Previous Selections

Archive of past Shared Reading book selections.

Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen

"Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen" cover
Academic Year: 
2023-2024

Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas, called “the most famous undocumented immigrant in America,” tackles one of the defining issues of our time in this explosive and deeply personal call to arms.

Junaluska: Oral Histories of a Black Appalachian Community

Academic Year: 
2022-2023

Description from the publisher:

“Junaluska is one of the oldest African American communities in western North Carolina and one of the few surviving today. 

After Emancipation, many former slaves in Watauga County became sharecroppers, were allowed to clear land and to keep a portion, or bought property outright, all in the segregated neighborhood on the hill overlooking the town of Boone, North Carolina.

Between the World and Me

Book cover
Academic Year: 
2021-2022

In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion.