Four finalists for the 2008-09 Winona State University Common Book were recently selected from a list of thirteen nominations. The finalists are listed below, with hyperlinks to websites that include excerpts and other information about each book. Based on each book’s author’s availability, affordability, and willingness, a selection will be chosen at an open meeting scheduled for 11:00 am Tuesday, April 22, in the second floor Minné Lounge. During the weeks leading up to that meeting, I will be researching each finalist and the ways in which each might work, if selected, with WSU curricula and programming.
Copies of each book will be made available at Krueger Library (ask for the Common Book Reserve) and in the WSU Writing Center (Minné Hall 348). To comment on any of these selections, please use the “comment” feature below (login required).
- Dave Eggers, What Is the What (Vintage, 2007, 560 pp., $16, paperback)
- Robert D. Morris, The Blue Death: Disease, Disaster, and the Water We Drink (HarperCollins, 2007, 320 pp, $25, hardcover)
- Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin, Three Cups of Tea (Penguin, 2007, 368 pp., $15, paperback)
- Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle (Scribner, 2006, 288 pp., $15, paperback)
The eventual selection for the 2008-09 Common Book will be taught in a number of WSU classes, including many sections of English 111, College Reading and Writing, and related programming will include visits, lectures, and workshops offered by the author. As always, the selection and the project itself are contingent upon funding. –J Paul Johnson
1 Comment
April 4, 2008 at 7:45 pm
Those who submitted nominations for the four finalists describe them as follows:
Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Renick’s book Three Cups of Tea tells of Mortenson`s journey to fulfill his promise of building a school for the small village of Korphe in Pakistan. After a mountain climbing adventure, Mortenson gets lost and ends up in Korphe, a place that has never before entertained a foreigner. Upon learning that the village doesn`t have funding for a school or teachers and then seeing children practicing math and spelling in the dirt with sticks, Mortenson decides to return to the US and raise money for a school. Because he feels America is conducting a war on terror that is “flailing” and “ineffective,” Mortenson replaces bombs with books and works to “fight terrorism and build nations one school at a time.” The text offers engaging perspectives on the life and culture of those living in the Middle East and equally challenging opinions of Americans from a Middle Eastern viewpoint. Set in the late 1990s, the book includes Mortenson’s experiencing 9/11 among Muslims, navigating through war zones, and being abducted and imprisoned by the Taliban (and then later sharing tea with them). Such events rouse chatter among even the most quiet of students. —Lisa Ketelsen
Dave Eggers’s book What Is the What is the “novelized autobiography” of Valentino Achak Deng, a Sudanese refugee who struggled to survive the brutal civil war between the government of Sudan and with the people of southern Sudan. When he—along with thousands of other Sudanese—resettles in the United States he faces many new challenges. In the Preface to the book, Valentino states, “My desire to have this book written was born out of my faith and beliefs in humanity; I wanted to reach out to others to help them understand Sudan’s place in our global community.” Over the past two years my students have come to understand the conflict in Sudan and the need to take action against the ongoing acts of genocide. All the author’s proceeds go to the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation to improve the lives of the Sudanese in America and elsewhere. The VAD Foundation’s website provides a reader’s guide with a historical context and timeline, vocabulary and character lists, quality news articles relating to Sudanese matters, and links to organizations to aid Sudan. —Crystal Gibbins
Robert Morris’s The Blue Death chronicles the story of drinking water in terms of compelling accounts of early cholera epidemics, how scientists solved the mystery of the microbes in water, and the economic and political forces at play both then and now in controlling our drinking water. The book provides science in the form of a fast-moving narrative by giving a fascinating history of water-borne diseases and mankind’s quest for drinking water. Although accessible to many of our students, the book is also challenging in that it brings forth issues that many students have not heard of and will find unsettling. At the same time, I believe the book is very teachable. It has a website featuring maps, background reference material, and corrections; it gives solid data to back up its claims; and it provides the reader with ways that our societies can change things for the better. The book can be taught from multiple disciplinary perspectives in addition to English 111, including biology, geoscience, history, political science, economics, statistics and global studies to name a few. —Joan Francioni
Jeannette Walls’ memoir The Glass Castle is as engaging a text as I`ve run across in recent memory. Chronicling her life growing up in poor, largely dysfunctional family, The Glass Castle offers thematic inroads to issues of class, family structure, morals, gender, mental illness, and social institutions and their responsibility, to name a few. While the prose is unlikely to be challenging in and of itself, the book`s depiction of people who in many ways seem to “choose” poverty will undoubtedly present intriguing and productive difficulties to students and faculty alike. I would characterize the book as highly teachable, in part because the narrative itself is so compelling and will captivate students, I think. The interdisciplinary possibilities are many, with clear ties most evident with sociology, child/family studies, women`s studies, and social work. —Ethan Krase