UWinnipeg Alumni Book Club
Free for alumni
Thanks to the generous support of our alumni partner, The Personal Home and Auto Insurance there is no cost to participate. Books may be bought or borrowed in electronic or paper format.
How does the Book Club work? The University of Winnipeg Alumni Book Club connects through a private online forum where members respond to different discussion questions and other book-related topics. We spend about two months reading each book to accommodate reader schedules and preferences. Discussions occur online and are asynchronous, so members can provide their input at any time, wherever they may be in the world.
Book Club Selection May-July 2024
Unearthing: A Story of Tangled Love and Family Secrets
Three months after Kyo Maclear's father dies in December 2018, she gets the results of a DNA test showing that she and the father who raised her are not biologically related. Suddenly Maclear becomes a detective in her own life, unravelling a family mystery piece by piece, and assembling the story of her biological father. Along the way, larger questions arise: what exactly is kinship? And what does it mean to be a family?
Book Club Selection August - October 2024
A History of Burning by Janika Oza
An epic, sweeping historical debut novel spanning continents and a century, and how one act of survival can reverberate through generations.
At the turn of the twentieth century, Pirbhai, a teenage boy looking for work, is taken from his village in India to labor on the East African Railway for the British. One day Pirbhai commits an act to ensure his survival that will haunt him forever and reverberate across his family's future for years to come.
Pirbhai's children are born and raised under the jacaranda trees and searing sun of Kampala during the waning days of British colonial rule. As Uganda moves towards independence and military dictatorship, Pirbhai's granddaughters, Latika, Mayuri, and Kiya, are three sisters coming of age in a divided nation. As they each forge their own path for a future, they must carry the silence of the history they've inherited. In 1972, under Idi Amin's brutal regime and the South Asian expulsion, the family has no choice but to flee, and in the chaos, they leave something devastating behind.
As Pirbhai's grandchildren, scattered across the world, find their way back to each other in exile in Toronto, a letter arrives that stokes the flames of the fire that haunts the family. It makes each generation question how far they are willing to go, and who they are willing to defy to secure their own place in the world.
A History of Burning is an unforgettable tour de force, an intimate family saga of complicity and resistance, about the stories we share, the ones that remain unspoken, and the eternal search for home.
Recent books we've read:
What our Alumni Book Club members are saying:
Patricia Palahniuk (BA 91)
I quite enjoy being in the Alumni bookclub. First of all, we have now lived in the US for 30 years! Yikes! However, my heart is still in Winnipeg and it’s been such a good experience hearing from fellow Winnipeggers throughout the discussion of the last read. It’s also beneficial when there is lively discussion on the pros and cons of a book. We all bring our own perspectives to a reading but we also try to figure out the author’s intent. Books enrich our lives!!!