Dear John Brown University student,
Congratulations on your decision to enroll at John Brown University! In coming to JBU, you are joining a learning community
where students learn not only from professors and books but
from each other. Moreover, professors are not simply dispensers
of knowledge but fellow learners who continually explore new
ideas and perspectives.
One important feature of a learning community is the discussion
of good books. Thus, your first step in joining the JBU community is the Summer Reading Program we call JBU Reads. This
year’s theme is “From Every Nation and Tribe: Unity in Diversity.”
Last fall, the JBU Reads committee asked students, faculty, and
staff to recommend a book that best fits this theme. We received
many great suggestions. Here are the final selections: Alan
Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country; Jade Snow Wong’s Fifth
Chinese Daughter; Claude M. Steele’s Whistling Vivaldi; and Beverly Daniel Tatum’s “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together
in the Cafeteria?”
Please read one of these books before you join us for Orientation
Week in August. To help you make your selection, we have created this introductory booklet. You will find the biography of each
recommender, a brief plot synopsis, and a short essay explaining
why you should read that particular book. We hope you choose
the right book for you. It is not required to purchase a book, so
browse your local libraries or borrow from friends and family. If
you have access to a computer or an e-reader, you will also be
able to find some of the titles available as e-books.
During Orientation Week, you and your peers will discuss these
books and this year’s theme with a JBU professor and upper-level students. At this meeting you will be expected to write a brief
essay exploring how your book relates to important theological
concepts such as creation, sin, and redemption. So, it is important that you read the book carefully and critically. This academic
exercise will count as your first grade for COR 1002: Gateway
Seminar in Christian Scholarship.
We hope you enjoy the book, and we look forward to meeting
you in August.
Sincerely,
Mr. Brent Swearingen, Library Director
Mrs. Mary Habermas, Reference Librarian
Cry, The Beloved Country was first published in 1948
(even before I was born!) but don’t think for a minute this is
dry and old and for boring people. I usually read between
40—75 books a year and about 10—15 of these are novels. To
this day, this novel is #1 on my “must read” list. And it’s even
worth re-reading. Simply the most profoundly moving and
best written book I have ever read. Period. Good thing it won
the Pulitzer because, if it hadn’t, I would have to create an
award for it.
Recommended by “Dr. C.”, Robbie Castleman, Professor of Theology. Robbie
is an avid book-reader and founder of
the Dead Theologians Society, wife of
one man, mother to two grown sons
and a beagle, as well as a “Nona” to five
grandchildren, and a book writer.
Cry, the Beloved Country is a book for people that reflects the worst
and the best of who we are on this planet in all sorts of places,
cultures, times, families, nations. It’s a book that helps you look at
sinful reality and hold on to hope at the same time. It’s a book that
needs to be read by people who think (or who have said out loud),
“Nothing will ever change.” It’s a book for people tempted to give
up being human or being a disciple. It’s a book that reminds me of
a person who gave the commencement address at my graduation
from college in 1985. He glared at us on my graduation night and
said something like this: “Don’t you DARE tell me that nothing can
change! I graduated from college twenty years ago, 1965. And
I remember being scared to death to drive home from Atlanta to
New Orleans. I had to go through Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi,
and on to Louisiana. I prayed to God that I’d make it home alive.
Dear Jesus, I prayed, don’t let my car break down in Mississippi!
Twenty years ago tonight, I would have thought you a fool if you had
told me that I would someday be the mayor of Atlanta, and the US
Ambassador to the UN! But, I was and I am. Don’t you DARE fail to
believe that God is still victoriously at work in this world!”
Don’t wait until you graduate. Start believing as you enter your first
year at John Brown University. Cry, the Beloved Country is a story
that will help you believe bigger about hard things. It will help you
hope. It will remind you that God is victoriously at work to change
the way the world is.
“…and I come to believe that he suffered,
not to save us from suffering, but to teach
us how to bear suffering.”
– Alan Paton
Originally published in 1945, Jade Snow Wong’s story
is one of struggle and achievements. These memoirs of the
author’s first twenty-four years are thoughtful, informative, and
highly entertaining. They not only portray a young woman and
her unique family in San Francisco’s Chinatown, but they are rich
in the details that light up a world within the world of America.
The third-person singular style is rooted in Chinese literary form,
reflecting cultural disregard for the individual, yet Jade Snow
Wong’s story also is typically American.
Patty Kirk is Associate Professor of
English, JBU’s Writer in Residence, and
the author of two spiritual memoirs, a
food memoir, and two essay collections.
She just completed a novel called The
Unicorn Hoax: The True Story of What
Happened, about a girl and her dad
who make horses into unicorns, pass
them off as real, and get caught. Kirk
has two daughters in college and a
husband and four dogs at home, where
she writes, cooks, grades papers, and
generally enjoys herself.
Having become a Christian in middle-age and eventually a spiritual
memoirist, it seems prophetic that, of the few books in my spiritually
unconscious home, the one I read and reread growing up was Jade Snow
Wong’s Fifth Chinese Daughter. Nonfiction, written for adults. A spiritual
memoir. About a girl whose life and strangely personal God were pretty much
foreign to me.
Jade Snow’s memoir is a conversion story on many levels. Fifth daughter
in a large, first-generation immigrant home in a poor neighborhood of San
Francisco then disparagingly called “Chinatown,” she is referred to not by
name but by her low rank in that world: Fifth Daughter, another worthless
girl to feed and find a husband for. As Jade Snow enters adulthood, she
gradually—and graciously—changes the story such a beginning wants to tell.
She finds God, falls in love, builds a career, all on her own terms. By the end
of her book, she’s a born-again Christian and a self-supporting ceramics artist
and has singlehandedly transformed her parents from impediments to loving
supporters of her success.
I wish I could say it was Jade Snow’s discovery of the God I now worship that
drew me. Or her sweet-spirited feminism. Or her resolve to not just dream
the American dream but achieve it. It wasn’t. Rather, it was Jade Snow’s
concrete rendering of her world—one in which families bought a year’s worth
of rice at once, so merchants gave them samples to try out before making
that important purchase. There was a certain way to wash and cook rice that
Jade Snow detailed so lovingly, so exactly, that I’ve cooked rice that way my
whole life. The family made themselves shoes from overalls scraps; years
later, remembering, I made my own. Inspired by Jade Snow, I threw pots in
high school and throughout college.
I reread Jade Snow’s book because I wanted to be part of her world—a world
in which rice and shoes mattered. And art. And God.
That’s what good writing does. It’s not just enjoyable. It makes you want to
go out and do stuff.
“Learning can never be poor or exhausted.”
– Jade Snow Wong
Claude M. Steele offers a vivid first-person account of
the research that supports his groundbreaking conclusions on
stereotypes and identity. He sheds new light on American social
phenomena from racial and gender gaps in test scores to the
belief in the superior athletic prowess of black men, and lays out
a plan for mitigating these “stereotype threats” and reshaping
American identities.
Rod Reed leads the Office of Christian
Formation in developing programs and
processes that help students grow spiritually, one of which is chapel. Mostly,
he loves getting to know students and
helping them develop an ever-growing relationship with Christ that is big
enough for whatever life brings. When
he’s not in his office, the classroom, or
the Cathedral, you might find him playing ping pong at one of the tables on
campus. He and his wife Michelle have
four children.
This year I was part of a reading group on campus that met on a
monthly basis to discuss the book Whistling Vivaldi. I’ve read lots
of books about race, diversity and reconciliation, but this one struck
me differently. The author writes in a very compelling way sharing
stories of how people perform when they feel the pressure of
negative stereotypes. I was fascinated to read stories of how much
people’s performances can suffer when they perceive that other
people think negatively about them. Conversely, it was amazing to
see the same people perform at higher levels when their identity
wasn’t threatened by negative stereotypes. I loved that the author
showed how people from all sorts of backgrounds – white, black,
brown, Latino, Asian, Native American, etc. – could either struggle or
thrive based on how the people around them perceive their identity.
As a pastor, professor and friend, I was challenged to consider how
my explicit and implicit messages to the people around me either
affirm or threaten the dignity that they deserve as children of God
who are made in his image.
“There exists no group on earth that is not
negatively stereotyped in some way.”
– Claude M. Steele
Walk into any racially mixed high school and you will
see black youth seated together in the cafeteria. Of course, it’s
not just the black kids sitting together — the white, Latino, Asian
Pacific, and, in some regions, American Indian youth are clustered in their own groups, too. The same phenomenon can be
observed in college dining halls, faculty lounges, and corporate
cafeterias. What is going on here? Is this self-segregation a problem we should try to fix, or a coping strategy we should support?
How can we get past our reluctance to talk about racial issues?
Marquita Smith, an assistant professor of
communication, teaches journalism and
public relations courses. As directed by the
Apostle Paul, Smith believes that Christians
have a responsibility to understand the need
for diversity. 1 Cor 12: 25-26 “that there may
be no dissension within the body, but the
members may have the same care for one
another. If one member suffers, all suffer
together with it; if one member is honored,
all rejoice together with it.”
Smith is passionate about promoting kingdom identities and celebrating diversity. She
also serves as the faculty sponsor of MOSAIC, the Multicultural Organization of Students
Active in Christ.
Too often, students have asked why all of the Latinos sit together
during lunch at John Brown University? A fair question, I suppose.
But it’s not something I had considered. Seeking a way to have
an intelligent response I discovered Beverly Daniel Tatum’s “Why
Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?”: And
Other Conversations About Race. The book highlights racial
identity development and the challenges with having productive
conversations about race.
Tatum shares practical examples from her experience as a parent
and a college professor. She discusses how such conversations
played out at home with her children and in her classroom. Readers
will get a firsthand look at how she facilitated discussions with
college students about accepting and appreciating their racial
identity.
Tatum writes chapters about several ethnic minority groups. In
several chapters, she discusses the racial identity development of
African Americans (those descendants of slavery) and Whites (those
of European ancestry). Tatum answers the question, “Why are all
the Black kids sitting together in the cafeteria?” by discussing late
adolescence and early adulthood experiences of young African
Americans and how past hurts and encounters with racism can
cause different student populations to self-segregate. She also
explains how students who share a common history, language and
culture often create social enclaves, thus why all of the Blacks, and
in our case Latinos, are sitting together in the cafeteria. My prayer is
that this book will help students to develop cultural intelligence and
deeper understanding about different people groups, so that we
can better support and love ALL of our sisters and brothers in Jesus
Christ.
“As a society, we pay a price
for our silence.”
– Beverly Daniel Tatum