
Williams Reads aims to foster new connections among students, staff, faculty, and community members by exploring diversity through a common reading experience. Developed by the Committee on Diversity and Community (CDC), Williams Reads is an initiative offered as an opportunity for us to explore a book together that will help us to celebrate and deepen our appreciation of diversity. It is the goal of the CDC to select a book that will stimulate community engagement and challenging conversation.
2022-2023 BOOK:
South to America: A Journey Below the Mason Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation by Imani Perry
“An elegant meditation on the complexities of the American South—and thus of America—by an esteemed daughter of the South and one of the great intellectuals of our time. An inspiration.” —Isabel Wilkerson
An essential, surprising journey through the history, rituals, and landscapes of the American South—and a revelatory argument for why you must understand the South in order to understand America
We all think we know the South. Even those who have never lived there can rattle off a list of signifiers: the Civil War, Gone with the Wind, the Ku Klux Klan, plantations, football, Jim Crow, slavery. But the idiosyncrasies, dispositions, and habits of the region are stranger and more complex than much of the country tends to acknowledge. In South to America, Imani Perry shows that the meaning of American is inextricably linked with the South, and that our understanding of its history and culture is the key to understanding the nation as a whole.
This is the story of a Black woman and native Alabaman returning to the region she has always called home and considering it with fresh eyes. Her journey is full of detours, deep dives, and surprising encounters with places and people. She renders Southerners from all walks of life with sensitivity and honesty, sharing her thoughts about a troubling history and the ritual humiliations and joys that characterize so much of Southern life.
Weaving together stories of immigrant communities, contemporary artists, exploitative opportunists, enslaved peoples, unsung heroes, her own ancestors, and her lived experiences, Imani Perry crafts a tapestry unlike any other. With uncommon insight and breathtaking clarity, South to America offers an assertion that if we want to build a more humane future for the United States, we must center our concern below the Mason-Dixon Line.
Williams Reads Events
Come back soon to find out about Williams Reads events in January 2023!
Previous Williams Reads Books
2021-2022 book: Ebony & Ivy by Craig Steven Wilder
2021-2022 Book: Ebony & Ivy – by Craig Steven Wilder Hard copies are available at Sawyer and Schow Libraries. E-Books are available using this link! A groundbreaking exploration of the intertwined histories of … Continue reading “2021-2022 book: Ebony & Ivy by Craig Steven Wilder”
2020-2021 Book: Subject to Change: Trans Poetry & Conversation- Edited by H. Melt
Subject to Change is an anthology celebrating the work of five poets who are unapologetically trans: Joshua Jennifer Espinoza, Christopher Soto, beyza ozer, Cameron Awkward-Rich, and Kay Ulanday Barrett. Featuring poetry … Continue reading “2020-2021 Book: Subject to Change: Trans Poetry & Conversation- Edited by H. Melt”
2019-2020 Book: Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
Called a “breathtaking novel…[that] arrives at an urgent time” by NPR, Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West is an astonishingly visionary love story that imagines the forces that drive ordinary people from … Continue reading “2019-2020 Book: Exit West by Mohsin Hamid”
2018-2019-Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
“MacArthur Genius and two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward has been hailed as the standout writer of her generation, proving her “fearless and toughly lyrical” voice in novels, memoir, … Continue reading “2018-2019-Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward”
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