Group bonds through reading
Non-veterans join vets in book club
MADISON - They come from different backgrounds and experiences, some who know combat intimately and others only through books.
Ryan Erisman decided to join the Warrior Book Club because few people would guess he’s a war veteran, while Mitchell Ott joined because he’s never seen combat and wanted to read books outside his comfort zone.
Sponsored by the Wisconsin Veterans Museum in Madison, the Warrior Book Club brings together veterans and non-veterans to read and discuss books about war and its aftermath. Members include peacetime and war veterans, family members of veterans, people who work with veterans and folks who have no link to veterans.
For Ott, the books and discussion have been an eye-opener.
“I knew about PTSD, but I didn’t understand the full mental thing they go through — that their brain is changed, that they’re chemically and physically changed,” said Ott, a civil engineer in Madison who began going to the Warrior Book Club in September.
Erisman, an infantry officer who served 10 years in the Marines, including two tours of Iraq, learned of the reading group through a University of Wisconsin-Madison alumni newsletter. His first meeting was at last month’s book group to discuss “Ceremony” by Leslie Marmon Silko.
“Most people have no idea of my background when they meet me. They’re surprised. Sometimes it’s fun to blow up stereotypes,” said Erisman, who owns a farm in Sun Prairie.
Though the Wisconsin Veterans Museum has organized a reading group in the past, it morphed into the Warrior Book Club in September through the efforts of UW graduate student Molly Harris and Erin Hoag, the museum’s curator of education.
Book club selections last fall focused on combat: “The Things They Carried” by Vietnam veteran Tim O’Brien, “Redeployment,” a short story collection by Iraq War veteran Phil Klay and the Greek trage-
dy “Philoctetes.” This spring the group is reading about the challenges veterans face when they return home from war. This month’s book is “All That You’ve Seen Here is God,” a modern translation of Sophocles’ “Ajax” by Bryan Doerries.
Harris was awarded a fellowship through UW’s Center for the Humanities that pairs graduate students with community partners. She knew of programs that connect combat veterans and their families with theatrical performances and thought it would be interesting to create a reading group for veterans. Harris contacted the Wisconsin Veterans Museum, and Hoag told her about efforts to revive the museum’s reading group and call it the Warrior Book Club but with a broader scope — not just for veterans but anyone from the community.
“The real goal is to get veterans and civilians together. We get older veterans, but not the more recent veterans; I think they may not want to read about this yet,” said Hoag, a Coast Guard Reserve veteran.
A PhD candidate in classical and near Eastern studies, Harris noticed in Greek and Roman literature how much war was an integral part of ancient civilizations. She selected a couple of ancient Greek texts among the Warrior Book Club readings.
“I was interested in the way that there are large segments of American society so distant from war whereas with the cultures I was studying it was so much a part of their lives,” said Harris.
Books are provided for free. Attendees are asked to register in advance so organizers know how many to expect. The group has ranged from half a dozen to more than 20 as word spread.
Last month nine readers met in the museum’s second-floor education center to talk about “Ceremony,” whose main character is a wounded World War II veteran who returns home to his Native American reservation suffering from battle fatigue.
They discussed the book’s characters — who they liked, who they didn’t — and which scenes were the most memorable. They talked about the challenge of reading a dense book with no chapter breaks, about how the novel was a story of redemption rather than a story of war.
The main character, Tayo, heals not through outside services but through his small community of friends and fellow veterans. Erisman said that veterans continue to keep tabs on their buddies now through social media after they take off their uniform and blend back into society. Marines from Erisman’s company stay in touch via Facebook, which they use to take care of each other and help those battling addictions or contemplating suicide.
Before the meeting started, Erisman pointed out that not everyone touched by war is damaged.
“What doesn’t get a lot of coverage is how much you can be enriched and enabled by your experience,” said Erisman, who served seven-month deployments in Iraq in 2005’06 and 2007. “Combat is unique but it’s not special. A lot of people go through trauma.”
In March the Warrior Book Club read “Learning to Stay,” a novel by Madison-area author Erin Celello about a soldier returning from Iraq with a traumatic brain injury. Celello attended the meeting and answered questions.
“It was a huge honor. There are some fantastic books being considered this time around. My book was in really good company,” said Celello.
Harris hopes to get another humanities fellowship for the next season of the Warrior Book Club. Hoag and Harris haven’t selected the fall and spring 2018 titles but are thinking of focusing on books about female veterans or satirical war novels.
The next Warrior Book Club meeting is 7 p.m. May 17 at the Wisconsin Veterans Museum, 30 W. Mifflin St., Madison. For more information: wisvetsmuseum.com or contact Erin Hoag, (608) 264-7663, visitor.curator@dva.wisconsin.gov