Previous Literature Selections
2009 - Barefoot Heart: Stories of a Migrant Child
Barefoot Heart is a vividly told autobiographical account of the life of a child growing up in a family of
migrant farm workers. It brings to life the day-to-day existence of people facing the obstacles of working
in the fields and raising a family in an environment that is frequently hostile to those who have little
education and speak another language.
Assimilation brings its own problems, as the original culture is
attenuated and the quality of family relationships is compromised, consequences that are not inevitable,
but are rather a series of choices made along the way. Barefoot Heart is also the story of how the author
overcame the disadvantages of this background and discovered her true talents and, in the process, found herself.
More information:
Reviews
Additional Resources
Sponsors
Download the Powerpoint Slide
2008 - A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
Ishmael Beah
Ishmael Beah was born in Sierra Leone on November 23, 1980. When he was eleven, Ishmael's life, along with the lives of millions of other Sierra Leoneans, was derailed by the outbreak of a brutal civil war. After his parents and two brothers were killed, Ishmael was recruited to fight as a child soldier. He was thirteen. He fought for over two years before he was removed from the army by UNICEF and placed in a rehabilitation home in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone. After completing rehabilitation in late 1996, Ishmael won a competition to attend a conference at the United Nations to talk about the devastating effects of war on children in his country. It was there that he met his new mother, Laura Simms, a professional storyteller who lives in New York. Ishmael returned to Sierra Leone and continued speaking about his experiences to help bring international attention to the issue of child soldiering and war affected children.
More information:
Videos
Reviews
The Book's Website
Additional Resources
Info about Sierra Leone
Herald Journal Article
2007 - Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science
Atul Gawande
"In Complications, Dr. Gawande offers a raw view from the scalpel's edge, where science is ambiguous, information is limited, the stakes are high, yet decisions must be made. In dramatic and revealing stories of patients and doctors, he explores how deadly mistakes occur and why good surgeons go bad. He shows what happens when medicine comes up against the inexplicable. At once tough-minded and humane, Complications is nuanced and lucid, unafraid to confront the conflicts and uncertainties that lie at the heart of modern medicine, yet always alive to the possibilities of wisdom in humanity's heroic attempts at healing." Speakers Bureau
More information:
Literature Overview
FAQ's about this Common Literature Experience
Background Resources
Interview with Dr. Gawande
2006 - Warriors Don't Cry
Melba Pattillo Beals
"There is no putting Warriors Don't Cry down....In a plainly written story that reflects both the wisdom of the woman telling it almost 40 years after the fact and the crumbling innocence of the young woman who experienced it, Melba Beals gives us a history lesson, a civics lesson and as true a story of coming of age in America at a certain time and place as one could hope to find." -- Judith Paterson, Washington Post Book World
2005 - When the Emporer Was Divine
Julie Otsuka
Julie Otsuka's commanding debut novel paints a portrait of the Japanese internment camps unlike any we have ever seen. With crystalline intensity and precision, Otsuka uses a single family to evoke the deracination-both physical and emotional-of a generation of Japanese-Americans. In five chapters, each flawlessly executed from a different point of view-the mother receiving the order to evacuate; the daughter on the long train ride to the camp; the son in the desert encampment; the family's return to their home; and the bitter release of the father after more than four years in captivity-she has created a small tour de force, a novel of unrelenting economy and suppressed emotion. Spare, intimate, arrestingly understated, When the Emperor Was Divine is a haunting evocation of a family in wartime and an unmistakably resonant lesson for our times.
More information:
FAQ's about this Common Literature Experience
Supplemental Reading
Student thoughts on a visit to Topaz (power point download)
Photos of Julie Otsuka
2004 - A Hope in the Unseen
Ron Suskind
The true story of an inner-city black youth, Cedric Jennings, who defies the odds and is accepted to an ivy league university. Discover themes of transition, exploration, growth, defeat, and ultimate triumph with which any college student can identify.
More information on author and text
May Out West
May Swenson
This collection of May Swenson's poems takes the west as its focus and field of vision. As the west was a place of inspiration to her, and of birth, the book gathers May's work about the region into a memorable and inspiring collection.
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