Featured Reading and Discussion Programs

Below is a selected list of recently awarded Grants for Reading and Discussion Programs.

Pursuing the American Dream

Albert Wisner Public Library
Warwick, Orange County

The idea of the American Dream is ubiquitous in society today - from the reasons immigrants have for leaving their countries of origin to the way advertisers use it to promote merchandise, not to mention the way politicians invoke it in their rhetoric - and yet, for most people, the American Dream is a vague and undefined notion we all take for granted without too much conscious thought about what it means.

This course of study aims to consciously examine what the American Dream is through looking at a variety of texts and the contexts of these works - historical, philosophical, cultural, and environmental. Participants will be given the opportunity to examine their own subjective responses to these works and ideas and be able to more clearly articulate their own versions of the Dream.

• The Declaration of Independence
• The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea that Shaped a Nation by Jim Cullen
• Ragged Dick by Horatio Alger, Jr.
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• On the Road by Jack Kerouac
• The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream by Barack Obama

 

Inviting the Stranger In

Geneva Public Library
Geneva, Ontario and Seneca Counties

In our world today, so often characterized by deep misunderstandings of who each of us is and where we come from, the literary form of memoir emerges more importantly than ever as a vehicle for empathy. As one writer divulges his or her own true story, the opportunity to listen to each of these voices gives us the chance to realize that underneath our sharp differences lays a basic human similarity. Out of this realization, a way to dismantle prejudice emerges.

• Ghostbread by Sonya Livingston
• Come to the Edge: A Memoir by Christina Haag
• Brother, I'm Dying by Edwige Danticat
• The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates by Wes Moore

 

The Spirituality of Poetry: From Walt Whitman to Mary Oliver

Walt Whitman Birthplace Association
West Hills, Suffolk County

Spirituality is an important part of the works of Walt Whitman. Participants will be encouraged to tour the Interpretation Center and Birthplace either before or after each session to view original editions of Leaves of Grass and other artifacts.

• Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
• Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson
• The Essential Rumi translated by Coleman Barks
• Poems of Gerald Manley Hopkins by Gerald Manley Hopkins and Robert Bridges
• Dream Work by Mary Oliver

 

Keeping Us In, Keeping them Out: The Powers of Community

Roxbury Library Association
Roxbury, Delaware County

What forces bind communities? What forces destabilize communities? How do those outside communities struggle to enter them or to make communities of their own? How does the me make an identity inside the we? Four novels, all set in New York State and/or New York City, will be used to explore these questions through the lenses of gender, class, and race.

• House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
• Kaaterskill Falls by Allegra Goodman
• The Sweet Hearafter by Russell Banks
• Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

 

Women in War

Friends of Johnson Hall
Johnstown, Fulton County

We propose to look at war from a woman's perspective, beginning with the colonial period and ending with an autobiography in the period of the Islamic Revolution (in Iran). Women and girls across the world have suffered the trauma of war - as soldiers, as widows or orphans, possibly displaced from their homes or detained. They have been separated from those they love and have become victims of violence and intimidation. Others have been civilians who have shown resourcefulness and resilience in times of war as their homes and sometimes their families disintegrated.

• Bluebird, or the Invention of Happiness by Sheila Kohler
• The Widow of the South by Robert Hicks
• Day After Night: A Novel by Anita Diamant
• Perseopolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi