! Meeting date to be determined.

About the Book:

From the author of Strange Weather in Tokyo comes this funny, heartwarming story about love, life, and human relationships that features a delightfully offbeat cast of characters.

Objects for sale at the Nakano Thrift Shop appear as commonplace as the staff and customers that handle them. But like those same customers and staff, they hold many secrets. If examined carefully, they show the signs of innumerable extravagancies, of immeasurable pleasure and pain, and of the deep mysteries of the human heart.

Hitomi, the inexperienced young woman who works the register at Mr. Nakano’s thrift shop, has fallen for her coworker, the oddly reserved Takeo. Unsure of how to attract his attention, she seeks advice from her employer’s sister, Masayo, whose sentimental entanglements make her a somewhat unconventional guide. But thanks in part to Masayo, Hitomi will come to realize that love, desire, and intimacy require acceptance not only of idiosyncrasies but also of the delicate waltz between open and hidden secrets.

Animating each delicately rendered chapter in Kawakami’s playful novel is Mr. Nakano himself, an original, entertaining, and enigmatic creation whose compulsive mannerisms, secretive love life, and impulsive behavior defy all expectations.

Building Bonds through books and conversation. Our club reads a wide range of authors and genres. Books that Bind is the official Book Club of the Interchurch Center located in the Morningside/ Harlem area of New York City, NY. The club was established in 2011 to build bonds and friendship through a shared love of books among the various tenants of the building and neighbored. Due to the Pandemic the Club is currently meeting on Zoom until further notice.

New members are always welcome! Click here to join the club.