Common Read

The annual Common Read is designed to give students new to Mount Holyoke College their first intellectual dialogue based on a shared text. These students start to explore the selected text during Orientation and continue the discussion into their fall classes and throughout the year.

Open to the entire College community to read and discuss — staff on campus and alumnae groups across the country discuss the book, for instance — the Common Read sets the tone for the community. It helps collectively frame discussions for the upcoming academic year.

Current and prospective students, faculty, staff, alumnae and trustees are invited to participate.

Common Reads

2021	Jesmyn Ward	The Fire This Time \| Library guide for The Fire This Time
2020	The New York Times Magazine	The 1619 Project
2019	Tommy Orange	"There, There"
2018	Cristina Henriquez	“The Book of Unknown Americans”
2017	Claudia Rankine	“Citizen: An American Lyric”
2016	Ta-Nehisi Coates	“Between the World and Me”
2015	Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie	“Americanah”
2014	Piper Kerman	“Orange is the New Black”
2013	Junot Díaz	“The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao”
2012	Jhumpa Lahiri	“The Namesake”
2011	Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn	“Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide”
2010	Please see list of readings below.
2009	Anne Fadiman	“The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures”
2008	Danzy Senna	“Causasia”
2007	Elizabeth Kolbert	“Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change”
2006	Tracy Kidder	“Mountains Beyond Mountains”
2005	Ruth L. Ozeki	“My Year of Meats”
2004	Azar Nafisi	“Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books”
2003	Barbara Kingsolver	“The Poisonwood Bible”
2002	Barbara Ehrenreich	“Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America”
2001	Julia Alvarez	“How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents”
2000	Terry Tempest Williams	“Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place”

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Common Read

Common Reads

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