If you haven’t read The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas, now is the time. As the 2016-17 selection for The College Reads! – the College of Charleston’s campuswide common reading program – this book has been discussed by faculty and students in a number of settings all semester.
And now the campus and Charleston communities will have the opportunity to hear directly from the author, Anand Giridharadas.
An Evening with Anand Giridharadas and Raisuddin Bhutan takes place at 7 p.m. on Oct. 24, 2016, in the College’s Sottile Theatre. The author will be joined by one of the book’s subjects, Raisuddin Bhutan. The event is free and open to the public.
Winner of the 2015 NYPL Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism, The True American is the story of two men and one nation. The first man, Raisuddin Bhuiyan, is a Bangladeshi immigrant who became the victim of a hate crime committed by the second, Mark Stroman, a racist with a history of violence who went on a shooting spree after the 9/11 attacks, apparently seeking revenge against people he thought were Arab. Bhuiyan lost sight in one eye, but gained media attention when he appealed to save Stroman from the death penalty and started a movement with Amnesty International called World Without Hate. Through the stories of these two men, Giridharadas exposes the complexities and realities of the continuum of American life and identities.
In addition to writing the “Admit One” column for The New York Times arts pages and the “Currents” column for its global edition, Giridharadas appears regularly on TV and radio, including on CNN, MSNBC, NPR, Morning Joe and The Daily Show. The author of India Calling: An Intimate Portrait of a Nation’s Remaking, he is a Henry Crown fellow of the Aspen Institute and has received honors from the Society of Publishers in Asia, the South Asian Journalists Association and the Poynter Fellowship in Journalism at Yale. He has given talks on the main stage of TED (see below) and at Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, Yale, Princeton, the University of Michigan, the Aspen Institute, Summit at Sea, the Sydney Opera House, the United Nations, the Asia Society, PopTech and Google.
Connecting students, faculty and staff around a single book, The College Reads! program is designed to promote the idea that liberally educated people read broadly and discuss with one another ideas arising from the books they share. All faculty and incoming students are encouraged to read this selection, as it will be connected to the academic curriculum and campus activities throughout the academic year.
Featured Image of Anand Giridharadas: Pop Tech
