Join the 2019 Medgar Evers College Big Read!

In the tradition of the Great American Read, the Medgar Evers College Black History Month Committee in collaboration with the Department of English invites all students, faculty, and staff to join in the Medgar Evers Big Read. This collaborative, interdisciplinary endeavor features the book The Fire This Time, edited by Jesmyn Ward. This important collection of essays, memoirs, and poetry brings together major thinkers, including Carol Anderson, Jericho Brown, Edwidge Danticat, Kevin Young, Claudia Rankine and Honoree Jeffers. Likewise, the 2019 Medgar Evers Big Read will bring together students and faculty to spark thoughtful conversation and social engagement, as well as offer a platform for research and writing.

Medgar Evers College faculty, students, and staff will participate in a series of brown bag “book club” gatherings. A culminating event will take place during Black History Month in February 2019 with an author talk and reception. Academic departments, across disciplines, are encouraged to join the discussions during Black History Month and to consider how they can engage students in the Medgar Evers Big Read.

As Jesmyn Ward writes in the introduction of The Fire This Time, “I hope this book makes each one of you dear readers, feel as if we are sitting together, you and me and Baldwin and Trethewey and Wilkerson and Jeffers and Walters and Anderson and Smith and all the serious, clear-sighted writers here—and that we are composing our story together.”

See the New York Times book review, here: www.nytimes.com/2016/08/14/books/review/fire-this-time-edited-by-jesmyn-ward.html.