Richard M. Smith Common Reading Experience

The Richard M. Smith Common Reading Experience is an integral part of the First-Year Experience at Albion College. All first-year students are given a work of literature and asked to read it over the summer and participate in discussions about the work when they come to campus in the fall. Typically, the creator of the work visits the campus to speak with the first year students and give a convocation presentation. Additional events may be scheduled through the year that are directly related to the common reading.

Past common readings include:

• "Their Eyes Were Watching God" by Zora Neale Hurston (1991)
• "Linden Hills" by Gloria R. Naylor (1992)
• "A Typical American" by Gish Jen (1993)
• "Black Ice" by Lorene Cary (1994)
• "Savage Inequalities" by Jonathan Kozol (1995)
• "The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison (1996)
• "Life on the Color Line" by Gregory Williams (1997)
• "The Other Side of the River" by Alex Kotlowitz (1998)
• "A Hope in the Unseen" by Ron Suskind (1999 & 2000)
• "An American Story" by Debra Dickerson (2001)
• "Nickel and Dimed" by Barbara Ehrenreich (2002)
• "The Laramie Project" by Moises Kaufman (2003)
• "Farewell to Manzanar" by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston & James Houston (2004)
• "West of Kabul, East of New York" by Tamim Ansary (2005)
• "Confluence: A River, The Environment, Politics & The Fate of All Humanity" by Nathaniel Tripp (2006)
• "Darfur Diaries:  Stories of Survival" by Jen Marlowe, Aisha Bain, and Adam Shapiro (2007)
• "Thank You for Smoking" by Christopher Buckley

The 2009 selection is: "Dreams from My Father" by Barack Obama