The Roots of the Guava Tree: Sonia Daccarett In-Conversation with Claire Sufrin

The Book Stall (811 Elm Street in Winnetka) welcomes to the store author Sonia Daccarett on Wednesday, October 15 at 6:30 pm for a discussion featuring her new book, The Roots of the Guava Tree: Growing Up Jewish and Arab in Colombia. A debut contemporary memoir about a young woman struggling to understand her identity as the daughter of a Jewish mother and Christian Palestinian father, coming of age in Colombia as increasing violence and the instability of the 1980s engulf her country. Ms. Daccarett will be in-conversation with Dr. Claire E. Sufrin. 

More about the Author: Sonia Daccarett is a writer and communications professional. Born in Colombia to a Christian Palestinian father and a Jewish mother, she moved to the United States and received an undergraduate degree in journalism from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a master's degree in international and public affairs from Columbia University. For more than two decades, she worked on strategic communications initiatives with corporate and non-profit clients and currently writes and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family.

More about our conversation partner: Dr. Claire Sufrin is editor of Sources: A Journal of Jewish Ideas and Senior Editor at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. A scholar of modern Jewish thought, she is a widely respected educator with teaching experience at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Claire’s written work has appeared in a variety of academic and other publications and is co-editor of the New Jewish Canon: Ideas and Debates, 1980-2015, a 2021 National Jewish Book Award finalist. Claire holds a BA in Religious Studies from Yale University and a PhD in Religious Studies from Stanford University. She lives with her husband Michael Simon and their two children in Evanston, Illinois.