Banned? Challenged? That means it’s a book worth talking about. Come talk about it at the Banned Book Club at BookMarx, in partnership with the Springfield-Greene County Library. Meet with your neighbors to read books that have recently been in the news. This month’s book is “Out of Darkness” by Ashley Hope Perez. Discuss the book, reasons for it being banned or challenged and ideas surrounding intellectual freedom. This book club is for adults, but teens age 15 and older are welcome to attend with a parent or guardian.

From Kirkus Reviews: “Mexican-American girl and a black boy begin an ill-fated love in the months leading up to a catastrophic 1937 school explosion in East Texas.

The powerful story opens with the legendary school explosion in New London and then rewinds to September 1936. Naomi has begrudgingly left behind her abuelitos in San Antonio for a new life with her younger half siblings, twins, and their long-absent white father, Henry. Now a born-again Christian, Henry struggles to atone for his sins. The siblings struggle to fit into the segregated oil town, where store signs boast "No Negroes, Mexicans, or dogs." The precocious twins read better than half the senior class, and dark-skinned Naomi is guilty of not only being Mexican, but also of being "prettier than any girl in school." Their one friend is Wash, a brilliant African-American senior from the black part of town. Pérez deftly weaves multiple perspectives—including Henry and "the Gang," the collective voice of the racist students—into her unflinchingly intense narrative, but the story ultimately belongs to Naomi and Wash. Their beautifully detailed love story blossoms in the relative seclusion of the woods, where even stepfathers can't keep them apart. But as heartbreaking events unfold, the star-crossed lovers desperately hope that any light can penetrate the black smoke cloud of darkness spreading around them.

A powerful, layered tale of forbidden love in times of unrelenting racism. (author's note)(Historical fiction. 14 & up)”

During our November First Friday Art Walk, Nancy Dornan will be selling and signing copies of her new book “I Married an Immigrant”.

”Bridget, an 18-year-old Midwest farm girl elopes with 32 year old Domino Danzero, a dashing and romantic Italian immigrant. She defied her father and convention to live a fifty-year love affair. The story of Bridget and Domino is a story of adventure, travel, growth, and creativity sewn together from Bridget’s diaries, letters, transcriptions and enhanced by Domino’s extraordinary photographs. Open this book and experience a turn of the last century life of great risk and opportunity, of travel, of the Spanish Flu Pandemic, and the Great Depression, of the advent of radio and highways…. all seen through Bridget’s eyes.

How did they do it? Why did they do it? Could this be done today?”

“All Boys Aren’t Blue” by George M. Johnson

Meet with your neighbors to read books that have recently been in the news.

We’ll discuss the book, reasons for it being banned or challenged, and ideas surrounding intellectual freedom. Teens age 15 and older are welcome to attend with a parent or guardian.

“In a series of personal essays, prominent journalist and LGBTQIA+ activist George M. Johnson explores his childhood, adolescence, and college years in New Jersey and Virginia. From the memories of getting his teeth kicked out by bullies at age five, to flea marketing with his loving grandmother, to his first sexual relationships, this young-adult memoir weaves together the trials and triumphs faced by Black queer boys.

Both a primer for teens eager to be allies as well as a reassuring testimony for young queer men of color, All Boys Aren't Blue covers topics such as gender identity, toxic masculinity, brotherhood, family, structural marginalization, consent, and Black joy. Johnson's emotionally frank style of writing will appeal directly to young adults.”

Local comedian and tinkerer-about-town Nate Black brings an unusual, whimsical show to Bookmarx this month. Just in time for Halloween season, Nate’s large-scale works feature unexpected objects on a variety of hand-cut wood animal skulls. (Googly eyes, but make it art.) Nate hopes to both amaze and amuse by making us all look closer at the everyday objects around us.