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 June 3, 2019 Reading the Spirit: A Book Club With a Difference Elia Touesnard longed for a book club, perhaps with her Bahá’í friends in Ottawa. Inspiration came from some of the usual sources, and an unusual one: Azar Nafisi’s memoir Reading Lolita in Tehran, about an Iranian professor sharing literary enthusiasms with young women under cover of darkness (the Iranian Revolution had made such a meeting a crime). Meanwhile, Phyllis Perrakis was herself a University of Ottawa Professor, and in secret, she similarly volunteered to teach at the Bahá’í Institute for Higher Education (BIHE), helping Bahá’ís in Iran to get an education their country had denied them.  Phyllis helmed a meeting to acquaint Ottawa citizens with the Iranian situation, especially since our local universities were among the first in the world to admit BIHE students to their graduate programs. She spoke in April 2015 about Reading Lolita and about her work with BIHE; she glowed when sharing thoughts about books she cared about. Responding to Elia’s interest, Phyllis proposed a book club that would, as she wrote, “focus on novels that inspire and uplift while challenging the reader, deepening our understanding of our spiritual potential and the power of literature for personal growth.” ‘Reading the Spirit’ launched monthly meetings at the Ottawa Bahá’í Centre in January 2016, but its membership went well beyond the Bahá’í community. Phyllis was the torchbearer for its first two years, while continuing to teach in the BIHE program. I was lucky to attend the first gathering; I had never heard of Marilynne Robinson or her novel Gilead, Phyllis’s first choice, but I was astonished and everyone admired it. Phyllis and many others offered comments and questions that foreshadowed the rich Tuesday afternoon conversations that followed.
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