The Common Book Project connects incoming first-year students with readers in the university and the community as thousands join together in the reading of a “Common Book.”  This provides incoming students with a common literacy experience, a shared text that generates thoughtful discussion and debate.   In concert with the shared reading are numerous extracurricular events and activities related to the content and theme of the shared text.  The project provides faculty, staff, administration, community organizations, and other interested parties with materials and development activities that facilitate discussion and understanding of the text.

In the first year, 2005-06, over 1,000 WSU students read Rochester Author Fan Shen’s Gang of One: Memoirs of a Red Guard, a book focused on the Chinese Cultural Revolution.  In 2006-07, over 1,800 students read Kent Nerburn’s Neither Wolf Nor Dog: On Forgotten Trails with an Indian Elder.

The book selected for 2007-08 is My Year of Meats, a first novel by Ruth Ozeki an award-winning filmmaker. The novel has been translated into eleven languages and published in fourteen countries.  It tells the story of Jane and Akiko, two women on opposite sides of the planet, whose lives are connected by a TV cooking show. Ozeki will visit campus on Oct. 2 and 3, 2007 and again in the spring of 2008.    

For more information about the project, e-mail Dr. J Paul Johnson at pjohnson@winona.edu.

   L-21 Project Information   

The Common Book Project
Target audience: Over 2,800 students in two years