For our next Louisiana Inspired Book Club pick, we have chosen "I Never Thought of it That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times" by journalist and author Mónica Guzmán. We will announce the date and time for our discussion soon.
Guzmán is the daughter of Mexican immigrants who voted twice for Donald Trump. Politically, she leans the other direction. She used the lessons she learned in maintaining conversation and relationship with her parents as the big idea behind the book. She knows from personal experience how hard having conversations with people whose perspectives are different can be, but she also believes in the value of having them.
Her approach is to find ways to talk with people — rather than about them — and asking the questions, curiously.
Excerpt from the book:
On the morning of Election Day 2020, I was driving east from Seattle to my parents' house in Redmond, Washington, wondering if I should turn around.
About a week earlier, I’d ask my parents if I could watch the results of the presidential election from their house. Mom blinked over her plate of carnitas tacos from the food truck down the way. She looked at Dad, and then back at me.
"Claro, Moni," she said in Spanish. Of course, Moni. Then her eyes held mine a moment, asking what I was silently asking myself: But are you sure you want to?
After all, I’m a liberal who voted for Joe Biden, and Mom and Dad are conservatives who voted enthusiastically — and twice now — for Donald Trump.
I drove their way in silence, my hands gripping the steering wheel of the sturdy 2004 black Nissan Altima they sold me for a dollar when my Civic felt too clunky for our kids, a mere four months before Trump's 2016 victory shook the world. I preferred the too-loud rumble of the Altima's wheels on the road to any music that could make the day feel too normal. Would my parents end the day happy and relieved, or would I? Who would feel at home in our country tomorrow?
Up ahead, a big American flag waved by the conifers along the highway. Seeing it brought back brought me back to my mother‘s naturalization ceremony 20 years earlier. “Did you notice I dressed in red, white, and blue" Mom had texted me this past Independence Day when Dad dug up and shared a family photo from the New Hampshire state courthouse. In the photo, Mom‘s in a red cardigan with white buttons and a blue skirt clutching a small American flag and she poses next to me, my younger brother, and my dad, who had been naturalized a month prior. I was 17 then, my long hair draped over a purple sweater. Being under 18 meant my brother and I were automatically naturalized along with her parents. It was our first family photo as American citizens. We were beaming.
Guzmán, a Mexican immigrant, Latina and dual US/Mexico citizen, is a senior fellow for Public Practice at Braver Angels, the nation’s largest cross-partisan grassroots organization working to depolarize America. She is the founder and CEO of Reclaim Curiosity, an organization working to build a more curious world. She is also co-founder of the award-winning Seattle newsletter "The Evergrey" and an adviser for Starts With Us and the Generations Over Dinner project.
In 2019, she was a fellow at the Henry M. Jackson Foundation, where she studied social and political division, and a 2016 fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, where she researched how journalists can rethink their roles to better meet the needs of a participatory public.
Her book, "I Never Thought of it That Way," was featured on the Glenn Beck Podcast and named a New York Times recommended read.
"I can see this book helping estranged parties who are equally invested in bridging a gap — it could be assigned reading for fractured families aspiring to a harmonious Thanksgiving dinner," The New York Times reported.