. . . that the NEA Big Read has come to Montgomery County? Big Read is a program designed to broaden our understanding of our world, our communities, and ourselves through the joy of sharing a good book.The book selected for the 2018 Big Read in Montgomery County is MacArthur Foundation Fellow Dinaw Mengestu's The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears. Various programs will be held throughout May and June around the County to celebrate the diverse immigrant experiences of our residents through discussions about The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, storytelling, music, panel presentations, a documentary film viewing, and more.
How much do you know about the Big Read? The Big Read was created by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), in partnership with Arts Midwest, to revitalize the role of literature in American culture and to bring the transformative power of literature into people’s lives. MCPL has received a NEA Big Read grant in partnership with the Friends of the Library, Montgomery County, Montgomery Community Media, the Gaithersburg Book Festival, and Montgomery History.
Set in the Washington DC metro area, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears narrates the alienation, hopes, and desires of an Ethiopian refugee searching for his place and role in a foreign environment. The book, Mengestu’s debut novel, was named a New York Times Notable Book and received numerous awards including the Guardian First Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction.
Beautifully written, this powerful story gives a universal voice to those whose lives have been uprooted and who migrated to the United States to find a new life. The novel also describes the sorrows, challenges, and complexities of such a journey. This book chronicles one of the thousands of immigrant stories and resonates with the residents of our community. A majority/minority county, 32% of Montgomery County residents are foreign born and 38% of its inhabitants speak a language other than English.
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| #WeAreMontgomery |
The NEA Big Read in Montgomery County provides the opportunity to celebrate the different immigrant experiences of our residents. Various events and activities are scheduled through June 10, including book discussions, panel presentations about immigration, storytelling programs, viewings and discussions of documentary films, an Ethiopian coffee ceremony, and music performances. In addition, MCPL is creating displays at branches, celebrating the immigrant experience during storytimes, and promoting the social media campaign #WeAreMontgomery. This campaign encourages residents to post photos, accompanied by the hashtag #WeAreMontgomery, with a note about where they are from to showcase the diversity of our community. Many residents have participated, proudly showing where they are from: Colombia, Jamaica, El Salvador, Nigeria, Ghana, Haiti, Ethiopia, Russia. The list is endless. Montgomery County is a quilt created from many different fabrics.
Residents are invited to join the celebration and attend one of the many activities we have planned. Dinaw Mengestu will close the Big Read program with a Contemporary Conversations discussion, where he will talk about his award-winning novel and writing about the immigrant experience. The event will take place on June 9, 7:30 PM at our Silver Spring branch. Mengestu, a graduate of Georgetown and Columbia Universities, came to the United States at the age of two, a move that reunited his family after his father was forced to flee. A prolific writer, he has published in Harper’s Magazine, Granta, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, and The Wall Street Journal. He has published two other books besides The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears. They are How to Read the Air and All Our Names.
Labels: Did You Know, May 2018
