Nkento Reads
About our Book Club
Launched in 2020, to serve as a space for critical study and community, fueled by the desire to connect and engage in collectively empowering authors who have been historically marginalized.
It is important to amplify voices that resonate with us. We want to encourage dialogues around literature and for you to discover stories written by authors who look like us.
Every last Sunday of the month we virtually come together on Zoom with a number of loyal Book Club members where we discuss our monthly read.
We are a dedicated to reading books written by authors of color with a highlight on Congolese authors. If you have a passion for reading African literature and you are interested in joining a great space where women help each other grow, then this is your kind of book club. With our online book club discussions and community, you won't be joining just a club but you will get a better understanding of other forms of storytelling and you'll get a chance to meet and interact with like-minded women.
We offer a diverse and safe space to learn, discuss and celebrate a shared love for literature where we connect trough constructive conversations.
Are you ready to experience some positivity, thought-provoking discussions and love from our Book Club members? Don't hesitate. Membership is free! When you become a member you have first access to our intimate conversations between leading writers. Below you can find a list of the books we have read until now. We look forward to reading with you!
Click here to read a few testimonials about our Book Club.
''How Dare The Sun Rise''
by Sandra Uwiringiyimana
A powerful book by a girl from the DRC who tells the tale of how she survived a massacre, immigrated to America, overcame her trauma trough art and activism.
Click to watch our Live Q&A with the author!
Click here to read what some of our Book Club members had to say about this novel.
''Shut up You're pretty''
by Téa Mutonji
Shut Up You’re Pretty is a fiercely intelligent collection about the inner lives of young women, examining abortion, family conflict, and the emergence of sexual identity. In writing marked by bursts of intense language, Mutonji takes the reader into her nuanced study of a young Congolese immigrant, following her journey into womanhood - including moving to Canada from Congo as a child, to her experiences leading up to early adulthood.
''Illegal among us''
by Martine Kalaw
Martine is forced to make a choice in an immigration courtroom. Her decision catapults her into a tumultuous and seven-year battle with immigration and a personal struggle to discover her identity. Ten years later, at age thirty-three, a social media message reconnects Martine with the father she thought dead for twenty years. Here begins the story of a prep-school illegal immigrant’s return to her birth land of Zambia. She travels to Africa to unlock the key to her past but what she discovers is unimaginable and will never leave her the same.
''Hood feminism''
by Mikki Kendall
‘Hood Feminism’ makes a convincing — and urgent — case about how race and class divide women. In her searing collection of essays, Mikki Kendall takes aim at the legitimacy of the modern feminist movement, arguing that it has chronically failed to address the needs of all but a few women.
Drawing on her own experiences with hunger, violence, and hyper-sexualization, along with incisive commentary on politics, pop culture, the stigma of mental health, and more, Hood Feminism delivers an irrefutable indictment of a movement in flux.
''Professional troublemaker''
by Luvvie Ajayi Jones
We're all afraid. We're afraid of asking for what we want because we're afraid of hearing "no." We're afraid of being different, of being too much or not enough. We're afraid of leaving behind the known for the unknown. But in order to do the things that will truly, meaningfully change our lives, we have to become professional troublemakers: people who are committed to not letting fear talk them out of the things they need to do or say to live free.
With humor and honesty, and guided by the influence of her professional troublemaking Nigerian grandmother, Funmilayo Faloyin, Luvvie walks us through what we must get right within ourselves before we can do the things that scare us; how to use our voice for a greater good; and how to put movement to the voice we've been silencing--because truth-telling is a muscle.
''No place to call home''
by JJ Bola
Jean starts a new school and struggles to fit in. He develops an unlikely friendship with Rowdy class mate James, who gets him into a string of sticky situations; fights, theft and more.
At home, his parents Mami and Papa, who fled political violence in Congo under the dictatorial regime of Le Maréchal, to seek asylum as refugees - which Jean and his star-student little sister Marie, have no knowledge of - pressure him to focus on school and sort his act out. Jean is then suspended, and Marie, who usually gets on his nerves, helps him keep his secret, which draws them closer together”.
With colorful characters and luminous prose, No Place To Call Home is a tale of belonging, identity and immigration, of hope and hopelessness, of loss - not by death, but by distance - and, by no means the least, of love.
''Get good with money''
by Tiffany Aliche
An invaluable guide to cultivating good financial habits and making your money work for you, Get Good with Money will help you build a solid foundation for your life (and legacy) that’s rich in every way.
Tiffany Aliche was a successful pre-school teacher with a healthy nest egg when a recession and advice from a shady advisor put her out of a job and into a huge financial hole. As she began to chart the path to her own financial rescue, the outline of her ten-step formula for attaining both financial security and peace of mind began to take shape. These principles have now helped more than one million women worldwide save and pay off millions in debt, and begin planning for a richer life.
Revealing this practical ten-step process for the first time in its entirety, Get Good with Money introduces the powerful concept of building wealth through financial wholeness: a realistic, achievable, and energizing alternative to get-rich-quick and over-complicated money management systems. With helpful checklists, worksheets, a tool kit of resources, and advanced advice from experts who Tiffany herself relies on.