SUMMER READING 2016 @ COUNTRY DAY – THE “ALL-SCHOOL READ”
THEME: GLOBAL AMERICA
America has long been known as the “melting pot,” a country that people around the world admire,
respect, and also critique. This summer, we engage with texts describing some of the many experiences
of newcomers to the United States.
Students are required to read one of the many choices below, but as always are encouraged to read
additional books selected by faculty to deepen our understanding of various topics related to
immigration, assimilation, culture, identity, and empathy.
Summaries below come from Goodreads; students, however, are encouraged to do additional research
before selecting a book that is both interesting and appropriate in terms of reading level and content.
All books were selected by the faculty-run Summer Reading Committee. Books recommended for
older readers have more mature material, although all books have a degree of mature content.
Please take time to research the book that is most comfortable for you/your child.
As an additional option, students are invited to watch the movie, Brooklyn, if interested in another
perspective on the Irish experience in America. The film is rated PG-13, considered appropriate for
viewers 13 years and older.
Key Questions:
 What forces push an individual or family to leave his or her home country for America, and what
are the consequences of leaving the familiar for a land of unknowns?
 What efforts are made by Americans to welcome or repel newcomers?
 What are the unique and commonly experienced challenges that immigrants to the U.S. face?
 Have you ever felt a stranger in a strange land? What or who helped you to feel comfortable?
What did you learn about the role of hospitality in the complex 21st century world through your
experience?
 Compare and contrast the cultures represented in your book. What distinguishes American
culture from the culture(s) these characters have left behind? How do characters assimilate into
American culture, or not, and why?
Students will receive a link to a Google Doc form where they can complete their reflective writing
on their All-School reading book by the first day of school, August 24, 2016.
1. Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street (Fiction; grade 9 only)
“Acclaimed by critics, beloved by readers of all ages, taught everywhere from inner-city grade schools
to universities across the country, and translated all over the world, The House on Mango Street is the
remarkable story of Esperanza Cordero. Told in a series of vignettes – sometimes heartbreaking,
sometimes deeply joyous – it is the story of a young Latina girl growing up in Chicago, inventing for
herself who and what she will become. Few other books in our time have touched so many readers.”
2. Willa Cather, My Antonia (Classic Fiction; grades 9-10 only)
“Through Jim Burden's endearing, smitten voice, we revisit the remarkable vicissitudes of immigrant
life in the Nebraska heartland, with all its insistent bonds. Guiding the way are some of literature's most
beguiling characters: the Russian brothers plagued by memories of a fateful sleigh ride, Antonia's
desperately homesick father and self-indulgent mother, and the coy Lena Lingard. Holding the pastoral
society's heart, of course, is the bewitching, free-spirited Antonia.”
3. Jean Kwok, Girl in Translation (Contemporary Fiction; grades 9-10 only)
“When Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong to Brooklyn squalor, she quickly
begins a secret double life: exceptional schoolgirl during the day, Chinatown sweatshop worker in the
evenings. Kimberly learns to constantly translate not just her language but herself back and forth
between the worlds she straddles. Through Kimberly’s story, author Jean Kwok, who also emigrated
from Hong Kong as a young girl, brings to the page the lives of countless immigrants who are caught
between the pressure to succeed in America, their duty to their family, and their own personal desires,
exposing a world that we rarely hear about.”
4. Firoozeh Dumas, Funny in Farsi (Memoir/ Non-Fiction; grades 9-12)
“In 1972, when she was seven, Firoozeh Dumas and her family moved from Iran to Southern
California, arriving with no firsthand knowledge of this country beyond her father's glowing memories
of his graduate school years here. More family soon followed, and the clan has been here ever since.
Funny in Farsi chronicles the American journey of Dumas's wonderfully engaging family: her engineer
father, a sweetly quixotic dreamer who first sought riches on Bowling for Dollars and in Las Vegas, and
later lost his job during the Iranian revolution; her elegant mother, who never fully mastered English
(nor cared to); her uncle, who combated the effects of American fast food with an army of miraculous
American weight-loss gadgets; and Firoozeh herself, who as a girl changed her name to Julie, and who
encountered a second wave of culture shock when she met and married a Frenchman, becoming part of a
one-couple melting pot.”
5. Cristina Henriquez, The Book of Unknown Americans (Contemporary Fiction; recommended
for grades 10-12)
“A dazzling, heartbreaking page-turner destined for breakout status: a novel that gives voice to millions
of Americans as it tells the story of the love between a Panamanian boy and a Mexican girl: teenagers
living in an apartment block of immigrant families like their own. Peopled with deeply sympathetic
characters, this poignant yet unsentimental tale of young love tells a riveting story of unflinching
honesty and humanity that offers a resonant new definition of what it means to be an American.”
6. Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake (Contemporary Fiction; some mature content; recommended for
grades 10-12)
“In The Namesake, Lahiri enriches the themes that made her collection an international bestseller: the
immigrant experience, the clash of cultures, the conflicts of assimilation, and, most poignantly, the
tangled ties between generations. The Namesake takes the Ganguli family from their tradition-bound life
in India through their fraught transformation into Americans. With penetrating insight, she reveals not
only the defining power of the names and expectations bestowed upon us by our parents, but also the
means by which we slowly, sometimes painfully, come to define ourselves.”
7. Mohsin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist (Contemporary Fiction; some mature content;
recommended for grades 11-12)
“At a café table in Lahore, a bearded Pakistani man converses with an uneasy American stranger. As
dusk deepens to night, he begins the tale that has brought them to this fateful meeting . . . Changez is
living an immigrant’s dream of America. At the top of his class at Princeton, he is snapped up by the
elite "valuation" firm of Underwood Samson. He thrives on the energy of New York, and his infatuation
with elegant, beautiful Erica promises entry into Manhattan society at the same exalted level once
occupied by his own family back in Lahore. But in the wake of September 11, Changez finds his
position in his adopted city suddenly overturned, and his budding relationship with Erica eclipsed by the
reawakened ghosts of her past. And Changez’s own identity is in seismic shift as well, unearthing
allegiances more fundamental than money, power, and maybe even love.”
8. Julie Otsuka, The Buddha in the Attic (Historical Fiction; grades 11-12)
“Julie Otsuka’s long-awaited follow-up to When the Emperor Was Divine is a tour de force of economy
and precision, a novel that tells the story of a group of young women brought from Japan to San
Francisco as “picture brides” nearly a century ago. In eight incantatory sections, The Buddha in the Attic
traces the picture brides’ extraordinary lives, from their arduous journey by boat, where they exchange
photographs of their husbands, imagining uncertain futures in an unknown land; to their arrival in San
Francisco and their tremulous first nights as new wives; to their backbreaking work picking fruit in the
fields and scrubbing the floors of white women; to their struggles to master a new language and a new
culture; to their experiences in childbirth, and then as mothers, raising children who will ultimately
reject their heritage and their history; to the deracinating arrival of war.”
9. Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ashes (Memoir/ Autobiography; grades 11-12)
“Frank’s mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank’s father, Malachy, rarely
works, and when he does he drinks his wages. Yet Malachy — exasperating, irresponsible, and
beguiling — does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story. Frank lives for
his father’s tales of Cuchulain, who saved Ireland, and of the Angel on the Seventh Step, who brings his
mother babies. Perhaps it is story that accounts for Frank’s survival. Wearing rags for diapers, begging a
pig’s head for Christmas dinner and gathering coal from the roadside to light a fire, Frank endures
poverty, near-starvation and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors—yet lives to tell his tale with
eloquence, exuberance, and remarkable forgiveness. Angela’s Ashes, imbued on every page with Frank
McCourt’s astounding humor and compassion, is a glorious book that bears all the marks of a classic.”
10. Joseph O’Neill, Netherland (Fiction; grades 11-12)
“In a New York City made phantasmagorical by the events of 9/11, Hans--a banker originally from the
Netherlands--finds himself marooned among the strange occupants of the Chelsea Hotel after his
English wife and son return to London. Alone and untethered, feeling lost in the country he had come to
regard as home, Hans stumbles upon the vibrant New York subculture of cricket, where he revisits his
lost childhood and, thanks to a friendship with a charismatic and charming Trinidadian named Chuck
Ramkissoon, begins to reconnect with his life and his adopted country. Ramkissoon, a Gatsby-like
figure who is part idealist and part operator, introduces Hans to an “other” New York populated by
immigrants and strivers of every race and nationality. Netherland gives us both a flawlessly drawn
picture of a little-known New York and a story of much larger, and brilliantly achieved ambition: the
grand strangeness and fading promise of 21st century America from an outsider’s vantage point, and the
complicated relationship between the American dream and the particular dreamers.”