Nonfiction Book Club: Before and After

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Program Type:

Book Club, Authors & Books

Age Group:

Adult
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Program Description

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The library's Nonfiction Book Club meets the third Monday each month at 1 PM. All are welcome.

Whenever possible, copies of each month's title will be available for checkout with a library card.

Registration is optional - register to receive reminders!

This club will be held in hybrid format. Come in person at the library, or attend online! Click this link to connect via Zoom. Password: 3GWdHC

For more book groups, visit cityofportsmouth.com/library/book-discussion-groups.

Before and After by Judy Christie & Lisa Wingate

From the 1920s to 1950, Georgia Tann ran a black-market baby business at the Tennessee Children's Home Society in Memphis. She offered up more than 5,000 orphans tailored to the wish lists of eager parents – hiding the fact that many weren't orphans at all, but stolen sons and daughters of poor families, desperate single mothers, and women told in maternity wards that their babies had died.

The publication of Lisa Wingate's novel Before We Were Yours brought new awareness of Tann's lucrative career in child trafficking. Adoptees who knew little about their pasts gained insight into the startling facts behind their family histories. Encouraged by their contact with Wingate and award-winning journalist Judy Christie, who documented the stories of fifteen adoptees in this book, many determined Tann survivors set out to trace their roots and find their birth families.

Note: read the novel that brought this scandal to light, Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate, and join us for the corresponding Fiction Book Club on Monday June 12!