Our Book Club is open to anyone who loves to read and cares about Together Women Rise’s mission to achieve global gender equality. We feature fiction and nonfiction books related to:
- Gender equality
- International women’s issues
- Global poverty
- Countries where our grantees operate
- Women’s history and accomplishments
- Memoirs/biographies of strong women who changed the world
We use Goodreads to share, review, and discuss books. Goodreads is the world’s largest site for readers and book recommendations. Together Women Rise’s volunteer Moderators post books regularly and generate online discussions.
How to Join
- Go to Goodreads and create your free account.
- Click on the “Community” tab, then “Groups” and search for Together Women Rise.
- Click “Join Group” button below our logo.
- Click on the Book Shelf to view or add books.
- Invite your chapter members or friends to join.
- Attend quarterly Book Club events
- Discuss what you have read with other Book Club members.
Together Women Rise Big Read Events
Each quarter, we select one book that we will feature for Together Women Rise’s “Big Read”, and we encourage everyone to read this book at the same time! We highlight the book in our newsletters and on social media, and host a virtual book club gathering to discuss the book.
Thursday, September 12 at 8 pm ET / 5 pm PT
Book: Last to Eat, Last to Learn: My Life in Afghanistan Fighting to Educate Women
Speaker: Pashtana Durrani (author)
Summary: Inspired by generations of her family’s unwavering belief in the power of education, Pashtana Durrani recognized her calling early in life: to educate Afghanistan’s girls and young women, raised in a society where learning is forbidden. In a country devastated by war and violence, where girls are often married off before reaching their teenage years and prohibited from leaving their homes, heeding that call seemed both impossible and dangerous.
Pashtana was raised in an Afghan refugee camp in Pakistan where her father, a tribal leader, founded a community school for girls within their home. Fueled by his insistence that despite being a girl, she mattered and deserved an education, Pashtana was sixteen when, against impossible odds, she was granted a path out of the refugee camp: admittance to a preparatory program at Oxford. Unthinkably and to her parents’ horror, she chose a different path. She chose Afghanistan.
Pashtana founded the nonprofit LEARN and developed a program for getting educational materials directly into the hands of girls in remote areas of the country, training teachers in digital literacy. Her commitment to education has made her a target of the Taliban. Still, she continues to fight for women’s education and autonomy in Afghanistan and beyond.
REGISTER HERE
We will also be holding a separate online event for those interested in a deeper discussion about the book. This will be held on September 19 at 8 pm ET/5 pm PT and moderated by Vicky Bush-Joseph, Board Vice Chair. Register HERE for this discussion.
TBD
Book: Radical Inclusion: Seven Steps to Help You Create a More Just Workplace, Home, and World by David Moinina Sengeh
Speaker: TBD
Summary: As the newly appointed minister of education in Sierra Leone, David Moinina Sengeh assumed that the administration he served—not to mention his family and friends—shared his conviction that all girls belong in the classroom. He was shocked to learn that many of those closest to him, including a member of his own household, were against lifting a long-standing policy banning pregnant girls from school.
Radical Inclusion is the dramatic narrative of Sengeh’s drive to guarantee pregnant girls’ right to an education. His story functions as a parable that can help us all advocate for change by reimagining the systems that perpetuate exclusion.