Inciting Change Is as Easy as Turning a Page

Book clubs everywhere aren’t just encouraging a love for books, but advocacy too.

There is a traditional archetype of book club goers. They’re often women who attend weekly get-togethers in damp Presbyterian church basements to gab about insanely grim memoirs. 

This trend of literary organizing can be partially attributed to Oprah Winfrey. An estimated two million people participated in “Oprah’s Book Club,” which functioned as a regular segment on The Oprah Winfrey Show starting in 1996 where the eponymous host would recommend a book to her viewers to discuss live each month. But like various genres of books, there are many genres of book clubs. The impact of these gatherings can go beyond the healing of socializing over a common interest. 

Winfrey may be how the crowd of early-2000s-small-town-middle-class-Christian-women  identify with the human phenomenon of book clubs, but that’s not the case with everyone. Book clubs are thought to have begun as early as the mid-1600s. In a timeline published by Boston University, Puritan advisor Anne Hutchinson is credited with starting the first book club in 1634. It’s said to have met weekly and consisted solely of women who discussed religious sermons. Women continued to lead the way into the 1700s: American essayist Hannah Mather Crocker started a science-focused reading collective of women in 1778. 

Books, and the act of coming together to talk about them, have continued to bring hope and purpose to those seeking out community—beyond early American feminist collectives and the run of The Oprah Winfrey Show. In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, social and intellectual stimulation were lifelines. There was an unprecedented degree of social and political unrest and  conversations on systemic issues that needed to be had—neither of which could be dealt with face-to-face. 

Everywhere, there seemed to be recommendations of James Baldwin or Angela Davis’ works at the peak of the Black Lives Matter movement. Alternatively, some people informed themselves of their life in a pandemic with The Great Mortality by John Kelly, a nonfiction novel tracking the history of the Black Plague. According to a LitHub survey, interest in books surrounding racial injustice increased by 28 per cent in 2020, while books surrounding information related to then-current events increased by 15 per cent. 

With the shared experience of isolation, or even just a love for Oprah Winfrey, there’s a drive to become more inserted in the nuances and happenings of the ecosystem you’re within. Both Winfrey and the pandemic sparked an interest in people everywhere to artistically connect, to find community and common ground between people separated by a screen, state lines or social distancing regulations. 

In today’s post-pandemic world, there are still book clubs. With everyone smothered by election cycle anxieties and glued to their device for updates on geopolitical atrocities, there are humans connecting on topics much bigger than themselves—understanding the workings of the world one page at a time. It’s a real form of collective activism, akin to rallies and speeches and it doesn’t just happen in aforementioned damp Presbyterian church basements. 

Lysanne Louter started off volunteering as a lead organizer for Amnesty International’s Book Club in 2023. From being a journalist at CBC, to Amnesty International’s digital content strategist, to  Amnesty International Canada’s manager of marketing and branding, books have been there for her consistently as a breath of fresh air. 

“I’m thinking of Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides that I read as a teenager and that among many others was a piece of work that really opened my eyes to something that at the time I didn’t know that much about,” she said. Known for its intimate discussion of gender identity amidst Greek heritage, the novel earned Eugenides a Pulitzer-prize. 

“[I come] from a very conservative, Christian background. I went to a Christian private school. I never felt comfortable with the church’s position on LGBTQ+ rights and inclusivity. I think that book probably motivated me to be inclusive and think about social justice,” said Louter. Literature opened Louter’s eyes beyond her immediate first-hand experience. She now actively carries these lessons into her work with the Amnesty Book Club.

According to Amnesty International Book Club volunteer Jasmin Smith, the club offers a space for others to approach changing their perspectives in the same way. Amnesty Book Club is special in and of the fact that it offers participants to communicate directly with the authors at regular Q&A sessions of selected bi-monthly readings. 

“We do have some commenters that might have the right questions, but they're coming off the wrong way. It helps them to ask these questions and get to engage with the authors. We've had a lot of people changing their minds about things and you can see it in real time,” explained Smith. 

“I think it's a less high stakes way to discuss these issues that we're talking about. It's a way that you're able to ask questions without pertaining to real people's lives and real people's identities, because you can kind of take that fictional [novel] setting and discuss it in a way where there's no risk,” she added. 

Amnesty’s Book Club began in 2014, but according to Louter, it began to lose steam in 2020 when the original organizer left Amnesty International. 

“When I started, it wasn't running anymore. I'm someone who really believes in the power of literature, in particular, in bringing people together and changing hearts and minds, so

I was really excited to take it on,” she said. 

According to Louter, Amnesty’s Book Club began with around 8,000 members in January 2024. Now, in the latter half of the year, there are around 13,000 subscribers. This club has largely focused on Canada’s Temporary Foreign Work (TFW) Program this year, reading The Story of Us by Scarborough-native Catherine Hernandez—a novel which discusses the author’s journey as an Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW). Traditionally there is a selection of books focused on anti-racism, with the club reading The Sleeping Car Porters by Suzette Mayr this year as well. 

For Louter and her volunteer committee, it’s most important to select each year’s shortlist of six books, and ensure the concepts in which they discuss are accessible to everyone. 

They prioritize choosing books that can be accessed at public libraries, rather than brand new books that can only be purchased from a retailer. Even so, the club as an entity is meant to be a gateway into understanding different social issues, whether you’re a reader or not. 

“We have a lot of members who, I'm fairly certain they haven't even read the books, and definitely haven't read all of the books, but they still participate in the events and they still engage with the other community members and ask questions. A lot of them are running their own small book clubs and they use our discussion guides to supplement and deepen their discussion within their own book clubs,” said Louter. 

Louter notes the mobilization Amnesty aims to set forth. The goal of the club is not only just to bring in more donor interest to the causes of Amnesty International, but to spark an interest in change for everyone everywhere. “I have definitely noticed Amnesty supporters becoming a lot more active in our other campaigns, whether it's [through our campaigns] or taking action digitally through a petition page or an email-to-target page.” 

“The books that I've read through the Amnesty Book Club definitely motivated me in many aspects of my life to take action. Not just by taking action by protesting or doing sort of more typically activist type things, but in how I talk to my neighbors and how I raise my children, in how I make choices about what I buy, in the choices of media that I consume,” she continued.

Still, with so many options to advocate for social change in today’s day and age, Smith sees books and the community they foster as a unique facet of protest. 

“I think it's just like natural history for everyone to really connect over narrative. As long as humans can be tracked back, you'll see narratives and stories being told. And I think stories are just always a way that people can connect with each other, whether liking a book or disliking a book, it's a way to share an experience over human nature, really.”