The following titles are available in sets of approximately fifteen copies; sometimes more. Those with an asterisk * have a study guide to accompany the title. Please call (801) 359-9670 to check availability. We invite you to select books from the following themes. (Some titles may be found in more than one category.)

Understanding Each Other- Diversity in America

* America’s Dream – (Esmeralda Santiago, 1996) This brutal yet sensitive tale of a woman’s journey from hotel worker in Puerto Rico to nanny and housekeeper in New York tackles issues of class and power common to many immigrant experiences.

American Pastoral - (Philip Roth, 1997) Symbolic of turbulent times of the 1960s, the explosion of a bomb in his own bucolic backyard sweeps away the innocence of Swede Levov, along with everything industriously created by his family over three generations in America.

The Bluest Eye – (Toni Morrison, 1970) Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Morrison began her career with this novel, heralded for its richness of language and boldness of vision.  Set in the author’s girlhood hometown of Lorain, Ohio, it tells the story of Pecola Breedlove, an African-American girl of eleven. Pecola prays for her eyes to turn blue so that she will be as beautiful and beloved as all the blond, blue-eyed children in America. In the autumn of 1941, the year the marigolds in the Breedloves’ garden do not bloom, Pecola’s life does change, in painful, devastating ways.

Braided Lives, An Anthology of Multicultural American Writing – (Minnesota Humanities Commission, 1991) This anthology brings together the most powerful stories and poems of some of the best Native American, Hispanic American, African American, and Asian American writers. Braided Lives reveals the remarkable diversity that enriches the nation.

Bread Givers – (Anzia Yezierska, 1925) Sara Smolinsky, the youngest daughter of an Orthodox rabbi, watches as her father marries off her sisters to men they don’t love. But Sara rejects this conception of Jewish womanhood. She wants to live for herself and to marry for love. Set during the 1029’s on New York’s Lower East Side, the story of Sara’s struggle toward independence and self-fulfillment - through education, work, and love – is universal and resonates with a passionate intensity that all can share.

* Catfish & Mandala – (Andrew X. Pham, 1999) In a search for cultural identity and personal history, Vietnamese-American Pham sets out on a solo bicycle voyage around the Pacific Rim to Vietnam.

The Chosen – (Chaim Potok, 1967) In a world of New York’s East side, a loving father has not spoken to his son for six years except to discuss the Talmud. Danny is expected to become the seventh rabbi in his family and eventually to lead the tightly-knit religious community that has survived in transplantation to America. But his brilliant intellect is powerfully drawn to the secular prophets of Darwin and Freud. Told from the perspective of his best friend, Reuven, whose family represents the liberal tradition in Judaism, the novel recounts Danny’s search for religious identity.

Davita’s Harp - (Chaim Potok, 1985) For Davita Chandal, growing up in the New York of the 1930s and '40s is an experience of joy and sadness. Her loving parents, both fervent radicals, fill her with the fiercely bright hope of a new and better world. But as the deprivations of war and depression take a ruthless toll, Davita unexpectedly turns to the Jewish faith that her mother had long ago abandoned, finding there both a solace for her questioning inner pain and a test of her budding spirit of independence.

* The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories – (Leo Tolstoy, 1960) Tolstoy exposes the egotism that tragically blinds average people as they search for ways to become respected by their societies. In addition to the title story, the collection includes “Family Happiness,” “The Kreutzer Sonata,” “Master and Man.”

The Devil’s Highway - (Luis Alberto Urrea, 2004) Luis Alberto Urrea tells the true story of a group of men who illegally crossed the border from Mexico and attempted to enter America through one of the most inhospitable stretches of Arizona desert known as The Devil's Highway. Urrea not only chronicles their descent into hell on earth, but the economic and cultural forces that drove them to attempt such a risky trek in search of a better life.  Caught as pawns between governments and tempted by smugglers who seek only to profit from others' despair, these men were willing to take that risk, with disastrous consequences.

Faces of Utah – (Shannon Hoskins, 1996) In an inspired centennial project, the Mountain West Center at USU and the Utah Humanities Council put out a call around the state: tell us your feelings about living in Utah.  Collected in this volume are entries picked out of over 500,000 responses to represent the diverse voices of the state’s people.

Forty (40) Ways to Raise a Nonracist Child – (Barbara Mathias, Mary Ann French, 1996) A practical guide for all parents desiring to teach their children to shun prejudice, narrow-mindedness and hatred. 

The Grapes of Wrath– (John Steinbeck, 1992) An American classic looks at the effects of economic and political forces on families and small communities.  It is also one of the few works of fiction that explores how people organize independent familial and community associations to build the good society.

The House on Mango Street - (Sandra Cisneros, 1984) A story of harsh realities and beauty unfold as Cisneros describes the story of the young girl, Esperanza Cordero, growing up in a latino section of Chicago. Depicted in a series of vignettes this novel produces a novel about this young girl “coming into her power, and inventing for herself what she will become.”

* Hunger of Memory, An Autobiography: The Education of Richard Rodriguez – (Richard Rodriguez, 1982) Here is the poignant story of a “minority student” who pays the cost of his social assimilation and academic success with a painful alienation – from his past, his parents, his culture – and so describes the high price of “making it” in middle-class America.

* Missing Stories: An Oral History of Ethnic and Minority Groups in Utah – (Leslie Kelen and Eileen Hallet Stone, 1996) This extensive volume contains oral histories from some of Utah’s oldest and largest cultural  communities: Ute, African-American Jewish, Chinese, Italian, Japanese, Greek, and Chicano-Hispano.

* Mormon Country – (Wallace Stegner, 1942) A portrait of the subject done with affection and objectivity, every detail standing forth in the light of the author’s trenchant memory.

Nobody’s Son: Notes From an American Life – (Luis Alberto Urrea,1998) Born in Tijuana to a Mexican father and an Anglo mother from Staten Island, Urrea had a childhood full of opposites, a clash of cultures and languages. In prose that seethes with energy and crackles with dark humor, Urrea tells a story that is both troubling and wildly entertaining.

* On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of my Chinese-American Family – (Lisa See, 1995) Out of her memoirs and years of research, See has constructed a sweeping chronicle of a Chinese-American family on “Gold Mountain,” the Chinese name for the United States. Encompassing racism and romance, entrepreneurial genius and domestic heartache, secret marriages, and sibling rivalries, On Gold Mountain  is a powerful history of two cultures meeting in a new world.

Reading Lolita in Tehran – (Axar Nafisi, 2003) Every Thursday morning for two years in the Islamic Republic of Iran, a bold and inspired teacher named Azar Nafisi secretly gathered seven of her most committed female students to read forbidden Western classics. In this extraordinary memoir, their stories become intertwined with the ones they are reading.  

* Reservation Blues – (Sherman Alexie, 1996) Funny, tragic, sometimes raw, Alexie’s novel dispels stereotypes and myths of life on a contemporary Spokane Indian reservation.

Song of Solomon – (Toni Morrison, 1978) Awarded Best Novel of the Year by the New York Times Book Review, this novel explores sources of strength in a multi-generational black American family.

* The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures – (Anne Fadiman, 1997) This nonfiction work traces the case of a Hmong refugee child with severe epilepsy, and, in so doing, exposes the numerous culture clashes between Hmong and western understandings.

Straight Parents, Gay Children: Keeping Families Together – (Robert A. Bernstein, 1995) A father comes to terms with his daughter’s homosexuality and discovers that his life is not diminished, as he had originally thought, but enriched by it.  Bernstein tells about experiences with P FLAG, an organization that helps parents to achieve a fuller understanding and appreciation of human diversity.

The Sum of Our Past – (Judy Busk, 2004) A Ford van is about the same length as a covered wagon and about a foot wider. On a journey taken by Judy Busk and her husband, Neal, to retrace the Oregon and Mormon trails, horsepower comes in the form of a combustion engine. Along their journey, they seek a connection to the past in museums, archives, and at historical sites. What most surprises Judy is what she finds about pioneer women. Through her narrative, we move beyond stereotypes of the past and find a vibrant spectrum of attitude, education, occupation, and family- women motivated by their religious beliefs, and forerunners of the modern women's movement. She parallels the past with experiences in the present.

Their Eyes Were Watching God – (Zora Neale Hurston, 1990) First published in 1937 and now a classic of black literature, this novel tells with haunting sympathy the story of Janie Crawford’s evolving selfhood through three marriages.

Things Fall Apart – (Chinua Achebe, 1959) A now classic drama of Africa, this novel focuses on a confrontation between tribal Ibo life and its first encounter with colonialism and Christianity at the turn of the last century. Achebe’s novel is among a small company of highly regarded books that describes a native culture from the inside, before outside forces break up the old ways.

The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality - (Dalai Lama, 2005) In this rare, personal investigation, His Holiness the Dalai Lama discusses his vision of science and faith working hand in hand to alleviate human suffering. Drawing on a lifetime of scientific study and religious practice, he explores many of the great debates and makes astonishing connections between seemingly disparate topics–such as evolution and karma–that will change the way we look at our world.

* Voyages: From Tongan Villages to American Suburbs – (Cathy A. Small, 1997) Small uses stories of individuals from one village and factual information about Tongan society to help readers understand why Tongans migrate and what they experience in the U.S.

* The Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China – (Jung Chang, 1991) This mesmerizing memoir is a riveting account of the impact of history on the lives of women. A powerful, moving, at times shocking story of three generations of Chinese women, as compelling as Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club.

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