Common Read

Reading Together, Building Connections, Strengthening Our University Community

When you read books, they bring you to different places, they change you, by opening up different experiences and thoughts. That’s what educates you.” – Cathy Germano, Director of Learning Services

Excelsior University’s Common Read program invites students, alumni, faculty, and staff to participate in a shared reading experience that engages our community to better understand topics such as diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice through many perspectives.

The book for the September 2022 Common Read was “My Time Among The Whites” by Jennine Capó Crucet.

“In this sharp and candid collection of essays, critically acclaimed writer and first-generation American Jennine Capó Crucet explores the condition of finding herself a stranger in the country where she was born. Raised in Miami and the daughter of Cuban refugees, Crucet examines the political and personal contours of American identity and the physical places where those contours find themselves smashed: be it a rodeo town in Nebraska, a university campus in upstate New York, or Disney World in Florida. Crucet illuminates how she came to see her exclusion from aspects of the theoretical American Dream, despite her family’s attempts to fit in with white American culture—beginning with their ill-fated plan to name her after the winner of the Miss America pageant.” – [source]
 
You can purchase “My Time Among The Whites” at Excelsior’s online bookstore.
 

Watch the author discuss some of the challenges of being a first-generation college student.