Thanks for the Memoirs Book Club

Thanks for the Memoirs Book Club will focus on memoirs from authors representing a variety of backgrounds and lived experiences. We will meet on the 2nd Thursday at 10am, every even month, starting in February (so February, April, June...)

This month we're reading How to stand up to a Dictator: The Fight for our Future by Maria Ressa.

Discussions will be facilitated by Mary Sussman, who previously led Shakespeare and Company (2003-2005), dedicated to the works of William Shakespeare; and League Café, dedicated to books about racial equity (2018-2023).

About the book:

From the recipient of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, an impassioned and inspiring memoir of a career spent holding power to account. Maria Ressa is one of the most renowned international journalists of our time. For decades, she challenged corruption and malfeasance in her native country, the Philippines, on its rocky path from an authoritarian state to a democracy. As a reporter from CNN, she transformed news coverage in her region, which led her in 2012 to create a new and innovative online news organization, Rappler. Harnessing the emerging power of social media, Rappler crowdsourced breaking news, found pivotal sources and tips, harnessed collective action for climate change, and helped increase voter knowledge and participation in elections. Democracy is fragile. How to Stand Up to a Dictator is an urgent cry for Western readers to recognize and understand the dangers to our freedoms before it is too late. It is a book for anyone who might take democracy for granted, written by someone who never would. And in telling her dramatic and turbulent and courageous story, Ressa forces readers to ask themselves the same question she and her colleagues ask every day: What are you willing to sacrifice for the truth?