One Book One Community
Find out what happens when all of Southwestern Indiana reads the same book!
Reading, Writing, and Growing Together in Southwestern Indiana
The 2009 One Book One Community title is Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black by Gregory H. Williams. Dr. Williams will be speaking at Bosse High School on October 1, 2009 at 7:30pm.
More information about this year's program will be available soon.
Check our catalog for Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black.
About the Book
Williams, president of The City College of New York, tells the affecting & absorbing story of his most unusual youth. Born to a white mother & a black father who passed for white, Williams was raised as white in Virginia until he was 10, when his mother left. His father brought his two sons back home to Muncie, Indiana, in 1954 and sank further into drink. The two boys were eventually taken in by Miss Dora, a poor black widow.
Williams's many anecdotes are a mixture of pain, struggle and triumph: learning "hustles" from Dad, receiving guidance from a friend's mother, facing racism from teachers and classmates, beginning a clandestine romance with a white girl he eventually married. And while his scarred, grandiloquent father was never reliable, he did instill in young Greg-though not in Greg's brother-sustaining dreams of professional success. Along the way the author decided, despite his appearance, he would proudly claim the black identity that white Muncie wouldn't let him forget.
For more info about the book, check out HRevvdon@evpl's blog post.
One Book One Community: Reading and Growing Together in Southwestern Indiana is a project of the Evansville Vanderburgh Public Library and is overseen by a committee of interested citizens and community leaders. Based on similar programs throughout the country, it originates from a belief in the sense of community built around the shared experience of people reading and talking about the same book. Bringing people together to discuss ideas in books can play an important role in breaking down barriers between people, cultures, and economic and educational backgrounds.