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Dear Students and Families,
The English Department hopes that you will find the summer reading and viewing options listed below compelling. While everyone’s reading experience is unique, we recognize that when next semester begins we will all gather around those oblong tables and transform those unique experiences into a more collective one.
There may very well be moments of real joy and contemplation as we read, as well as encounters with language and/or images that may unsettle or even offend us. Navigating such encounters is essential, and should we find ourselves in such a moment, we—and the works themselves—will be best served by considering the context of vexing material: Does the author use it disparagingly or gratuitously? How are the language and the described events in coherent service of the work as a whole?
We offer such questions as ways to help us all make the most of our summer’s reading and to begin what soon becomes a shared communal inquiry next fall.
As a reflection of the English Department's goal of encouraging literacy across genres we offer as “summer reading” the following lists of options, drawn from a variety of genres, including film.
Students must choose at least one work from each genre list for their class level. Students should, of course, feel free to explore more than one option.
Next fall students will be asked to speak about their choices of works and to share their reactions and reflections. We aim to establish class atmospheres of respectful rapport and curiosity, and students’ speaking about their summer readings and viewings are first steps to that end.
These works complement this year’s all-School summer reading of Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing.
C.H. Frankenbach III
Head of English Department
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