Julie Kinnaird | June 15, 2018
Looking for a good summer read? Take a look at what World View staff are reading for inspiration!
Educated
by Tara Westover
Tara Westover was born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho. She grew up in isolation without any formal education, teaching herself math, grammar and science in her teens before applying to Brigham Young University. There, she studied philosophy and history and learned for the first time about pivotal world events like the Holocaust and the Civil Rights Movement. Her quest for the education she was denied as a child eventually takes her to Harvard and then to Cambridge for a doctorate in history.
Homegoing
by Yaa Gyasi
The story begins in Ghana with the birth of two half-sisters who are separated at birth. The story shows how their parallel paths through life depict the lasting effects of slavery on those participated in the enslavement of their own people and on those who were enslaved. While one sister marries a white Englishmen, the other is captured in her village and sold into slavery. The novel follows the two sister’s families through eight generations and various different historical events, with a recurring theme that underlines the constant challenge West Africans and African Americans face as they live with the troubled legacy of slavery and their captivity.
In the Time of the Butterflies
by Julia Alvarez
In the Time of the Butterflies transports us to the Dominican Republic in the mid-twentieth century when the country struggled under the brutal dictatorship of Rafael Leonidas Trujillo. A work of historical fiction, the novel honors the lives of Patria, Minerva, and María Teresa Mirabal, who became icons of freedom and women’s rights when they were assassinated in the autumn of 1960 for their role in the underground movement against Trujillo’s regime. The murders of the three women inspired many in the Dominican Republic to denounce the regime publicly and marked the beginning of the end for Trujillo’s reign. In 1999 the United Nations General Assembly designated the date of the Mirabal sisters’ deaths, November 25, as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.
Little Soldiers: An American Boy, a Chinese School, and the Global Race to Achieve
by Lenora Chu
An American journalist of Chinese descent raising a young family in Shanghai, Chu noticed how well-behaved Chinese children were compared to her boisterous toddler. How did the Chinese create their academic super-achievers? Would their little boy benefit from Chinese school? Chu and her husband decided to enroll three-year-old Rainer in China’s state-run public school system. The results were positive—her son quickly settled down, became fluent in Mandarin, and enjoyed his friends—but she also began to notice troubling new behaviors. Wondering what was happening behind closed classroom doors, she embarked on an exploratory journey, interviewing Chinese parents, teachers and education professors, and following students at all stages of their education. Chu’s eye-opening investigation challenges our assumptions and asks us to consider the true value and purpose of education.