Fall Reading & Discussion Series at LPL

LPL will be hosting a reading and discussion series this fall entitled, Growing Up Between Cultures. Registrations are required for this series which will take place on the third Thursday evening of each month, September through December.
Growing Up Between Cultures is one of several book discussion programs offered through the Maine Humanities Council’s “Let’s Talk About It” series.  This LPL series is made possible through support from the Council.
The books to be discussed are all memoirs which explore issues of cultural, ethnic or national identity.  Whether the setting is colonial and post-colonial Africa, the American Southwest in the 1940’s and 1950’s, post-World War II Poland, the intellectual scene of New York City, or political Washington D.C., all of the people in these books wrestle with questions about their own individual identity, questions complicated by their experiences growing up among multiple cultures.
The discussion programs will take place in the Library’s Couture Room at 6:00 p.m. on the third Thursday of each month, beginning on September 18.  The book to be discussed at the first session is Lost in Translation, by Eva Hoffman.
Lost in Translation is a classic immigrant story of dislocation from one place to begin life anew elsewhere—at age 13 her family leaves Poland to come to Canada where a new language and way of life must be learned in order to survive.  The other titles included in the series are The Accidental Asian, by Eric Liu; The Names, by N. Scott Momaday; and Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, by Alexandra Fuller.
Anna Sims Bartel, a local humanities scholar who has conducted reading and discussion programs for LPL for the last three years, will serve as the facilitator once again for this fall’s series.  The Library is able to provide the programming thanks to support from the Maine Humanities Council and funding from the Friends of LPL.
Participation in the programming is limited and pre-registration is required.  To register for the series, call the Library’s circulation desk at 513-3134 or contact them via email at LPL@LewistonMaine.gov.