¡Adelante! Book Club
¡Adelante! — Spanish for “forward” — is our branch’s long-running book club. Since 2008, the group has gathered every other month to discuss books exploring diverse voices, social justice, memoir, history, and world cultures. ¡Adelante! currently meets on Thursdays at 2:30 PM via Zoom.
From late 2009 through early 2012, ¡Adelante! split into AM and PM groups that read different books and later swapped selections. They reunited as a single group in March 2012. No meetings were held in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Curious what our other groups are reading? Check out the Presidents’ Bookshelf and Read Between the Wines selections.
2024–2025
A novel reimagining the life of Sarah Grimké, a real-life abolitionist, and Handful, an enslaved woman in the Grimké household, following their intertwined stories across 35 years in antebellum Charleston.
A memoir of escaping a strict Rastafarian upbringing in Jamaica and a controlling father through the liberating power of poetry and education.
McBride’s memoir tells parallel stories — his own coming-of-age as one of twelve children in a Black family and his white Jewish mother’s hidden past. ★ Re-read — first discussed January 2008.
A novel following the interconnected Black and Jewish residents of a small Pennsylvania town in the 1920s–30s who rally to protect a disabled orphan from being institutionalized.
The true story of the systematic murder of wealthy Osage Nation members in 1920s Oklahoma — a conspiracy that helped spark the creation of the FBI.
Two young Chileans flee the Spanish Civil War on Pablo Neruda’s rescue ship and build new lives in Chile, only to face Pinochet’s coup decades later.
2023
Three timelines weave together the true story of the record-breaking racehorse Lexington, exploring American art, science, and the persistent shadow of racism.
A Dominican immigrant in Washington Heights reveals a life of resilience, humor, and hard choices across twelve sessions with her career counselor.
A thriller following a young Black violinist whose priceless Stradivarius is stolen days before the most important competition of his life.
Trevor Noah recounts his childhood in apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa, born to a Black mother and white father at a time when their union was literally a crime.
A grieving widower and a lonely teenager are connected through a mysterious reading list found tucked inside a library book.
2022
A Black author on a promotional book tour who may be losing his mind, alternating with the story of a young boy called Soot growing up in a small southern town.
The first Native American U.S. Poet Laureate continues her memoir, weaving Muscogee Creek history with personal reflection on finding her voice.
A young Chinese woman kidnapped from her homeland escapes across the American West during the Chinese Exclusion Act era.
The true story of Belle da Costa Greene, J.P. Morgan’s personal librarian, who hid her Black identity to navigate elite white society and build one of America’s greatest collections.
A documented account of how federal, state, and local governments deliberately imposed residential segregation through unconstitutional laws, policies, and practices.
Twelve urban Native Americans travel to a powwow in Oakland, their interweaving stories building toward a devastating convergence.
2021
The true story of Eliza Lucas, a teenaged girl in colonial South Carolina who pioneered indigo cultivation and changed the course of American agriculture.
Essays examining the Asian American experience, coining “minor feelings” for the dissonance of being perceived as a model minority while feeling anything but.
A Mexican mother and son flee cartel violence on a harrowing journey north to the U.S. border.
The witch Circe of Greek mythology is reimagined as a fully realized woman discovering her power in a world of gods and mortals.
2019
A Chinese immigrant girl navigates the brutal world of a Brooklyn sweatshop while excelling at an elite prep school.
An enslaved boy on a Barbados sugar plantation is swept into the world of his master’s eccentric, abolitionist brother and a life-changing hot-air balloon journey.
A memoir of escaping a survivalist family in Idaho who kept her out of school, and her eventual path to earning a PhD from Cambridge.
The true story of an unlikely bond between Ruth Dayan, wife of Israeli general Moshe Dayan, and Raymonda Tawil, a Palestinian activist and Yasser Arafat’s mother-in-law.
2018
A memoir tracing a journey from a traditional Muslim upbringing in Pakistan to interfaith bridge-building in New York City after 9/11.
Three women’s lives converge at Ravensbrück, the only Nazi concentration camp for women, based on the true story of American philanthropist Caroline Ferriday.
A National Book Award winner following a poor Black family in rural Mississippi during the twelve days leading up to Hurricane Katrina.
A harrowing memoir of escape from North Korea as a teenager and the decade-long odyssey that followed before finding freedom.
2017
A novel imagining the story behind Gustav Klimt’s famous golden portrait, interweaving fin-de-siècle Vienna with the Nazi plunder of a Jewish family’s art collection.
A novel imagining the life of Christina Olson, the woman in Andrew Wyeth’s iconic painting “Christina’s World,” confined to a Maine farmhouse by a degenerative illness.
A novel exploring the toxic legacy of workplace discrimination against women, inspired by real-world legal battles.
A modern retelling of Jane Eyre following a Korean American orphan from Queens through a nannying job in Brooklyn and a transformative trip to Seoul.
A biography of Louisa Catherine Adams, the only foreign-born First Lady, who navigated political power in early America alongside her husband John Quincy Adams.
2016
Four Dominican sisters navigate their turbulent adjustment to life in America after their family flees a Caribbean dictatorship.
A Japanese-American writer in British Columbia discovers a Tokyo teenager’s diary that washed ashore after the 2011 tsunami, connecting their lives across the Pacific.
Three women in an Indiana National Guard unit are deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq, documenting how military service transformed their lives.
Laura Ingalls Wilder’s original, unvarnished autobiography — annotated by Pamela Smith Hill — reveals the harsher realities behind the beloved Little House series.
2015
A memoir chronicling a solo 1,100-mile hike along the Pacific Crest Trail as a way to recover from personal devastation.
The forgotten story of Mary Sherman Morgan, America’s first female rocket scientist, who invented the fuel that launched the U.S. into the space race.
A memoir tracing one woman’s path from a childhood marked by poverty and bullying through her transition as a trans woman of color to becoming a media figure and advocate.
A memoir of the journey from a Bronx housing project — navigating poverty, illness, and a father’s alcoholism — to becoming the first Hispanic justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.
2014
A young Nigerian woman immigrates to America for university, exploring race, identity, and the immigrant experience through a sharp and often funny lens.
An autobiographical novel of a privileged Cambodian girl whose world is shattered when the Khmer Rouge seize power.
The tangled history of America’s largest slaveholding family and their Black and white descendants across four centuries.
The secret story of the young women recruited to work in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, during WWII — unknowingly helping to build the atomic bomb.
A chance encounter with an eleven-year-old panhandler on a New York City street led to a lifelong bond that transformed both their lives.
2013
Six young widows form an unconventional support group that defies the traditional rules of grief.
The collective story of Japanese picture brides who arrived in San Francisco in the early twentieth century, full of hope and soon disillusioned.
Two siblings — one a soldier in the Korean War, the other developmentally disabled — are connected across time and distance by bonds of love and loss.
A pharmaceutical researcher journeys deep into the Amazon jungle to investigate the death of a colleague and a mysterious fertility drug.
Africa’s first elected female head of state recounts her extraordinary journey from childhood in Liberia through imprisonment and exile to the presidency.
2012
The story of the Black woman whose cancer cells were taken without consent in 1951 and became one of the most important tools in medical research.
A journey from a remote matriarchal community in China’s Himalayan foothills to international fame as a singer.
A couple’s journey to rebuild language and intimacy after a devastating stroke, told with creativity and devotion.
The true 1904 incident when white vigilantes kidnapped Irish orphans placed with Mexican Catholic families, revealing deep currents of race and class in the American West.
Two Pakistani sisters — one who stays and one who emigrates to America — navigate honor, family loyalty, and survival.
2011
During 2010–2011, ¡Adelante! split into AM and PM groups that read different books and later swapped selections.
A biography of Frances Perkins, FDR’s Secretary of Labor and the first woman in a U.S. Cabinet position, who shaped Social Security, minimum wage, and workers’ rights.
A profile of Annie Dodge Wauneka, a Navajo leader who dedicated her life to improving healthcare and education on the Navajo reservation.
Temple Grandin describes how her visual thinking as a person with autism led to revolutionary innovations in animal science and offers insight into the autistic mind.
Set in 1680s America before slavery was codified by race, a mother’s desperate act of mercy reverberates across several women’s lives.
Four Mexican-American teenage friends in Denver — two documented, two undocumented — navigate high school, college, and the immigration system.
The true story of Helga Estby, a Norwegian immigrant mother who walked across America in 1896 to save her family’s farm.
2010
During 2010–2011, ¡Adelante! split into AM and PM groups that read different books and later swapped selections.
The story of Edith Warner, a solitary woman living near Los Alamos who unknowingly became a bridge between the Pueblo Indians and the Manhattan Project scientists.
The fates of a Nigerian refugee and a British magazine editor are connected through a shared traumatic encounter on a Lagos beach.
An argument that the oppression of women worldwide is the central moral challenge of our era, documented through stories of resilience from Africa to Asia.
A Booker Prize winner following a poor Indian villager’s darkly comic rise from servant to entrepreneur in the new India.
Black domestic workers and a young white woman in 1960s Mississippi together write a book exposing the racism they experience daily.
Jehan Sadat, widow of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, reflects on the struggle for peace in the Middle East and the role of women in building bridges between cultures.
An L.A. Times columnist befriends Nathaniel Ayers, a Juilliard-trained musician living homeless on Skid Row, and the complicated bond that follows.
A history of lesbian life in America from the nineteenth century to the present, documenting how women who loved women navigated secrecy, persecution, and community.
2009
A memoir of growing up on a South Dakota reservation, radicalization during the American Indian Movement, and participation in the 1973 Wounded Knee occupation.
The first openly gay Episcopal bishop reflects on his faith journey, the firestorm his consecration ignited, and his hope for an inclusive church.
A novel reimagining the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire through the memories of the last living survivor, weaving together love, loss, and industrial tragedy.
An autobiography tracing a journey from a traditional Somali upbringing through genital mutilation and forced marriage to emergence as a fierce critic of Islam and advocate for women’s rights.
The classic 1961 account of six weeks traveling the Deep South disguised as a Black man, experiencing firsthand the daily humiliation and danger of racial segregation.
2008
A Pulitzer Prize–winning poetry collection honoring the Louisiana Native Guards, one of the first Black regiments in the Civil War, while also mourning the poet’s murdered mother.
The American-born son of Bengali immigrants struggles with his unusual name and the cultural expectations of two worlds.
A failed attempt to climb K2 leads to a mission to build schools for girls in remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
A memoir telling parallel stories — the author’s own coming-of-age as one of twelve children in a Black family and his white Jewish mother’s hidden past.
