In chronicling the lifelong friendship of a Presbyterian and a Congregational pastor, Marilynne Robinson’s linked novels Gilead and Home can appear to present a bucolic view of 1950s life in small town Iowa. But a closer reading of the novels unmasks simmering racial tension, revealing both Iowa's suppressed abolitionist history and the characters’ failure to engage with the contemporary struggle for civil rights. We’ll read Robinson’s novels in counterpoint with Claudia Rankine’s book-length poem Citizen: An American Lyric, which provides an unflinching exploration of modern day racism from an African-American perspective. We’ll examine the choices white people make to engage with—or ignore—racial tensions, as well as the potential role that seemingly white spiritual communities can play in promoting healing around race.

The class is structured like a book discussion group, with three 2-hour sessions held over a month and a half. Participants will be expected to come to the first session having read Gilead (247pp.), to the second having read Citizen (161 pp.), and to the third having read Home (325 pp.). They’ll also be asked to select a passage from each work relating to whiteness or race to share and discuss.

Instructor Bio: A Twin Cities writer, Jacqueline White (she/them) has held senior editorial positions at McGraw-Hill Healthcare, Search Institute and the Utne Reader. She was the founding executive director of CloseKnit, which catalyzes anti-racist system change to prevent youth homelessness. She describes the most formative experience of her childhood as her family’s involvement with St. Boniface Catholic Church, the center of civil rights organizing in Milwaukee. A queer white person, Jacqueline is a racial justice facilitator with the YWCA. She graduated cum laude from Yale with a B.A. in English, earned an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Antioch University-Los Angeles, and did a year of graduate study at Union Theological Seminary in New York City.

Cost: $45 (Does not include books. Participants are responsible for procuring their own books.)