Campus Reading Celebration

The idea behind the Campus Reading Celebration is to invite all members of the campus community (students, faculty, staff and administrators) to read the same book and to talk with each other in both formal and informal venues about the book throughout the academic year. By having the entire campus community read the same book we will all have a common intellectual experience that can generate shared discussions of a book we've all read.

2008/2009 Book Announced!

The book for the fifth annual Campus Reading Celebration this fall will be Southland , by Nina Revoyr.  Spanning three generations, Revoyr uses the murder of four boys during the 1965 Watts riot as the pivot point for a moving, sometimes harrowing exploration of race relations among black, Japanese, and white residents of L.A. When her grandfather dies in 1994, young Japanese American lawyer Jackie Ishida seeks to discover why her grandfather, Frank, had once planned to leave his Crenshaw grocery store to one of the murder victims, a black teen from the neighborhood. After enlisting the help of one of the young man's relatives, rock-solid community group worker James Lanier, Jackie embarks on a journey that will enable her to understand why she has fled so far from her Japanese roots she won't even consider dating a fellow Asian. Switching effortlessly from the mid-1990s to the 1960s, the 1940s, and back again, Revoyr peoples the landscape with compelling characters who are equally believable whether they're black, Japanese, male, female, gay, or straight. With prose that is beautiful, precise, but never pretentious, she brings to vivid life a painful, seldom-explored part of L.A.'s past that should not be forgotten (description from amazon.com). 

Copies for Southland will be available at The Cove Bookstore in April. Students, Faculty, Staff, and community members are invited to buy the book and read it over the summer. During fall semester, the book will be incorporated into courses across disciplines, including the freshman composition courses. Faculty are encouraged to incorporate the book into their syllabi, and to encourage or require students to attend Revoyr’s presentations in November. The centerpiece of the Campus Reading Celebration will be a visit by author Nina Revoyr on Nov. 12th.

For more information on Nina Revoyr and Southland, please visit Revoyr’s website at: http://www.ninarevoyr.com/books/southland/

For more information about the Campus Reading Celebration, please contact the Campus Reading Celebration Task Force:

Renny Christopher      renny.christopher@csuci.edu      Jaimie Hoffman    jaimie.hoffman@csuci.edu

Debi Hoffmann            debra.hoffmann@csuci.edu         Amber Weir          amber.weir@csuci.edu