HEY, LET’S ALL READ THIS BOOK TOGETHER

Goddard Riverside, the Upper West Side community center and social service agency, got a grant to try to get people in the community reading one book, and then set up events where people can discuss it. They’ve chosen The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears, which was written by Upper West Side resident Dinaw Mengestu. It’s about an Ethiopian immigrant who moves to Washington DC and opens a convenience store. It touches on themes of gentrification too, which should make for lively discussion.

There are several events already scheduled, with a reading by the author, live Ethiopian music, and a theater-staging on Saturday, January 24 at 7 p.m. at 647 Columbus Avenue. More book discussions, dances and an open mic will follow in the weeks afterward.

Check out more below from Goddard Riverside and see the full list of events here.

“Goddard Riverside recently received a National Endowment for the Arts grant to conduct a community read of the novel The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, by Upper West Side resident and MacArthur Award winner Dinaw Mengestu. The idea is to get an entire community reading and speaking about the same book at the same time. To this end, we have scheduled book discussions and related arts events on the Upper West Side from January-March 2015. Our big kick off event in January 24th where there will be readings by the author, theater reenactments, music and food.

We chose Mengestu’s novel from a long list of possibilities because we thought it would speak to a wide variety of our community members. The main character, Sepha Stephanos, is an Ethiopian immigrant attempting to find his place in American society. He struggles to keep his convenience store going in a poor area of Washington, DC, and relies on two other African immigrants for friendship. His life changes when a well-to-do white woman and her daughter renovate and move into the house next door to his store. The novel is beautifully written, evoking Stephanos’ abrupt departure from Ethiopia during the country’s revolution, his loneliness and sense of displacement in Washington, and the solace he finds in friendship and reading. It also portrays the disruptive influence of gentrification on a neighborhood. But there are no good guys or bad guys in Mengestu’s nuanced story, which should make a wonderful springboard for discussion.

You can also check out the NEA Big Read at www.neabigread.org/communities.”