Common Read

Our Common Read invites participants to read and discuss the same book in a given period of time. A Common Read can build community and foster personal growth by giving diverse people a shared experience, shared language, and a basis for deep, meaningful conversations.

James by Percival Everett

James by Percival Everett is both an homage to Mark Twain’s iconic but controversial American classic Huckleberry Finn and a reshaping of the story from the enslaved Jim’s perspective. Like its forbearer, it is an adventure tale of a trip down the Big Muddy but is also a treatise on code-switching and Black survival. It is not necessary to have read Huckleberry to enjoy James, but refreshing oneself on the plot is helpful.

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Past Common Reads

Authentic Selves: Celebrating Trans and Nonbinary People and Their Families Peggy Gillespe editor
The Round House by Louise Erdrich
Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World by Danya Ruttenberg
Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
Deacon King Kong by James McBride
Mistakes and Miricles by Nancy Palmer Jones and Karin Lin
Kindred by Octavia Bulter
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Dare
The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron
The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
Breathe by Imani Perry
The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Michele Richarson
The Cooking Gene by Michael W. Twitty
Choke Hold by Paul Butler
This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger
Washington Black by Esi Edugyun
On the Come Up by Angie Thomas
An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz OR
An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States for Young People adapted by Jean Mendoza and Debbie Reese
The Overstory by Richard Powers
Dispatches from Pluto: Lost and Found in the Mississippi Delta by Richard Grant
Justice on Earth: People of Faith Working at the Intersections of Race, Class, and the Environment by Manish Mishra-Marzetti and Jennifer Nordstrom
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
The Book of Joy by Desmund Tutu & Dalai Lama
The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka
Daring Democracy: Igniting Power, Meaning and Connection for the America We Want by Frances Moore Lappe & Adam Eichen
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Religion and Politics by Jonathan Haidt
Beyond Words: What Animals Think & Feel by Carl Safina
Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J. D. Vance
The Third Reconstruction by The Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II
Defying the Nazis: The Sharps’ War
LaRose by Louise Erdrich
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Behind the Kitchen Door by Sarumathi Jayaraman
Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander