Little Bee Triggers and Discussion

This week we are inviting our members to discuss the Seattle Reads book Little Bee. We are constantly reading together on Typetrigger, and this is our first experiment with off-site reading. 

We will post several triggers in the coming weeks  that with the text in some way, and we invite you to approach the trigger however you like: as a response to the text, a new line of narrative, etc. Please tag your work "Little Bee" if you are participating. Our first Little Bee trigger will go up at 10 a.m. PDT on Wed, April 27. The following triggers will be scheduled as follows:

Monday, May 2, 4 p.m. PDT

Friday, May 6, 10 a.m. PDT

Monday, May 9, 10 a.m. PDT

We also have a discussion board here on the blog, which we invite you to participate in. Let's see what happens!

Q&A with Chris Higashi of Seattle Reads

Typetrigger is excited to be involved with this year's Seattle Reads, which is a program of the Washington Center for the Book at the Seattle Public Library. From the reading guide for this year's program:

[Seattle Reads is] a project designed to deepen engatement in literature through reading and discussion. Each year the Library hosts an author for a series of free programs...We also host a series of programs, film screenings, readings, and other events around the themes of the featured work.

Our plan is to engage Typetrigger members in a conversation around this year's book, Little Bee, by Chris Cleave. We invite all members to read this book, and in coming weeks we will post triggers that tie in with the text, giving our writers a chance to respond to the events and themes in this novel. 

Little Bee is an intensely emotional tale of a young Nigerian woman, Little Bee, who is seeking asylum in London. Her connection to a white magazine editor, Sarah, is revealed as the story unfolds, each woman narrating a chapter at a time. The pace and intense subject matter bring the reader through a wide range of questions and feelings in quick succession. Whether you are gripped by Cleave's use of language or by the complex issues of refugees, Little Bee provokes.

Chris Higashi, the program manager of Washington Center for the Book, who started Seattle Reads with librarian Nancy Pearl, took some time to talk to us about how the program. 

Q&A with Chris Higashi 

In your experience, what makes a good book for reading in a group?

Good books for discussion tend to share certain characteristics: they explore basic human truths

and raise universal themes that readers can identify with; have three-dimensional characters

forced to make difficult choices in difficult circumstances, whose decisions don’t always make

sense to everyone. Ambiguous endings drive some readers crazy, but they’re great for book

discussion.

How is a city-wide reading program like Seattle Reads different from an individual book club?

An individual book club might have special interests and with the group’s members in mind,

focus on certain genres, authors, countries or cultures, make any number of choices specific to

them. A book for a city-wide program needs all the characteristics of a good book for discussion

and more: a book with sufficiently broad appeal to be read by a wide variety of readers; one

that’s relevant to the community (what works well here won’t necessarily be a good choice

someplace else); that raises many, many questions, enough to sustain a discussion.

Equally important for us – because hosting the author, putting the author before audiences

in settings, large and small – is an author who is willing to, likes to, engage with readers – is

comfortable talking with them, not just at them. Not everyone is comfortable interacting with the

public. Seattle Reads is a chance for readers and writer to talk with one another. You’ve mulled

questions about the book in your book group or as an individual reader, you wonder about a

character’s action, you want to know why the author made that choice. People come to events

having read the book carefully, thought about the issues raised, and wanting answers to hard

questions.

If the book chosen is not the author’s latest, is the author willing to go back and focus on an

earlier work? Not everyone with a new or recent book will want to divert attention and spend

time and energy talking with readers about something else.

How do you choose the book?

This is one of the most frequently asked questions: how does Seattle choose its title? My answer

is, it’s an organic process. I read all the time with Seattle Reads in mind. Independent bookstore

friends who are longtime partners to our project, the Library’s Reader Services librarians who

likewise are intimately familiar with Seattle Reads, and I share ideas, read, comment, reject

scores of books. I do research, talk to booksellers and programming colleagues to learn whatever

I can about the author. We make a recommendation to Library leadership, who typically bless

our selection.

To illustrate, let me describe how we came to our 2008 selection, The Beautiful Things That

Heaven Bears, by Dinaw Mengestu. In spring 2007, Mengestu did a reading at Elliott Bay Book

Co. Rick Simonson and Karen Maeda Allman (knowledgeable about Seattle Reads and also

aware of our Library’s initiative to serve Seattle’s immigrant and refugee community, including

East Africans) called to tell me about Dinaw. They had had a good crowd of 100, this for a debut

novel. He was charming, wonderful with the crowd and Q&A. They sent me an advance copy. I

read it and, oh wow. I gave it to the Fiction Department manager. She, too, loved it.

Meanwhile a library staffer sent me an email, saying “I think you should consider these two

authors for library programs,” and pointed me to two NPR interviews, one of which was with

Dinaw. Then two weeks later, a librarian told me she had read a review, bought the book, read

it over the weekend, and “I think you should consider this for Seattle Reads.” Yes, it was The

Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears.

I said, “Okay, the universe is telling me something.” If we had had a formal process, where a

committee meets, nominates titles, and votes, that would not have happened.

Little Bee is very provocative in part because the author is surprisingly unlike the characters that he so vividly creates. When you select books, do you feel like the author or the story is more important?

One is not more important than the other. I have long felt that even with a great book for

discussion Seattle Reads would fail without a friendly, charismatic, non-egotistical author. Over

the project’s 13 years, I’ve listened to authors answer the same question repeatedly, thoughtfully, with the same enthusiasm as if asked for the first time. Audiences sense and respond in kind to an author’s respect and gratitude for his or her readers.

What is gained by the community when a city reads together?

Seattle Reads and other One Book programs build community. They bring people together. They

foster deep conversation, among strangers as well as friends and family. I firmly believe there’s

no substitute for the face-to-face encounter. People are hungry to connect with one another, to

talk about things that matter to them. Meeting and discussing ideas in the context of a book is a

wonderful way to make those connections happen. Reading is richer when shared. We may all

read the same book, but we each read a different book – because we bring our personal histories

to the reading – and a reader’s appreciation for a book is often enhanced through a facilitated

discussion.

One Book programs expand community. When we feature books by authors of diverse cultures

and ethnicities, we work with community leaders – those tied to new groups we’re trying to

reach. We introduce readers to new worlds. We bridge cultures, and often generations. People

crave stories and conversations that help us make sense of diverse people, places, and events.

Typetrigger and Seattle Reads: Little Bee

When I started Typetrigger, it was my goal to create a tool for writers. I knew that posting our words publicly would help us by reminding us about that great unknown "audience." I didn't realize at the time how much the writers on Typetrigger would learn from reading on the site. Thinking as a writer can be by turns an exercise in unbridled ego and extreme self-doubt. By looking at things as a reader, which is to say as a stranger, we can become stronger writers. When a bunch of writers are working with the same constraints, as we do on Typetrigger, we can learn some fast lessons about what a reader might want from a piece of writing. But I wonder: What can we learn by reading longer works?

When I learned about Seattle Reads (a project of the Washington Center for the Book at the Seattle Public Library), I was curious to see how the our community, as a bunch of writers, would approach it. I am very excited to be involved with Seattle Reads, and I hope that Typetrigger members in Seattle and abroad will join us in a month of reading and discussion around this year's Seattle Reads book, Little Bee by Chris Cleave.  

Here is how it will work: Go out and get yourself a copy of Little Bee. Starting in mid-April, we will have weekly triggers that relate to the text. Reader/writers can respond however they like, whether they choose to respond directly to the text or to write their own perspectives on the theme. 

We will be publishing an interview here on the blog with Chris Higashi, the library program manager who started Seattle Reads with Nancy Pearl, about what makes a story good for discussion. As we make our way through the book, we will post questions about the story and the reading experience here. I hope you will join in the discussion.

If you are in Seattle, there will be a series of events around Little Bee in April and May, culminating with several talks by Cleave May 12-14. I will be attending several of these events and I would love to have the company of my Typetrigger community. 

-Lily

Typetrigger + Seattle Reads this Spring!

Typetrigger is a great community of writers and readers, and we are excited to work with other organizations on reading and writing projects in 2011. First on our list is a collaboration with Seattle Reads, a wonderful program put on by the Seattle Public Library.

Each year, SPL selects a new book that the city is assigned to read. This year's selection is Little Bee by Chris Cleave. For two months Seattle readers will be able to participate in all kinds of events around this book, culminating in a three day visit in May from the author.

We want to bring some of the book discussion online, and we will be discussing the book here on the blog in April and May. We will also invite readers/writers to share responses to the book via some special Little Bee triggers. We hope that Typetriggerers around the globe will join us as we consider what makes a good read.