2009-10 Great Michigan Read

FAIN: BC-50461-09

Michigan Humanities Council (Okemos, MI 48864-6012)
Gregory L Parker (Project Director: March 2009 to March 2011)

To support a variety of activities for the 2009-2010 Great Michigan Read, including reader's guides, a teacher's guide, grants for speakers, newspaper inserts, radio and television features and other promotional material. The selected book is "Stealing Buddha's Dinner" by Bich Minh Nguyen.

The 2009-10 Great Michigan Read is a humanities initiative encouraging the entire state to read the same book. Targeting young adults to seniors, The Great Michigan Read aspires to make reading more accessible and appealing, engaging Michiganians with literature unique to the Great Lakes State while encouraging them to learn more about their state, their history, and their society. The selected title, "Stealing Buddha's Dinner," by Bich Minh Nguyen, chronicles the author's migration from Vietnam in 1975 and her coming of age in Grand Rapids, Michigan in the 1980s. Along the way, she struggles to construct her own cultural identity from a menagerie of uniquely American influences. The Council's programming will encourage people to read Stealing Buddha's Dinner and use the text to explore three themes: immigration stories, cultural understanding, and contemporary history.