Many students heading off to college for the first time this fall already have a college-level assignment. In preparation for their first year, they’re expected to have read a book over the summer and come prepared to discuss it in class.
It was not just any book, but a “common reading.” It was a specific book selected by their institution to not only create a shared experience, but also planned to be the subject of discussions by college freshmen and their teachers. As you look through the list, compiled by the Chronicle of Higher Education, you’ll notice that many of them are intended to help raise awareness of social issues.
The term “occurrences” refers to the number of colleges using the book in the “one book, one campus” program--not to the fact that I lost the six-grade spelling bee by misspelling “occurrence.” And that’s another fact, jogging my 76-year-old memory. Ha!
Here’s the list of the top ten books, in order of selection numbers. I’ll also add a comment or two about each of the books.
- Just Mercy: A story of justice and redemption, by Bryan Stevenson (73 occurrences). Bryan Stevenson grew up poor in Delaware, the great grandson of slaves. His grandfather was murdered in a Philadelphia housing project when Stevenson was a teenager. After graduating from college, he went on to Harvard Law, and then began representing poor clients in the South.
- Educated: A memoir, by Tara Westover (57 occurrences). If you thought Hillbilly Elegie was great, it’s tame in contrast to Westover’s story of going to college with no education. Her ignorance of the Holocaust, and discoveries of Napoleon and Martin Luther King, Jr. as well as the fact of learning that Europe is not a country is all excruciating. Yet soon enough, she’s off to a fellowship at Cambridge University, where a renowned professor exclaims upon meeting her: “How marvelous. It’s as if I’ve stepped into Shaw’s ‘Pygmalion.’”
- Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nahisi Coates (35 occurrences). The well-known writer and commentator delivers his book in the form of a letter to his son. It overflows with insights about the embodied state of blackness and the logic of white supremacy. If you’re an avid reader you’ll know that a lot of his insights about being Black in a White world are being strongly challenged, making it still more important for the reader.
- The Other Wes Moore: One name, two fates, by Wes Moore (32 occurrences). This is the true story of two kids with the same name from the city: One went on to be a Rhodes Scholar, a decorated combat veteran, White House Fellow, and business leader. The other is serving a life sentence in prison. That’ll grab the new college student’s brain.
- The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot (31 occurrences). The book is much more than a portrait of one family. It is also a critique of science. . . a science that insists on ignoring the messy, human, distinguished origin of its materials. It’s also a science that has progressed much faster than our ability to figure out what is right and wrong about cells and culture. And there, the ethics difficulties surface—endlessly.
- Make Your Home Among Strangers, by Jeannine Capo Crucet (29 occurrences). This novel is about a Cuban-American family entangled in a fictionalized account of the González affair, the 6-year-old boy at the center of the international custody battle between Cuba and America. The writer shows us how journeys between cultures are almost impossible to navigate. And especially how “family relationships are bound to dump us in choppy waters.” Often, perhaps, but not always.
- Born a Crime: Stories from a South African childhood, by Trevor Noah (28 occurrences). The well-known TV host is a genius at commenting on the absurdities of American life. . . A superb example of the fact that it takes an outsider to see us as we really are. It’s significantly disarming to recognize that for Noah, his name is not even a biblical name. And he spells out the truth of that name in his home culture.
- Callings: The purpose and passion of work, by David Isay (28 occurrences). Laid out in sections like Dreamers, Healers, Generations, etc. The focus is on finding “meanings” and “callings” in work, a strategy made valid by Protestant theologians. (Calling is not a Catholic notion outside of the priesthood.) Writing this as a career specialist, I find it also especially helpful that the author recognizes that some people “fell into” jobs through life circumstances, while others found what they wanted to do after learning the hard way what they did not want to do. If you read, recognize that I find the notion of calling overdone. There are other ways of finding satisfaction than “calling.” Still, very helpful.
- There There, by Tommy Orange (25 occurrences). Central to this Native American’s book is the idea of “unsettlement and ambiguity, of being caught between two worlds, of living a life that is disfigured by loss and the memory of loss, but also by confusion, distraction and unease, impels some of the characters, and allows the sound of the brain on fire to become dense with dissonance.” This is a great book for grandchildren like mine, children who were born into the establishment and have no sense of being caught between two worlds. And that grandchildren like mine are still the majority of kids entering their first year of college this Fall.
- Spare Parts: Four undocumented teenagers, one ugly robot, and the battle for the American dream, by Joshua Davis (21 occurrences). This is that story, also made into a great movie, of four high schoolers from the wrong side of Phoenix who built a robot, entered it in a national competition that included such prestigious schools as MIT, and won. I’d love to know which colleges chose this selection--and why?
It’s clear from this list that schools are focused on today’s social and cultural context. When my eldest grandson marched off to the University of Rochester, now eight years ago, his one book was a revised, more accurate reading of American history—and a debunking of our widespread myths. I remember thinking, recognizing his context and the profound misunderstanding and misinterpretations of American history, that it was a flawless text for which to begin his college world. I was glad, after reading it, he agreed!
So, which one of these will you start with? Of those I’ve not already finished, it’ll be Tara Westover’s memoir for me.