The Sisters With Books Book Club Celebrates 30 Years: Reading Is Community
Sisters with Books members Dawn Crim (l-r), Marilyn Ruffin and Diane Taylor
by Jonathan Gramling
Back in the 1990s and before, the small size of the Black community inhibited the growth of commercial leisure and entertainment outlets that catered to the Black community. And so, the Black community created its own fun, whether through the Black churches or other social organizations. Many of the professional women came and went fromk the community due to the dictates of their jobs and careers. Madison could be an isolating place.
“There weren’t a lot of outlets, specifically for Black women to get together,” recalled Marilyn Peebles-Ruffin, one of the founders of Sisters with Books. “And being new here to Wisconsin from St. Louis, you just didn’t see anyone. We started the book club. The idea came through an article in Annetta Wright’s house. That was the origination of the book club. Jackie Haley-Crenshaw, Karen Davenport-White, Edrea Dismuke, Christy Ferguson, Annetta Wright and I were the first members. The formation of the book club happened at my apartment. And the name came from the R&B group SWV, Sisters with Voices. They were very popular at that time. And we made it easy. ‘Let’s just call ourselves Sisters with Books.’”
SWB is a monthly book club that connects the members to each other as well as to currents in contemporary African American culture.
“I think it was the fellowship,” said Diane Taylor who joined the club in 1999. “We would meet from 5:30-7 p.m. And for the first 30-45 minutes, we discussed what was going on in the community. Everyone — as far as a connection was concerned — it was what was going on in our lives. Through work or whatever, you brought a different perspective as to what was going on in the community. That’s how that connection came together. The other thing was, depending on what our book was, our conversations could sometimes move from the book to what was actually happening so we could relate to our families even and the community.”
“I would just say that the first hour is akin to being at the kitchen table where everyone is just kind of checking in on what’s been happening since we saw each other last and then what is happening around town,” said Dawn Crim who joined in 2000. “And then at 6 p.m. promptly, Marilyn Ruffin will say, ‘It is now time to talk about the book.’”
The first book club meeting actually had the best selling book by a Euro-American author as its focus.
“The very first book in July 1994 when we formalized SWB, in August 1994, this was our first book,” Peebles-Ruffin said. “It was on The New York Times Bestsellers list at that time. And it was a white author. So we got together the Black Book Club to start reading Black books, which we did. But we started out our first one with The Bridges of Madison County. I still love it. It’s a fantastic love story. Clint Eastwood made it into a movie starring Meryl Streep. And then after that is when we got into the Terry McMillans of the world, the E Lynn Harrises of the world.”
The connection to the world was equally important to the members.
“One of my favorites was Pearl Cleage’s What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day,” Crim said. “That was just so good. And I didn’t realize that she is a playwright. After reading the book, when the Oscar Mayer Theater was here, Blues from an Alabama Sky was a play that came that she wrote. I didn’t know that until I was reading the Playbill. And I went, ‘We read her.’ I share that because what’s cool about the book club and books is it introduces you to other things and you begin to notice other things in other areas that are connected.”
In some cases, the books gave the members a better understanding of their own histories.
“The book that I have loved is The Warmth of Other Sons by Isabel Wilkerson,” Taylor said. “And one of the reasons it resonated with me was because of my family — who came from the South. There was so much that I didn’t know about the Great Migration that was in the book. As Black people, we went all over the United States. I thought it was just up North and it wasn’t. It was to the West Coast and the East Coast.”
And it also introduced the members to topics that were taboo in the Black community at the time.
“E. Lynn Harris’, The Invisible Life, introduced us to the down low, DL,” Peebles-Ruffin said. “Maybe that’s why I have all of these stickers on my book. As Dawn said, reading books just brings in new ideas and new ways of thinking in terms of how people live and the story line that you would not have even thought of if we hadn’t read it together as a book. We were able to support him when he came to Madison. His books were great.”
And it enhanced their own communication skills.
“For me, what books opened me up to was how to articulate things better,” Taylor said. “I don’t think it helped me so much in writing necessarily. But it definitely broadened my vocabulary tremendously. I enjoy playing Scrabble. I was introduced to new words. ‘Oh, this will make a great Scrabble word.’ It broadened my vocabulary tremendously. You get into the book where you are reading and you totally lose yourself. You laugh out loud. You cry. You are totally immersed in the story.”
And with their increasing knowledge, SWB members were able to lend support to authors when they came to Madison.
“The Wisconsin Book Festival brings authors,” Crim said. “We read Edwige Danticat’s Krik? Krak!. And she was brought in as part of the festival. We had an opportunity to go to see the festival. But we are also able to celebrate and support our local authors. We have supported Katrina Sparkman and Dr. Charles Taylor. We don’t just do national authors. When we see something is happening in our community, we also celebrate our local authors.
And the members have even become “experts” on the authors they have read.
“When UW-Madison created the Go Big Read, one of their first selections was The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” Crim said. “We had already read the book. So we went to that discussion armed with questions and were ready to go because we had already read that.”
When the pandemic hit Madison in 2020, SWB had to adapt and in some ways, COVID-19 helped them change for the better.
“Each month, whoever wanted to host got to choose the book to read on that date,” Peebles-Ruffin said. “It gives an opportunity to come over to each other’s houses. That’s what we did for 25 years before the pandemic. And then we did everything by Zoom and we still had our little fellowship hour. But you would just jump onto Zoom a half hour earlier and do the same thing. ‘What’s going on with your life? What’s happening in the community?’ Now we are attracting someone from Detroit, Michigan and Washington, D.C. Mona is in Mississippi. We’re adding back Cecilia Timmons in South Carolina and Andrea Levy in Memphis, Tennessee. And it just goes back to what I had wanted for the book club from the first part. We said that we were going to have chapters all across the country. We were going to have Sisters with Books chapters all over the country. And it’s funny that we can now combine those from all over the country to do so.”
“I’m glad that we’ve stayed virtual because it allows me to participate,” Crim added. “I have taken a job at UW-Green Bay. And when you think about the connection of community, this allows me to continue to have my connection with community. I even value it more because I think when out of sight, it’s out of mind. You tend to appreciate it once you don’t have it. I’ve driven back on a Sunday evening and participated in the car with the book club and I chimed in. I was active.”
SWB is celebrating its 30th anniversary having impacted the lives of hundreds of Black women through the years. And it is determined to be around 30 years from now because there is no better feeling than getting immersed in a good book that lays in your hands.
“We’re going to keep it going,” Peebles-Ruffin said. “It’s 30 years now. And again, we have our core but it is always so cool when you hear from the new members who learn about this. And they say, ‘This is really nice’ because we can do this by Zoom.’ What we hear from them is they couldn’t find a book club that they could enjoy and were glad to come across this.”
Sisters without Books is open to Black women of all ages. For more information, email swbmadison@gmail.com.