Community Read

Book Cover for Hadha Baladuna
Community Read Event

Community Read is a program of the Faculty Senate's First Year Experience Committee (co-chairs Kristin Poling and Michael McDonald), similar to the NEA's Big Read. The intent is for students, especially those new to our campus, to engage with topics spanning several disciplinary perspectives. 

The reading for 2023-2024 is Hadha Baladuna: Arab American Narratives of Boundary and Belonging, edited by Ghassan Zeineddine, Nabeel Abraham, and Sally Howell. Hadha Baladuna is a 2023 Michigan Notable Book award winner.

Hadha Baladuna (This Is Our Country) collects creative nonfiction exploring the diversity of Arab American voices and experiences in our region, from a 1920s Lebanese peddler to an Iraqi-Lebanese poet inspired by Tupac Shakur. Topics include family, history, religion, immigration, music, gender, healing, and political activism. These diverse voices and topics will provide many opportunities for class and community activities. 

This book has many connections to our campus, through editors Ghassan Zeineddine (English) and Sally Howell (History), and through UM-Dearborn alums among its contributors, including Teri Bazzi, Mai Jakubowski, Yasmin Mohamed, and Hanan Ali Nasser.

The FYE Committee plans events to facilitate cross-campus conversations, including lectures and readings, writing workshops, and a small grants program for faculty to support related classroom or co-curricular projects. 

Please consider using book selections in class and encourage students to participate in activities. For materials to support your classroom work or other projects, see the Mardigian Library Subject Guide on Hadha Baladuna. Additional teaching ideas and resources were generated at our May workshop.

Hadha Baladuna is freely available as an ebook with a UM login. If you prefer a hard copy of the book to facilitate teaching, please ask Kristin Poling ([email protected]) or Anne Dempsey ([email protected]). 

Do you have an idea for a book that would make a great future Community Read? Help the FYE Committee make next year’s selection by completing this survey! Please reach out to the Faculty Senate First Year Experience Committee with any questions or ideas.

On deck for Academic Year 2024-2025 is Verified: How to think straight, get duped less, and make better decisions about what to believe online, by Mike Caulfield and Sam Wineburg. Look for more news about this selection and related programming.

Our reading last year was All We Can Save, 60 essays and poems related to the climate crisis, edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine K. Wilkinson. The anthology is part of the All We Can Save Project. 

In 2021-2022 we read William D. Lopez's Separated: Family and Community in the Aftermath of an Immigration Raid, which traces economic, social, psychological, health, and educational fallout from a 2013 ICE raid in Washtenaw County, Michigan. Dr. Lopez is assistant professor at the UM School of Public Health. 

The 2020-2021 book was How to Be an Antiracist, by Ibram X. Kendi. Faculty members created videos on book chapters for class use, now on the UM YouTube playlist, and the Mardigian Library listed antiracism resources

In 2019-2020, our first year, we read Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, chronicling the life of the woman whose famed HeLa cells have made possible countless medical breakthroughs.