The JEDI Reading Club grappled with some topics that are on a lot of people’s minds these days when several faculty and staff met virtually last Monday to discuss the book, “The Wake Up: Closing the Gap Between Good Intentions and Real Change,” by Michelle MiJung Kim. The book invites readers to, “deep dive into the challenging and nuanced work of pursuing equity and justice, while exploring various complexities, contradictions, and conflicts inherent in our imperfect world.”
The club, run by Director of JEDI Education and Programs Callie Watkins Liu and Director of the Library Jessica Bell, sent out a book summary and a YouTube video of the author discussing the book’s themes, and invited people to join in the discussion, whether they read the entire book or the summary they provided. Rebecca Pham, a physical therapy instructor, joined Watkins Liu and Bell in leading the conversation.
“The book is essentially a guiding framework for how to engage in social justice work,” explained Pham. “The author does a hybrid of sharing her own story and narrative memoir format of her background, how she started engagement in the activism space and moved into more of the corporate space of doing social justice and DEI work, and lessons that she learned along the way.Then she puts out frameworks for folks as a whole for how they want to engage.”
The book covers four areas of how people move toward positive change — grounding, orienting, showing up, and moving together. In addition to discussing these themes and hearing other perspectives, the book club gave the participants the chance to talk about the current political landscape.
“A lot of the conversation was wanting to hear what other people are feeling and experiencing right now,” said Pham. “I think the biggest thing was finding a space for community and expressing gratitude that this open dialogue exists and is being fostered and cultivated. People are really craving being able to talk to other people about how they're experiencing what's happening right now.”