UMBC’s Community Read provides discussions and events that foster intellectually stimulating interactions among all students surrounding the book. The Community Read is a program that allows everyone to come together to examine key issues in our global and local communities. Our working statement of purpose is to:
Create transformative experiences with our UMBC community through the simple act of reading together.
Our working vision includes the following:
- Fostering student empowerment and determination
- Creating a foundation for students to build their personal/professional development (notation for any skill building)
- Removing the sense of distance between the work and the reader; less analysis, more reflection
- Creating conversations that build community and connections
- Leveling the field; take away titles
- Engaging with others; shared learning
- Establishing a catalyst for changing the wider world; empowering agency
- Developing intercultural communication skills and connections
- Building a sustainable program
- Doing this because we mean it; not performative
- Keeping the connection to the importance of reading
- Creating transformative experiences
Archived Book Selections:
The world gasped in April 2015 as Baltimore erupted and Black Lives Matter activists, incensed by Freddie Gray’s brutal death in police custody, shut down highways and marched on city streets. In The Black Butterfly—a reference to the fact that Baltimore’s majority-Black population spreads out on both sides of the coveted strip of real estate running down the center of the city like a butterfly’s wings—Lawrence T. Brown reveals that ongoing historical trauma caused by a combination of policies, practices, systems, and budgets is at the root of uprisings and crises in hyper segregated cities around the country.
Putting Baltimore under a microscope, Brown looks closely at the causes of segregation, many of which exist in current legislation and regulatory policy despite the common belief that overtly racist policies are a thing of the past. Drawing on social science research, policy analysis, and archival materials, Brown reveals the long history of racial segregation’s impact on health, from bode pollution to police brutality. Beginning with an analysis of the current political moment, Brown delves into how Baltimore’s history influenced actions in sister cities like St. Louis and Cleveland, as well as its adoption of increasingly oppressive techniques from cities like Chicago.
But there is reason to hope. Throughout the book, Brown offers a clear five-step plan for activists, nonprofits, and public officials to achieve racial equity. Not content to simply describe and decry urban problems, Brown offers up a wide range of innovative solutions to help heal and restore redlined Black neighborhoods, including municipal reparations. Persuasively arguing that, since urban apartheid was intentionally erected, it can be intentionally dismantled, The Black Butterfly demonstrates that America cannot reflect that Black lives matter until we see how Black neighborhoods matter.
Dr. Lawrence T. Brown is an equity scientist, urban Afrofuturist, and the director of The Black Butterfly Academy, a virtual racial equity education and consulting firm. From 2013-2019, he served as an assistant and associate professor at Morgan State University in the School of Community Health and Policy. In June 2018, he was honored by OSI Baltimore with the Bold Thinker award for sparking critical discourse regarding Baltimore’s racial segregation.In 2020, he directed the US COVID-19 Atlas work and response for the County Health Rankings and Roadmaps program in partnership with the University of Chicago Center for Spatial Data Science. His first book The Black Butterfly: The Harmful Politics of Race and Space in America was published by Johns Hopkins University Press in January 2021. In 2021-2022, Dr. Brown will be working as a research scientist in the new Center for Urban Health Equity at Morgan State University.
Content borrowed from the The Black Butterfly Project website.
by Amanda Gorman
2022-23 Community Read Selection
There is a saying: “Grief is love with nowhere to go.” Well, it has found a worthy vessel in Amanda Gorman’s inaugural, ahem, collection of poetry. Call Us What We Carry includes the poem that put Gorman on the map, “The Hill We Climb,” which she delivered at President Biden’s swearing in ceremony. It sets the tone for this body of work, a literary salve for our collective suffering wrought from the pandemic and a country otherwise in crisis. While it is very much a time capsule of this moment, future generations will take comfort in its universal and enduring themes of hope and healing. And be impressed by the insight and wisdom displayed by someone so young. Here’s to all the birds who escape their cages and sing. The future is looking bright. —Erin Kodicek, Amazon Editor
“An inspired anthem for the next generation—a remarkable poetry debut.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Gorman’s newest poetry collection offers a stunning amalgamation of poems formatted in different styles to convey a message of sorrow, unity, and collective healing . . . Gorman’s poetry operates as a perfect combination of part elegy and part call to action. This stunning collection belongs on every shelf.” – Booklist
“At once heartbreaking and deeply healing, Gorman’s collection calls readers to their best selves, even–or especially–in the face of great loss.” – Shelf Awareness
“Amanda Gorman . . . reckons with America’s present, particularly with the pandemic. Through the lens of the country’s history, she shows us the path toward healing.” —NPR
by D. Watkins
2022 Community Read Selection
From the row houses of Baltimore to the stoops of Brooklyn, the New York Times bestselling author of The Cook Up lays bare the voices of the most vulnerable and allows their stories to uncover the systematic injustice threaded within our society. Honest and eye-opening, the pages of We Speak for Ourselves “are abundant with wisdom and wit; integrity and love, not to mention enough laughs for a stand-up comedy routine” (Mitchell S. Jackson, author of Survival Math).
Watkins introduces you to Down Bottom, the storied community of East Baltimore that holds a mirror to America’s poor black neighborhoods—“hoods” that could just as easily be in Chicago, Detroit, Oakland, or Atlanta. As Watkins sees it, the perspective of people who live in economically disadvantaged black communities is largely absent from the commentary of many top intellectuals who speak and write about race.
Unapologetic and sharp-witted, D. Watkins is here to tell the truth as he has seen it. We Speak for Ourselves offers an in-depth analysis of inner-city hurdles and honors the stories therein. We sit in underfunded schools, walk the blocks burdened with police corruption, stand within an audience of Make America Great Again hats, journey from trap house to university lecture, and rally in neglected streets. And we listen.
“Watkins has come to remind us, everyone deserves the opportunity to speak for themselves” (Jason Reynolds, New York Times bestselling author) and serves hope to fellow Americans who are too often ignored and calling on others to examine what it means to be a model activist in today’s world. We Speak for Ourselves is a must-read for all who are committed to social change.
From Amazon.com