Morrison Novel Home Picked for Summer Reading

Posted on Jan. 31, 2013

Home, the latest novel by Nobel laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Toni Morrison, will be the 2013 summer reading book for incoming students at Carolina.

A nine-member selection committee of students, faculty and staff selected the book from five finalists. Students on the committee described Home, published in 2012, as an inspiration to first-year students in their academic, personal and social lives as they leave their homes to come to Carolina.

New students who enroll this fall are expected and encouraged to read the book this summer and participate in small group discussions on the Monday before classes start in the fall. The program, now in its 15th year, aims to stimulate critical thinking outside the classroom and give new students intellectual common ground. An academic icebreaker, it encourages students to engage with the scholarly community and come to their own conclusions about the material.

Home is the story of a man who joins the Army to escape his too-small world, leaving behind his cherished and fragile little sister, Cee. After the war, his shattered life has no purpose until he hears that Cee is in danger.

This year’s other finalists were Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo; The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz; Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward and The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon. The committee considered fiction and nonfiction.

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More online…

• Technology Is Focus of Summer Reading
  January 2012 news report
• Two Campuses, One Book: Reading Program Unites Rivals
  February 2011 news report
• Story of Unlikely Friendship Picked for Summer Reading
  January 2010 news report
• Class, Ethnic Conflict Subject of Summer Reading Selection
  February 2009 news report
• Death Penalty Debate at Heart of Summer Reading Selection
  January 2007 news report
• Summer Reading Program Panel Picks First Novel, The Namesake
  January 2006 news report
• Freshmen May Do the Reading, But Most Don’t Want to Discuss It
  October 2005 news report
• Academic Freedom, Under Attack and At Work, Becomes Lesson One for Freshmen
  Issues department coverage from the Carolina Alumni Review, September/October 2002.

To mark the magazine’s centennial in 2012, all 100 years of the Review dating to October 1912 have been added to the magazine’s digital archive. Issues from the most recent five years are available to Carolina Alumni members only, as a benefit of membership in the association; earlier issues are open to anyone. Tools are available for searching, sharing, printing and downloading articles and photos.

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