April Social Justice Reading Circle

Book Discussion

Social Justice Reading Circle

April

April 10, 2024

Join us each month for our Social Justice Reading Circle. The 2^nd Wednesday of each month we will have a book club-style meetup to discuss a book that relates to social justice across a range of topics and genres. Our selections will include our Stowe Prize shortlist, fiction, and non-fiction works to explore the many ways that writers engage social justice issues. We invite you to meet for refreshments, reading, and lively conversation.

April 10th

6:00 – 7:00 pm

Stowe Center, Day House

Light refreshments provided

Our April selection is Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler:

Octavia Butler’s classic speculative fiction novel, Parable of the Sower, follows the highly sensitive Lauren Olamina, who lives a sheltered life inside of a gated community, protected from the social chaos caused by climate crisis and subsequent economic crash. In a society where any vulnerability is a risk, Butler’s work is a powerful statement on our relationship to the environment and shared humanity.

“Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower is a stunner. It’s a terrifying vision of a dismal future brought on by the willful ignorance, racism and greed of human beings, and an eerily dangerous parallel to our present path. Ms. Butler gives us a satisfying protagonist in the hypersensitive teenager Lauren, whose courage and wits are an infinite source of inspiration.”

―Flea, Wall Street Journal

Published In 2000

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TO BORROW

Hartford Public Library
Libby app (available with any library membership)
Hoopla (available with any library membership)

Location Stowe Center, Day House

Doors Open 5:45 pm

Program 6:00 - 7:00 pm

School Group Interest Form

School Group Interest Form 2024

Thank you so much for your interest in a group tour at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center! Please help us schedule your visit by answering the questions below.

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Adult Group Interest Form

Group Tour Interest Form 2022

Thank you so much for your interest in a group tour at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center! Please help us schedule your visit by answering the questions below.

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Are there special accommodations that can help us serve you best?

Are you interested in a joint visit with our neighbor, The Mark Twain House and Museum?

Yes, please.

No, thank you.

If yes, have you already contacted The Mark Twain House?

Yes

Isabella Beecher Hooker

Isabella Holmes Beecher Hooker (1822-1907)
An ardent member of the woman’s suffrage movement, Isabella Holmes Beecher Hooker joined in the cause along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.

Isabella was the first child of Lyman Beecher and his second wife, Harriet Porter Beecher.

Isabella began her education at Catharine Beecher’s Hartford Female Seminary and lived with her sister Mary Perkins. In 1841 she married John Hooker, a descendant of Thomas Hooker, the founder of Hartford. John Hooker was a lawyer and an abolitionist.

In the early 1860s Isabella got involved in the woman’s suffrage movement. Isabella joined Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony as a member of the National Woman’s Suffrage Association in 1869. She was a founding member of the Connecticut Woman’s Suffrage Association. Isabella’s ideas of equality were influenced by John Stuart Mills’ On Liberty and the Subjection of Women.

In 1871, Isabella organized the annual convention of the National Woman’s Suffrage Association in Washington D.C. and presented her argument before the Committee on the Judiciary of the United States Senate. Her husband, John Hooker, believed in his wife and supported her activities. He helped Isabella draft a bill to the Connecticut Legislature giving married women the same property rights as their husbands. The bill passed in 1877. Isabella annually submitted a bill granting women the right to vote, but it did not pass in her lifetime.