Summer Reading 2007 - Discussion Questions
Summer Reading 2007
While the Summer Reading Program has been successful in creating a common experience for our first year students, it holds great potential to reach a much wider audience. To facilitate conversations among faculty, staff, and students, here we provide a set of potential discussion questions.
- Describe turn of the century Durham. What were the major social, political and economic changes in Durham over the century that the book chronicles?
- Davidson goes to some lengths to chronicle the parallels between the life experiences of Atwater and Ellis. What were some of these similarities? Did you find his portrayal of these parallels convincing?
- How would you describe racial and economic relations in Durham before the charrette? What were some of the strategies employed by activists in Durham to improve them? Which were most effective and why? What was the relationship between mobilization in Durham and the broader national civil rights movement?
- What are the objectives of a charrette? Do you think it was a good idea? What were Bill Riddick’s objectives in organizing this particular charrette? Would you characterize it as “successful”? How was Durham changed by this event? How were Atwater and Ellis transformed by their participation?
- To what extent do issues raised in the book (education, housing, jobs, health care) persist in Durham today? Do you think the strategies described in the book would be an effective way to redress current problems in Durham or elsewhere?
- Some have argued that this book is a naïve tale of a romanticized friendship and trivializes the complexity of contemporary race/class relations. What do you think? Can friendship alter race/class relations?
- What does this story reveal about how to create social change in one’s community? What are the most effective mechanisms and strategies of change? Do you think ordinary people can make a difference today in the way Atwater and Ellis did? Why or why not?
- What surprised you most about this book? What in the book reminded you of something in your own life’s experience? In what ways was your experience similar or different?
919-660-5870
(Perkins Circulation Desk)
Unless otherwise specified on this page, this work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Last modified March 21, 2008 12:20:58 AM EDT