Richard M. Smith Common Reading Experience

Learn with your classmates. Even before you arrive.

Enter into global citizenship. Deepen your understanding of differences in the context of our community. And experience the academic expectations of Albion College. All through a common learning experience that starts before your first day of class.

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 before they begin. Discussions about the work start in the fall, along with a potential series of scheduled events. In the past, we’ve brought the creators of the work to campus for a convocation presentation.

The 2012 Common Reading Experience selection is A School for My Village: A Promise to the Orphans of Nyaka by Twesigye Jackson Kaguri.

Past common readings include:

• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (2011)
• The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan (2010)
• Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama (2009)
• Thank You for Smoking by Christopher Buckley (2008)
• Darfur Diaries: Stories of Survival by Jen Marlowe, Aisha Bain, and Adam Shapiro (2007)
• Confluence: A River, The Environment, Politics & The Fate of All Humanity by Nathaniel Tripp (2006)
• West of Kabul, East of New York by Tamim Ansary (2005)
• Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston & James Houston (2004)
• The Laramie Project by Moises Kaufman (2003)
• Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich (2002)
• An American Story by Debra Dickerson (2001)
• A Hope in the Unseen by Ron Suskind (1999 & 2000)
• The Other Side of the River by Alex Kotlowitz (1998)
• Life on the Color Line by Gregory Williams (1997)
• The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (1996)
• Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol (1995)
• Black Ice by Lorene Cary (1994)
• A Typical American by Gish Jen (1993)
• Linden Hills by Gloria R. Naylor (1992)
• Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (1991)