Stacey Abrams has a book club, but you can’t join it unless you’re one of her siblings.
The novelist and former minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives told the New York Times that she and her siblings are members of an exclusive book club that’s now tackling Marlon James’ Black Leopard, Red Wolf. The novel, the first installment in a planned trilogy, was a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award.
“I’m the second of six kids, all voracious readers,” Abrams said. “Our mother was a librarian before she became a minister, so we grew up steeped in reading and storytelling as a part of who we are.”
The siblings take turns selecting a book, but each pick is subject to a veto, Abrams said. “We have the right to decide after a few weeks that you either pick a new one or we move on to the next person on the list,” she explained. “We’re very egalitarian in that way. The beauty is, we know if you didn’t read and we can call you out.”
Abrams, whom many political observers see as one of Joe Biden’s potential vice president picks, is herself an author. She wrote eight romantic suspense novels under the pen name Selena Montgomery, as well as two nonfiction books, Lead From the Outside and Our Time Is Now.
So what was the last book Abrams picked for her sibling book club? Colson Whitehead’s Zone One, she told the Times, the author’s 2011 novel about a plague that turns its victims into zombies.
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
