Focus on Reading

Reading is a solitary act, but can lead to great connections to those around you. The Ann Arbor Book Festival provides a springboard to community discussions about reading and books through activities such as:

COMMUNITY READS

Community Reads have swept across Michigan and the nation. Communities have caught onto the idea that they can encourage civic dialogue through the shared experience of reading and discussing a common book over a designated period of time.

The Community Reads for Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti begins in January and goes through March offering a variety of activities. In 2008, The Eighth Promise: An American Son's Tribute to his Toisanese Mother by William Poy Lee was selected. Lee gives us a rare view of the Chinese-American experience from a mother-son perspective. His moving and complex stories unfold simultaneously in his mother’s war torn childhood of China of the 1930s and '40s and then amidst the housing projects of San Francisco Chinatown and the counterculture of North Beach of the 1960s and '70s as told in two voices—the author’s own and that of his mother. The mother's perspective provides a sense of tradition and culture as the author becomes completely American and then realizes that his simple Toisan farmer mother has been his greatest wisdom teacher. It is a stunning tale of violent community turmoil including a murder implicating a close family member, injustice, fortitude, survival, and ultimately redemption.