Gustavus Adolphus College has selected Enrique’s Journey by Sonia Nazario as its Reading in Common book for the 2009-10 academic year. The book recounts the odyssey of a Honduran boy who endures hardship and peril to find his mother in the United States.
This is the tenth year of the Reading in Common program at Gustavus. All first-year students are expected to read the chosen book during the summer and then meet with faculty members and upperclass students during New Student Orientation to discuss it. New Student Orientation is also loosely based around the themes found in the book.
“The selection committee felt this book would promote engaged student learning about a variety of topics,” said Director of Student Activities Megan Ruble. “Discussions could explore contemporary debates regarding immigration and the shifting demographics in America, or focus on more personal topics like changing family relationships, life transitions, and ‘a journey to the unknown’ — issues new college students also face, though on a very different scale.”
Nazario has spent 20 years reporting and writing about social issues, most recently as a projects reporter for the Los Angeles Times. In 2003, Nazario won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for her work on the multi-part newspaper series Enrique’s Journey. In 1998 she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing for her story about the children of drug addicts in Los Angeles. Nazario also won a George Polk Award for Local Reporting for a series about hunger among schoolchildren in California.
Nazario expanded on her newspaper series of Enrique’s Journey and published the book in 2005. The story details how a boy, by clinging to the tops and sides of freight trains, made the long, dangerous, and illegal journey through Mexico into the United States to find his mother who had left him at the age of five.
Books for the Reading in Common program are chosen based on their literary quality, reading manageability, interdisciplinary nature, and the author’s availability for a campus appearance. Nazario will visit Gustavus Monday, Sept. 28 and will deliver a lecture at 7 p.m. that evening.
Copies of Enrique’s Journey will soon be available for purchase in the Book Mark. For more information about the Reading in Common program at Gustavus, contact Ruble at 507-933-7597 or mruble@gustavus.edu.
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