By MILLY BALIMA
Staff Writer
The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom is the featured work for One Book, One College 2017 (OBOC) which includes the author’s visit to the CCC campus on Wednesday, November 1, during which she will hold a conference in the Banquet Area of the Luciano Conference Center at 7:00 p.m.
After the formal presentation, there will be time for the author to respond to questions and comments from the audience. Professor Sharon Kewish, OBOC Chairperson, said there will be a follow-up panel discussion in Spring of 2018.
Introduced to the CCC campus in the 2004-2005 academic year, OBOC is now an annual event. CCC’s website, in part, indicates: “OBOC is a college-wide reading program with a goal to create an on-campus reading community that encourages reading for pleasure, critical thinking, global awareness, and multicultural understanding.”
Yet, it is more than simply a “reading program.” Established on numerous campuses in the United States, OBOC provides an opportunity for a college community to focus on one book or theme as a point of reference for discussions in the classroom as well as in the cafeteria.
According to Professor Kewish: “One Book, One College is the only project we have attempted at CCC that involves all members of the college community–administration, faculty, staff, students–as well as members of the larger community; and it has been very successful.”
The prospect of a face-to- face encounter with the author or having the author autograph a copy of the featured work adds another dimension to the OBOC experience. The Kitchen House can be purchased at the campus bookstore.
At CCC, a year in advance, the OBOC Committee choses fiction or nonfiction prospects which can provide stimulating discussions regardless of majors or disciplines. The selections are pared down until three choices remain. After a final vote, an author is contacted so a fee can be negotiated and a mutually agreed upon date can be fixed for the author’s visit.
Among the past thirteen titles chosen for OBOC are works by established professional writers such as Joyce Carol Oates (2012-2013). Luis Carlos Montalvan (2014-2015) , a wounded warrior in the United States’ longest wars, became a first-time author because he had an urgent message for America in Until Tuesday.
Topics such as homelessness, growing up biracial, the Native American experience, Japanese-American internment in the United States during World War II have been chosen.
Some OBOC selections have become movies. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls (2008-2009) was “discovered” by CCC’s campus eight years prior to its current cinematographic treatment.
The 2017 selection, The Kitchen House, illuminates a period in American history in the pre-Civil War (antebellum) South when a white person could be held in servitude along with enslaved blacks, although under different circumstances and with different outcomes.
So, mark your calendars, remind your classmates, tell your friends and family. Look for spring 2018 activites involving CCC’s OBOC program!
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