Join EMU and the Ypsi Public Library on February 21st at the EMU Student Center for a lecture with Anchee Min, author of one of the three books considered for this year's Community Reads, Red Azalea. Besides this free lecture, there'll be a Q & A and book signing.

All sorts of excitement ensues this first week of February at Eastern Michigan University to celebrate the Chinese Lunar New Year. Beginning February 1st through 10th check out the Halle Library or the exhibit of EMU’s Chinese history & culture posters in the Foreign Language Lab Hallway. Check out their schedule Chinese Week at EMU for more details.The buffet dinner sounds especially yummy for only $10 bucks, too.

In celebration of International Education Week, Eastern Michigan University will show The Chinatown Files at the Halle Library this Wednesday, November 14th at 12:30 pm. This documentary by Amy Chen is an excellent precursor to see before reading The Eighth Promise: An American Son's Tribute To His Toisanese Mother by William Poy Lee, which has been selected as the title for the 2008 Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti Reads.

The Eighth Promise: An American Son's Tribute To His Toisanese Mother by William Poy Lee has been selected as the focus of the 2008 Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti Reads. An eleven-member selection team, composed of community members, eduators, students and librarians from the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti area chose The Eighth Promise (Rodale, 2007) from a group of three books, all of which centered on the theme China and America: Bridging Two Worlds.

Lee's memoir gives a rare view of the Chinese-American experience from a mother-son perspective. The story is told in two voices -- the author's and that of his mother. His moving and complex story unfolds simultaneously in his mother's war-torn childhood of China of the 1930s-40s and amidst the housing projects of San Francisco Chinatown of the 1960s-70s.

The Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti area has a five-year history of successful community reads programs which encourage all of Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti to read one book. University, Library, bookstore and community representatives from both Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti have been planning Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti Reads 2008 for several months.

In 2008, the program will encourage readers of all ages to explore the theme China and America: Bridging Two Worlds. A screening committee, which met throughout the summer, chose three titles for this year’s consideration:

Ha Jin, The Bridegroom: Stories. New York: Pantheon Books, 2000.

William Poy Lee, The Eighth Promise: An American Son's Tribute to His Toisanese Mother. Emmaus, Pa.: Rodale, c2007.

Anchee Min, Red Azalea. New York: Pantheon Books, 1994.

More information about these titles may be found on the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti Reads website at aareads.org – and there is an opportunity for individuals to blog their comments for each title on that site. In late October, a selection committee will choose one of these titles to be the focus of the Read.

This is one of three titles under consideration for this year's Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti Reads, which will focus on China and America: Bridging Two Worlds.

From the remarkable Ha Jin, winner of the National Book Award for his celebrated novel Waiting, The Bridegroom: Stories is a collection of comical and deeply moving tales of contemporary China that are as warm and human as they are surprising, disturbing, and delightful.

This is one of three titles under consideration for this year's Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti Reads, which will focus on China and America: Bridging Two Worlds.

In the best tradition of The Color of Water comes a beautifully written evocative memoir of a relationship between a mother and son – and the Chinese immigrant experience.

This is one of three titles under consideration for this year's Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti Reads, which will focus on China and America: Bridging Two Worlds.

Red Azalea is Anchee Min’s celebrated memoir of growing up in the last years of Mao’s China. As a child, she was asked to publicly humiliate a teacher; at seventeen, she was sent to work at a labor collective. Forbidden to speak, dress, read, write, or love as she pleased, she found a lifeline in a secret love affair with another woman.

This is one of three titles under consideration for this year's Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti Reads, which will focus on We The People… - the many people that we are, the diverse communities we have created, and the challenges we face in fostering a continuing sense of belonging and civic engagement in a rapidly changing world.

Sarah Vowell travels through the American past and, in doing so, investigates the dusty, bumpy roads of her own life. In this insightful and funny collection of personal stories Vowell — widely hailed for her inimitable narratives on public radio's This American Life — ponders a number of curious questions: Why is she happiest when visiting the sites of bloody struggles like Salem or Gettysburg? Why do people always inappropriately compare themselves to Rosa Parks? Why is a bad life in sunny California so much worse than a bad life anywhere else? What is it about the Zen of foul shots? And, in the title piece, why must doubt and internal arguments haunt the sleepless nights of the true patriot?

What did you think of this book? Tell us!

This powerful and inspiring new book shows how one person can make a difference, as Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tracy Kidder tells the true story of a gifted man who is in love with the world and has set out to do all he can to cure it.

Paul Farmer is a doctor, Harvard professor, renowned infectious-disease specialist, anthropologist and the recipient of a MacArthur "genius" grant. In medical school, he found his life's calling: to diagnose and cure infectious diseases and to bring the lifesaving tools of modern medicine to those who need them most.

The book shows how radical change can be fostered in situations that seem insurmountable, and how a meaningful life can be created, as Farmer--brilliant, charismatic, charming, both a leader in international health and a doctor who finds time to make house calls in Boston and the mountains of Haiti--blasts through convention to get results.

Mountains Beyond Mountains takes us from Harvard to Haiti, Peru, Cuba, and Russia as Farmer changes minds and practices through his dedication to the philosophy that "the only real nation is humanity" - a philosophy that is embodied in the small public charity he founded, Partners In Health. He enlists the help of the Gates Foundation, George Soros, the U.N.'s World Health Organization, and others in his quest to cure the world. At the heart of this book is the example of a life based on hope, and on an understanding of the truth of the Haitian proverb "Beyond mountains there are mountains": as you solve one problem, another problem presents itself, and so you go on and try to solve that one too.

Check for copies at the Ann Arbor District Library...

Check for copies at the Ypsilanti District Library...

This is one of three titles under consideration for this year's Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti Reads, which will focus on We The People… - the many people that we are, the diverse communities we have created, and the challenges we face in fostering a continuing sense of belonging and civic engagement in a rapidly changing world.

In Better Together, bestselling author Robert Putnam and longtime civic activist Lewis Feldstein describe some of the diverse locations and most compelling ways in which civic renewal is taking place today. In response to civic crises and local problems, they say, hardworking, committed people are reweaving the social fabric all across America, often in innovative ways that may turn out to be appropriate for the twenty-first century.

What did you think of this book? Tell us!

Jonathan Weiner's The Beak of the Finch was selected as the focus of the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti Reads 2006. An eleven-member selection team, composed of community members, teachers, students and librarians from the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti area chose this 1995 Pulitzer Prize-winner Tuesday night from a group of three books, all of which centered on the theme Revolutions in Science: the people, theories, explanations and discoveries that challenged our thinking and changed the world. The Beak of the Finch traces the efforts of Peter and Rosemary Grant, two scientists whose groundbreaking research on Darwin’s Theory of Evolution involved decades of study of thousands of birds on a desert island in the heart of the Galapagos.