{"id":6,"date":"2020-09-30T19:10:18","date_gmt":"2020-09-30T19:10:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.umflint.edu\/commonread\/?page_id=6"},"modified":"2025-08-06T11:15:22","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T15:15:22","slug":"about","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.umflint.edu\/commonread\/about\/","title":{"rendered":"About"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-umflint-templates umflint-template-default\"><div class=\"wp-block-umflint-jumbotron jumbotron jumbotron-fluid jumbotron-page mb-3\" style=\"background-color: rgb(4, 40, 78);\">\n    <div class=\"container\">\n\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading has-secondary-color has-text-color\">About Common Read<\/h1>\n\n<\/div>\n    <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"jumbotron-image\" src=\"https:\/\/www-s3.umflint.edu\/wp\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Blue.Walking.Bridge.jpg\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www-s3.umflint.edu\/wp\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Blue.Walking.Bridge.jpg 2560w, https:\/\/www-s3.umflint.edu\/wp\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Blue.Walking.Bridge-300x234.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www-s3.umflint.edu\/wp\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Blue.Walking.Bridge-1024x800.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www-s3.umflint.edu\/wp\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Blue.Walking.Bridge-768x600.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www-s3.umflint.edu\/wp\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Blue.Walking.Bridge-1536x1200.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www-s3.umflint.edu\/wp\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Blue.Walking.Bridge-2048x1600.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\" alt=\"\" \/>\n    <\/div>\n\n<div class=\"wp-bootstrap-blocks-container container mb-2\">\n\t\n<div class=\"wp-bootstrap-blocks-row row\">\n\t\n\n<div class=\"col-12 col-md-3\">\n\t\t\t\n<button class=\"btn btn-section w-100 px-0 wp-menu-block-toggle mobile-nav-toggle d-none\" data-target=\"wp-menu-block-side-menu\">\n          <span class=\"h-100 mr-3 mt-1 d-block mobile-nav-icon\" aria-hidden=\"true\">\n\t\t\t<span class=\"mb-1 transition bg-dark d-block mobile-nav-icon-line\"><\/span>\n\t\t\t<span class=\"mb-1 transition bg-dark d-block mobile-nav-icon-line\"><\/span>\n\t\t\t<span class=\"mb-1 transition bg-dark d-block mobile-nav-icon-line\"><\/span>\n\t\t  <\/span>\n          Common Read<\/button><nav id=\"wp-menu-block-side-menu\" class=\"wp-menu-block sidebar-nav wp-block-umflint-menu-block\"><div class=\"nav-sidebar-title-container\">\n                <div class=\"nav-sidebar-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.umflint.edu\/commonread\">Common Read<\/a><\/div>\n                <a class=\"nav-sidebar-title-close\" href=\"#\" data-target=\"side-menu\" aria-label=\"Close\" aria-expanded=\"false\">\n                    <svg xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"100%\" height=\"50\" fill=\"currentColor\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\">\n                        <title>close<\/title><path d=\"M19,6.41L17.59,5L12,10.59L6.41,5L5,6.41L10.59,12L5,17.59L6.41,19L12,13.41L17.59,19L19,17.59L13.41,12L19,6.41Z\" \/>\n                    <\/svg>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n            <\/div><ul id=\"menu-side-menu\" class=\"menu nav nav-sidebar flex-column\"><li itemscope=\"itemscope\" itemtype=\"https:\/\/www.schema.org\/SiteNavigationElement\" id=\"menu-item-7\" class=\"menu-item menu-item-type-post_type menu-item-object-page menu-item-7 nav-item\"><a title=\"About\" href=\"https:\/\/www.umflint.edu\/commonread\/about\/\" class=\"nav-link\">About<\/a><\/li>\n<li itemscope=\"itemscope\" itemtype=\"https:\/\/www.schema.org\/SiteNavigationElement\" id=\"menu-item-221\" class=\"menu-item menu-item-type-post_type menu-item-object-page menu-item-221 nav-item\"><a title=\"Events\" href=\"https:\/\/www.umflint.edu\/commonread\/events\/\" class=\"nav-link\">Events<\/a><\/li>\n<li itemscope=\"itemscope\" itemtype=\"https:\/\/www.schema.org\/SiteNavigationElement\" id=\"menu-item-250\" class=\"menu-item menu-item-type-post_type menu-item-object-page menu-item-250 nav-item\"><a title=\"Author\" href=\"https:\/\/www.umflint.edu\/commonread\/author\/\" class=\"nav-link\">Author<\/a><\/li>\n<li itemscope=\"itemscope\" itemtype=\"https:\/\/www.schema.org\/SiteNavigationElement\" id=\"menu-item-278\" class=\"menu-item menu-item-type-post_type menu-item-object-page menu-item-278 nav-item\"><a title=\"Previous Common Reads\" href=\"https:\/\/www.umflint.edu\/commonread\/previous\/\" class=\"nav-link\">Previous Common Reads<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul><\/nav>\n\t<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"col-12 col-md-9\">\n\t\t\t\n<nav aria-label=\"breadcrumb\"><ol class=\"breadcrumb mb-3\"><li class=\"breadcrumb-item\"><a href=\"\/\">Home<\/a><\/li><li class=\"breadcrumb-item\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.umflint.edu\/commonread\">Common Read<\/a><\/li><li class=\"breadcrumb-item active\" aria-current=\"page\">About<\/li><\/ol><\/nav>\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-primary-color has-text-color\">The Common Read Program<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>The Common Read program brings University of Michigan-Flint students, faculty, staff, and community members together through the shared experience of reading and discussing a book each academic year. The book and the events surrounding it emphasize the importance of reading to higher education, make possible conversations and relationships based on the shared reading experience, and integrate the campus into national and global culture and discussions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Common Read Program is faculty-led, in collaboration with academic and student affairs. The committee is in charge of selecting a book that inspires intellectual curiosity and contributes to the university as a community of ideas, inquiry, and discussion. Faculty are encouraged to assign the book in their courses and to guide discussion of the text. The committee also develops programming around the book\u2019s themes, often inviting the author to campus for major presentations and other discussions. This programming invites engagement with community members as speakers who share their perspectives and as event participants, enriching the overall program by broadening discussions and offering diverse viewpoints that connect the book&#8217;s themes to local experiences and global contexts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Faculty, staff, students, and community members read and discuss the chosen book and attend program events. This inclusive approach extends the intellectual and cultural benefits of the program, fostering a shared experience that enriches the university and can resonate with the wider Flint community. Through accessible events and discussions, the Common Read program aims to promote a culture of reading and shared learning for all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading has-primary-color has-text-color has-medium-font-size\"><strong>Common Read Committee<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-bootstrap-blocks-row row\">\n\t\n\n<div class=\"col-12 col-md-6\">\n\t\t\t\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Rebecca Tonietto, Co-Chair<\/strong><br>Associate Professor of Biology<br>College of Innovation &amp; Technology<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Sasha Drummond-Lewis<\/strong>, <strong>Co-Chair<\/strong><br>Associate Professor of Sociology<br>College of Arts, Sciences &amp; Education<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Stephanie Vidaillet Gelderloos<br><\/strong>Lecturer in Writing<br>College of Arts, Sciences &amp; Education<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Karen Widger Caldwell<\/strong><br>Assistant Professor of Education<br>College of Arts, Sciences &amp; Education<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\t<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"col-12 col-md-6\">\n\t\t\t\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>David J. Luke<\/strong><br>Division of Student Affairs<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Paul Streby<\/strong><br>Senior Associate Librarian<br>Francis Willson Thompson Library<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>LaQwana Dockery<\/strong><br>Student Affairs Assistant Director<br>Division of Student Affairs<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\t<\/div>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\t<\/div>\n\n<\/div>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-cover is-light h-auto mt-5\" style=\"min-height:50px;aspect-ratio:unset;\"><span aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-cover__background has-background-dim-100 has-background-dim\" style=\"background-color:#dedfe1\"><\/span><div class=\"wp-block-cover__inner-container has-global-padding is-layout-constrained wp-block-cover-is-layout-constrained\"><div class=\"wp-bootstrap-blocks-container container mb-2 mt-4\">\n\t\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading mt-3 mb-4 has-primary-color has-text-color\">Common Read Archives<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Common Read 2024<\/strong><br>Darnell Moore is an award-winning writer and a leading Black Lives Matter activist who advocates for justice and liberation. In <em>No Ashes in the Fire<\/em>, he shares the journey taken by that scared, bullied teenager who not only survived but found his calling. Moore&#8217;s transcendence over the myriad forces of repression that faced him is a testament to the grace and care of the people who loved him, and to his hometown, Camden, NJ\u2014scarred and ignored but brimming with life. Moore reminds us that liberation is possible if we commit ourselves to fighting for it, and if we dream and create futures where those who survive on society&#8217;s edges can thrive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>No Ashes in the Fire<\/em> is a story of beauty and hope\u2014and an honest reckoning with family, with place, and with what it means to be free.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Common Read 2023<br><\/strong>Suleika Jaouad\u2019s \u201cBetween Two Kingdoms\u201d draws its title from the author\u2019s devastating experience of acute myeloid leukemia followed by her reentry into a world of health and freedom. The book is a chronicle of her illness and medical treatment, her determined and creative survival, and the remaking of her life through new insights and relationships. The book is a memoir of illness, a narrative of the making and remaking of intimacies and relationships, an exploration of how heartbreak and illness produce writing and art, and the tale of a road trip across the U.S.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Common Read 2022<\/strong><br>Our selected text was Malaka Gharib\u2019s \u201cI Was Their American Dream: A Graphic Memoir.\u201d The book is the autobiographical story of Gharib\u2019s struggles through childhood, youth, and early adulthood to come to terms with her bi-ethnic identity, as the child of immigrants, a Catholic Filipina mother and Muslim Egyptian father, and life in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Common Read 2021<br><\/strong>Our selected text was J. Drew Lanham\u2019s \u201cThe Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man\u2019s Love Affair with Nature.\u201d Lanham\u2019s book pays lyrical tribute to the natural world\u2013 its beauty, resilience, and diversity. Using the history of his African American family rooted in the soil and woods of South Carolina, Lanham reflects on the development of selfhood and his intimate connection to and love of place.<br><br><strong>Common Read 2020&nbsp;<\/strong><br>Valeria Luiselli\u2019s essay, \u201cTell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions,\u201d was the focus of the 2020-2021 Common Read. Luiselli, a prominent writer and MacArthur Fellow, based her essay on her experience as an interpreter for unaccompanied refugee children in New York City immigration courts. Prompted by the intake questions, Luiselli reflects on the border, family and childhood, community, national identity and belonging, and language itself.<br><br><strong>Common Read 2019&nbsp;<\/strong><br>The 2019-2020 University of Michigan-Flint Common Read book was Jesmyn Ward\u2019s \u201cSing, Unburied, Sing,\u201d a moving novel focused on a quest for family and love in the dangerously racist and deeply impoverished fictional town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi. Ward is a MacArthur Fellow and National Book Award winner.&nbsp;<br><br><strong>Common Read 2018&nbsp;<\/strong><br>This year\u2019s text was Elizabeth Kolbert\u2019s \u201cThe Sixth Extinction.\u201d Kolbert\u2019s Pulitzer Prize-winning book reported on major human-induced challenges facing natural life across the planet.<br><br><strong>Common Read 2017<\/strong><br>The 2017-2018 Common Read was&nbsp;NoViolet Bulawayo\u2019s novel,&nbsp;\u201cWe Need New Names\u201d&#8211; a novel of displacement and relocation that speaks to people\u2019s movements across cultural and political borders in the contemporary world. It begins in a Zimbabwean shantytown, narrated in the remarkable voice of a young girl, Darling, and ends in Detroit and Kalamazoo, Michigan.&nbsp;Edwidge Danticat, novelist, essayist, and our inaugural Common Read author, describes it as \u201can exquisite and powerful first novel, filled with an equal measure of beauty and horror and laughter and pain.\u201d<br><br><strong>Common Read 2016<\/strong><br>The University of Michigan-Flint Common Read Committee selected Ta-Nehisi Coates&#8217;&nbsp;\u201cBetween the World and Me.\u201d<br><br><strong>Common Read 2015<br><\/strong>The University of Michigan-Flint Common Read Committee selected Sister Helen Prejean&#8217;s memoir,&nbsp;\u201cDead Man Walking\u201d&nbsp;(Random House, 1994), as the 2015-16&nbsp;Common Read. Published in 1994, the book is widely heralded as a profound reflection&nbsp;on capital punishment. Available in paperback and as an audiobook, it has also been the basis for a film and an opera. The memoir speaks to issues of capital punishment, the criminal justice system, the humanity of perpetrators, and the claims and needs of direct and indirect victims of brutal crimes.<br><br><strong>Common Read 2014<br><\/strong>The University of Michigan-Flint Common Read Committee selected Jonathan Kozol&#8217;s&nbsp;\u201cFire in the Ashes: Twenty-Five Years Among the Poorest Children in America\u201d&nbsp;(Random House, 2012) as the 2014-15 Common Read.&nbsp;\u201cFire in the Ashes\u201d revisits the children and families about whom Kozol has written in early books. Some of the stories are stories of defeat and inability to overcome almost impossible odds. Others are accounts of resilience, determination, and creativity, of children emerging whole and full of life.<br><br><strong>Common Read 2013<\/strong><br>The Common Read Selection Committee announced&nbsp;Amy Waldman\u2019s&nbsp;\u201cThe Submission,\u201d published in 2012, as its 2013-2014 selection.&nbsp;The Submission&nbsp;is a work of fiction. Set in New York City, the novel is about perspectives and tensions in the wake of 9\/11.&nbsp;It raises broad questions about identity, respect, and belonging; uses of public space and the nature of art; and the behaviors of politicians and the media. It particularly explores Muslim-American identities and experiences after 2001.&nbsp;<br><br><strong>Common Read 2012<br><\/strong>The UM-Flint Common Read Committee chose Rebecca Skloot\u2019s&nbsp;\u201cThe Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks\u201d&nbsp;as the Common Read text for 2012-2013. Skloot\u2019s widely reviewed and praised work of non-fiction focuses on the history of both U.S. medical research and one multi-generational African-American family. Skloot visited UM-Flint as part of the Common Read in the fall.&nbsp;<br><br><strong>Common Read 2011<\/strong><br>The University of Michigan-Flint inaugurated the Common Read program in Fall 2011 with Edwidge Danticat\u2019s&nbsp;\u201cBrother, I\u2019m Dying,\u201d her 2007 memoir that bridges Haiti and the United States, a story that demonstrates the power of words to recreate worlds of both suffering and love. Ms. Danticat visited the UM-Flint campus on March 13, 2012. During her time at UM-Flint, she engaged in a writing seminar with faculty and students, and she delivered a public presentation on her book.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"btn btn-secondary understrap-read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.umflint.edu\/commonread\/about\/\">Read More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-6","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.umflint.edu\/commonread\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.umflint.edu\/commonread\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.umflint.edu\/commonread\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.umflint.edu\/commonread\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.umflint.edu\/commonread\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6"}],"version-history":[{"count":35,"href":"https:\/\/www.umflint.edu\/commonread\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":216,"href":"https:\/\/www.umflint.edu\/commonread\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6\/revisions\/216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.umflint.edu\/commonread\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}