When will your box arrive? Boxes ship out the 1st of each month!
Available Boxes
Media & Misinformation Box
Book | 1984, by George Orwell.
Film | While We Watched
This year, the book 1984 turns 75. Arguably George Orwell’s most famous and enduring work, the dystopian novel feels almost prophetic amid today’s swelling distrust of news media and journalism in favor of social media echo chambers and repositories of disinformation designed to deliberately deceive and alter the meaning of “truth.”
Similar themes play out in Vinay Shukla’s 2022 While We Watched, which follows Indian television journalist Ravish Kumar as he battles a commitment to reporting accurate and balanced information alongside the spread of misinformation and threats of violence in an increasingly contentious political environment. While Orwell himself classified his book as satire, he prophesied that “something resembling [his fictional society] could arrive” and “that totalitarianism, if not fought against, could triumph anywhere.”
This box explores modern-day media literacy and misinformation and the impact in Utah, across the our country and throughout the world as digital channels become more pervasive and make it increasingly difficult to parse out fact from fiction. Your book club will contemplate and examine parallels between the fictional world laid out in Orwell’s 1984, the very real setting Kumar faces as he fights to deliver accurate information to viewers, and what you see and experience in your own daily interactions with news and social media in the United States.
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Right to Rest Box
Book | Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto, by Tricia Hersey
Digital Series | Let's Talk
The connection between our day-to-day habits and how we show up for our families, friends, and community is often overlooked. We live in a “grind” culture that tells us we must sacrifice Rest for productivity and financial success. The digital age and rise of technologically mediated forms of communication (aka Twitter, Instagram, Facebook) have tethered us to devices and negatively affected our ability to engage in civil discourse or just sit down for authentic face-to-face conversations with people we love. How do we reclaim our right to Rest and reconnect with what’s most important to us?
In this Book Box, we have selected Tricia Hersey’s groundbreaking book, Rest as Resistance: A Manifesto and the award-winning PBS Utah Digital Series, Let’s Talk, as springboards for rich conversation that will resonate with people of all ages. Hersey’s book challenges current definitions of rest, reframing it as a radical act of resistance against burnout, social isolation, and systemic inequities. She provides compelling rationales as well as practical strategies for infusing rest beyond sleep into our daily routines. Let’s Talk centers the voices of parents committed to providing a foundation of hope, love, and resilience for their children who are navigating a world where civil discourse on topics like racism and social justice are not always well-represented.
Your book club will create a healing space for rich discussion about what it means to prioritize various forms of rest as pathways to empowerment, deeper human connection, and resilience. For readers raising and educating children, you will explore how modeling self-care in all its creative forms will show young people what it means to slow down, be curious, foster kindness, and cultivate empathy.
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We All Belong Here Box
Book | We're Different, We're the Sameby Bobbi Kates
Videos | Standing Up for Yourself and Your Friends and Friendship
The book We’re Different, We’re the Same and the videos Friendship and Standing Up for Yourself and Your Friends tell the stories of friendships and what differences and similarities mean for friendships. All children are different and we can be friends with each other and stand up for each other. Both the book and the videos honestly admit differences in our looks, however they go beyond our outer differences and address our shared inner world. At the end, we are all the same; we act, feel, live, work, and play the same way, even if we look different, we’re alike. The shared similarities and differences both contribute to our world.
As children get through the book and the films, they may want to think and share about following questions: Do we have many different friends? Are we still friends when we are different? How would your friends feel when they hear that they look different and cannot be friends? How can we support and stand up for friends?
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In partnership with:
Icons Box
Book: Wake the Others by Willy Palomo
Videos: Aloha Iosepa, Mana, and Sistership
Immigration, religion, belonging, and the merging of all three, shape the identity of so many Utahans who came to the state to find a home away from their native lands. They can find this in the church or in art or on the pitch. Both Willy Palomo’s book Wake the Others and the three documentary films produced by local high school filmmakers explore the what happens at the intersection of immigration, religion, and belonging and how this has shaped them, their families, their identities.
Your book club will discuss why cultural tradition carried across oceans, mountains, and generations is so important to families in Utah. You’ll explore the notion of home and how that changes for each one of us as we migrate from one place to another. Have you had to make a major move in your life? What prompted that move? Was it religion? Family? Work? As we comprehend the challenges and triumphs of the people in the short films as well as the book, do we have a renewed perspective on our neighbors who have different cultural backgrounds? Have we learned something new about ourselves?
Please note: This book contains profanity and graphic descriptions. Book Clubs should consider the sensitivities of their participants before registering.
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In partnership with:
This project is made possible by a generous grant from Utah Humanities and the Bastian Foundation.
