Class, Ethnic Conflict Subject of Summer Reading Selection
Posted on Feb. 10, 2009Freshmen entering UNC next fall will be asked to read A Home on the Field before they arrive. This year’s selection in the Summer Reading Program was written by a UNC faculty member and explores class and ethnic conflict through the story of a Latino high school soccer team in Siler City.
The author, Paul Cuadros, is an award-winning investigative reporter specializing in issues of race and poverty. He is an assistant professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, joining Carolina’s faculty in July 2007.
UNC asks all first-year and incoming transfer students to read a book in the summer and participate in small group discussions led by faculty and staff once they arrive on campus. The voluntary noncredit assignment, an academic icebreaker but not a requirement, is intended to stimulate critical thinking outside the classroom environment and encourages new students to engage in the academic community.
Carolina’s program, now in its 11th year, focuses on discussion and dialogue, creating an intellectual climate in which students can come to their own conclusions and turn information into insight.
A Home on the Field was published in 2006. It explores the social and immigration hurdles the soccer team encounters while it climbs to a state championship under Cuadros’ coaching. The book offers insight into the complex issue of Latino immigrants coming to North Carolina to seek better lives and steady work but encountering significant resistance.
A nine-member book selection committee of students, faculty and staff began meeting last fall to consider books for this year’s program.
Committee Chairman John McGowan said the book documents the evolving relationships between immigrants with long-time residents of Siler City – both black and white – as well as with those left behind in Mexico and Central America. McGowan is the Ruel W. Tyson Jr. Distinguished Professor of humanities and director of the Institute for the Arts and Humanities.
“He raises tough questions about what services and opportunities the state of North Carolina should make available to these immigrants,” McGowan said, expressing confidence that the book will spark conversations among the incoming class. “We are also thrilled that our students will be reading a book written by a UNC faculty member and one that is about North Carolina today.”
The committee chose A Home on the Field from 239 book recommendations from students, alumni, faculty and community members. Four other books were considered as finalists: Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely; Lipstick Jihad: A Memoir of Growing up Iranian in America and American in Iran by Azadeh Moaveni; Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortensen and David Oliver Relin; and The Free Men by John Ehle. A Home on the Field was one of last year’s five finalists, when Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights by Kenji Yoshino was chosen.
The other books included in the program have been There Are No Children Here by Alex Kotlowitz, Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman, Approaching the Qur’an by Michael Sells, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich, Absolutely American: Four Years at West Point by David Lipsky, Blood Done Sign My Name by Timothy B. Tyson, The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri (the only novel in the group) and The Death of the Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions by Sister Helen Prejean.
Related coverage is available online:
- Death Penalty Debate at Heart of Summer Reading Selection
News report from January 2007 - Summer Reading Program Panel Picks First Novel, The Namesake
News report from January 2006 - Freshmen May Do the Reading, But Most Don’t Want to Discuss It News report from October 2005
- Academic Freedom, Under Attack and At Work, Becomes Lesson One for Freshmen
Issues department coverage from the Carolina Alumni Review, September/October 2002, available online to Carolina Alumni members.
