Hope College Presents
NEA Big Read
LAKESHORE 2023
Homegoing
Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing is a historical fiction novel told in stories that follows several generations of one family starting with the Atlantic Slave Trade in the 1700s and ending in the mid-2000s. Illuminating slavery’s troubled legacy both for those who were taken and those who stayed, Homegoing shows how the memory of captivity has been inscribed on the soul of our nation.
What is the NEA Big Read Lakeshore?
Hope College's NEA Big Read Lakeshore program began in 2014. Our goal is to create and foster a culture where reading matters. We bring our Lakeshore community together around a common book and use this shared experience of reading, discussing, and exploring the themes of the book as a springboard to listen to and learn from each other. Our trademark program takes place annually in November. Partial funding for our Big Read program comes from the NEA Big Read, a program of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in partnership with Arts Midwest.
Ways to Get Involved
Read the book
Our book's topics and themes are timely and relevant.
Attend our events
Our events offer a variety of perspectives, experiences, and angles on the book.
Interact with others
Our goal is that you listen and learn from others as well as sharing your own ideas and experiences.
Respond
Our community becomes stronger when you make positive changes in response to your interactions with the book.
Find The Book
Our 2023 Big Read and Little Read titles will be available at the Hope College Bookstore, Reader’s World (Holland), The Bookman (Grand Haven), Barnes and Noble in Holland and Amazon.
Participating libraries will host book giveaways in late October.
You can also check out the titles at participating libraries starting in June. Book club bags are available.
- Cook Library (Western Theological Seminary)
- Fennville District Library
- Gary Byker Library of Hudsonville
- Georgetown Township Public Library
- Herrick District Library
- Howard Miller Public Library
- Loutit District Library
- Patmos Library
- Saugatuck-Douglas District Library
- Spring Lake District Library
- Van Wylen Library (Hope College)
Land Acknowledgement
Together we acknowledge that we gather, in West Michigan, on the traditional land of the Peoria, Potawatomi, Odawa, Ojibwe Peoples, past and present.
We honor with gratitude the land itself and the people who have stewarded it throughout the generations.
As a community, we recognize the ever present systemic inequities that stem directly from past wrongdoings. We are grateful for the ways in which stories and words can speak truth and shed insight to these inequalities and wrongdoings, and also provide a way forward towards equality, justice and understanding.
Through these Big Read events and beyond, we commit to respecting and reconciling this long history of injustice, and commit to be better stewards of this land we inhabit.