HCC Celebrity Read Posters of 2009

Library Staff Recommendations

Posters from 2008

Posters from 2007

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

When I was asked to participate in the READ program, it was important for me to choose a book that related somehow to the interactions I have with students. Jeannette Walls' memoir, The Glass Castle, came to mind. The story exemplifies the ability to overcome a multitude of barriers such as those experienced by Walls: poverty, homelessness, starvation and shame. She tells her story with raw honesty and teaches us that love can have a profound effect on our spirit and challenges can provide us with opportunities for personal growth. The Glass Castle is inspiring: live life with courage and appreciation for who you really are.

Andrea Picard
HCC Coordinator of Experiential Education

Gotham : a history of New York City to 1898 by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace

Jim Quinn
HCC English Professor

The suppression of the African slave-trade to the United States of America, 1638-1870 by W. E. B. Du Bois

The Suppression of the African Slave Trade by W.E.B. DuBois is the most important and influential book that I have read. I grew up in New England being taught that slavery and its aftermath, segregation, were "Southern problems." This brilliant scholarly work, W.E.B DuBois's doctoral dissertation at Harvard, carefully documents the involvement of all states in the U.S., as well as many countries around the world, in perpetuating--and benefitting from--a system of slavery that lasted 400 years. I recommend it to anyone with an interest in studying the history of our country or a desire to understand the origins of racism as a system of economic oppression.

See the original Credo

Joanna Brown
HCC Director of Alumni Relations

The Mother's Story by Julia O'Donnell

This is a story of success against all odds. A woman who raised five children while dealing with every hardship imaginable. Two of those children are now world famous.

Maggie Lavelle
HCC Maintainer

The Old man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

This book is about very important qualities that a person should posses. It is about being persistent in reaching your goals despite all the difficulties that you can face, and not giving up. Also, this book is about kindness. The characters of this book are poor fishermen, so poor that they are not sure if they will have anything to eat the next meal. Instead of getting angry at the world, they are kind and loving towards each other.

Olesya Cherkashin
HCC Grant Accountant

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

Morrison tells a brutal, yet truthful tale of the psychology of oppression. The story reminds us that we should never confuse our individual beauty with what the masses may perceive to be beautiful. We are all beautiful!

The bluest eye may be the brownest, the greenest, the blackest or the most hazel eye. The key is understanding and knowing that our beauty is unique in and of itself.

Phil Warren
"International Ambassador"
HCC Marketing & Public Relations

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

The Ganguli family in The Namesake represents immigrant families that come from India to the USA in search of the American Dream. It is a poignant story of their immigrant experiences: cultural clashes, difficulties of integration and the pangs of intergenerational conflicts. The Namesake is the story of my ESL students from different countries and, it is my story, too. This book will transport the reader into the complex world of the lives of immigrants, "For being a foreigner, is a sort of lifelong pregnancy- a perpetual wait, a constant burden, a continuous feeling out of sorts.....an ongoing responsibility....to discover that that previous life has vanished, replaced by something more complicated and demanding. Like pregnancy, being a foreigner is something that elicits the same curiosity from strangers, the same combination of pity and respect."

Rubaba Matin
HCC ESL Professor