It has been so wonderful this remote year to interact with students, staff, and faculty though Real Lit, our social justice fiction book club, and Staff Reads, our non-fiction book club. For the Winter Quarter, we have two amazing books to share with you:
- Patron Saints of Nothing by Randy Ribay (Real Lit), a book which looks at Filipino-American identity through the lens of a teenager visiting family in Manila during Dutert’s war on drugs.
- Life of the Mind Interrupted, by Katie Rose Guest Pryal (Staff Reads), a book which examines experiences of mental health and illness in Higher Education.
Real Lit (young adult fiction) is open to anyone affiliated with UW Tacoma: students, faculty, staff! SIGN UP HERE!
Build community, reduce isolation and enhance campus education by joining a peer-based book club! The UW Tacoma Library, in collaboration with the Center for Equity and Inclusion, is pleased to announce that its award-winning social justice book club, Real Lit[erature], will meet remotely again Winter Quarter 2021!
The goals of Real Lit have always been to create a greater awareness and discussion of the experiences that are being had by our students, staff, and community members. By interacting with narratives that reflect different experiences, it has provided opportunities to dialogue with peers about shared and disparate experiences.
Students, Faculty, and Staff are welcome to join. We strive to be an actively anti-racist space and spend the first session crafting and reviewing community agreements.
We are reading Randy Ribay’s Patron Saints of Nothing:
A powerful coming-of-age story about grief, guilt, and the risks a Filipino-American teenager takes to uncover the truth about his cousin’s murder.Jay Reguero plans to spend the last semester of his senior year playing video games before heading to the University of Michigan in the fall. But when he discovers that his Filipino cousin Jun was murdered as part of President Duterte’s war on drugs, and no one in the family wants to talk about what happened, Jay travels to the Philippines to find out the real story.Hoping to uncover more about Jun and the events that led to his death, Jay is forced to reckon with the many sides of his cousin before he can face the whole horrible truth — and the part he played in it. As gripping as it is lyrical, Patron Saints of Nothing is a page-turning portrayal of the struggle to reconcile faith, family, and immigrant identity. – Description from the publisher.
Staff Reads (non-fiction) is open to any person employed by UW Tacoma in any capacity. SIGN UP HERE.
What is Staff Reads? Inspired by the UW Tacoma Strategic Plan and Real Lit[erature], Staff Reads is a collaboration between the Center for Equity and Inclusion, The Center for Student Involvement, and the UW Tacoma Library. The reading group seeks to create greater awareness and discussion of the experiences being had by our students, staff, and community members.
By interacting with non-fiction texts that discuss different issues being faced in our community, the reading group provides opportunities to dialogue and learn from each other. Additional benefits have included creating community by reducing isolation, and enhancing campus education through peer-based discussion groups.
Winter Quarter, we will be reading Life of the Mind Interrupted: Essays on Mental Health and Disability in Higher Education, by Katie Rose Guest Pryal.
In these deeply personal, fiery essays, Pryal tells her story of transformation that began the moment she chose to publicly disclose her own mental illness and leave her career in higher education to begin fighting for a better world for people with psychiatric disabilities. The stories she tells are universal: the fear of stigma, the fight for accommodations, and the raw reality of living with mental illness in a world that pushes mental health to the margins. With candor and grace, these essays discuss the disclosure of disabilities, accommodations and accessibility, how to be a good abled friend to a disabled person, the trigger warnings debate, and more. While harrowing at times, Pryal’s story is ultimately one of hope. With this memoir, she aims to make higher education—and all of our society—more humane. –Description from the publisher.
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To request disability accommodation, including American Sign Language interpretation, contact the Disability Resources for Students office at 253-692-4508, drsuwt@uw.edu or submit a request at http://www.tacoma.uw.edu/UWTDRS/eventaccess. Please contact Johanna Jacobsen Kiciman at jmjk@uw.edu if you want to arrange for Zoom accommodation.