Read to Achieve
All about Read to Achieve
The Read to Achieve program at UTC introduces students to the academic and intellectual culture of university life. The program provides a positive reading experience for students, faculty, and staff, one that holds at its core the belief that reading is an integral part of the university experience. Likewise, the program fosters a sense of community among students, faculty, and staff.
Because the selected Read to Achieve book is not intended to be specific to any one academic discipline, students, faculty, and staff find the book and its subject matter a touchstone for reference and discussion across the campus. The chosen book always focuses on various topics surrounding diversity and inclusion.
About the 2022-2023 Book
How We Go Home: Voices from Indigenous North America edited by Sara Sinclair, is a series of oral histories collected by Sinclair. Each chapter focuses on the story of influential Indigenous figures such as Althea Guiboche, who founded an organization for vulnerable populations; Gladys Radek, who became a family advocate for The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls; Marian Naranjo, the subject of a radiation test in high school, who lead Santa Clara Pueblo to compile an environmental impact statement about the consequences of living near Las Alamos National Laboratory; and many more. How We Go Home offers accurate and respectful portrayals of diverse cultures and identities, introducing UTC students to Indigenous histories and ways of knowing.
About the Author, from her website
Sara Sinclair is an oral historian of Cree-Ojibwa, German-Jewish and British descent. Sara teaches in the Oral History Masters Program at Columbia University. She is Project Director of the Aryeh Neier Oral History Project at Columbia Center for Oral History Research [CCOHR]. Sara is currently co-editing two anthologies of Indigenous letters, for Penguin/Random House Canada. She has contributed to CCOHR’s Covid-19 Oral History, Narrative and Memory Archive, Obama Presidency Oral History, and Robert Rauschenberg Oral History Project. With Peter Bearman and Mary Marshall Clark, Sinclair edited Robert Rauschenberg: An Oral History, published by Columbia University Press in spring 2019. Prior to attending Columbia University's Oral History Masters or Arts, Sara lived in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where she conducted an oral history project for the International Labour Organization’s Regional Office for Africa. Sara’s current and previous clients include the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of the City of New York, New York City Department of Environmental Protection.
Praise for How We Go Home: Voices from Indigenous North America
“This edited collection offers deep, experiential dives into law, policy, and life for contemporary Indigenous peoples in what is now the United States and Canada. These conversations and life histories, taken together, tell us a critical story of the effort it takes to live and transform structures that Indigenous peoples inherit and push against in bids for dignity, sovereignty, care, and justice in the twenty-first century.” —Audra Simpson (Kahnawà:ke Mohawk), professor of anthropology, Columbia University
“In this continent, oral history began with the creation and retelling of the rich, multilayered, and historical origin stories of Indigenous people whose lives were intricately bound to the land. The destruction and stealing of that land, and the systematic and highly personalized violence targeted against so many Indigenous communities, threatened the very act of storytelling itself. This book took my breath away, and then restored it. It refuses silence. It restores the word—and the field of oral history in unleashing the story of our origins.”—Mary Marshall Clark, Director, Columbia Center for Oral History
Quotes from How We Go Home: Voices from Indigenous North America
“A lot of adults think that young people don’t understand or don’t listen. And we may not understand in the moment, but we grow up, we carry that knowledge with us, and we begin to understand. And we won’t have to go on living in ignorance.” – Jasilyn Charger, Cheyenne River Sioux Activist
“We have people who you’d think would want the park to thrive, but because there are so many issues on the reservation, people are just trying to survive. They’re having a hard time with basic needs, with substance abuse, with domestic abuse. So y9ou have this festering of things that thrive in this habitat: people who sell drugs, people who are violent; those things take up space. And then you have a playground that’s in a community where no kids are playing in it. There needs to be recognition that forced assimilation breaks down people. In my work, I’m trying to put together a common thread to hold community together, to rebuild community. I meet a lot of people who are looking for a past. I am looking for a future.” Ashley Hemmers, Fort Mojave Indian Tribe, Tribal Administrator
