Expectation: Students are EXPECTED to read the book critically. When you enter the class at the beginning of the year, there will be an assessment to determine the depth of your reading and the critical thinking used to connect to the Author’s Purpose and Style, Themes, Characters, Setting, and Point of View.
Purpose: We read during the summer to ensure we cover the material necessary for the next year and beyond… What Research Says About Reading:
The following points are from “Reading In and Out of Schools,” a publication prepared by the Educational Testing Service for the U.S. Department of Education, and Patterns of Reading Practice, a publication of The Institute for Academic Excellence.
- The amount of reading that students do for school and do out of school are both positively related to their reading achievement.
- Students who reported discussing their reading had higher average reading achievement than students who reported never having this opportunity.
- When ranked according to the amount of reading they do, students in the top 5 percent read 144 times more than students in the bottom 5 percent.
Before commencing your careful but leisurely reading, go to the NPR site below and read a transcript of the author’s interview with Fresh Air’s Terry Gross
‘Americanah’ Author Explains ‘Learning’ To Be Black In The U.S. : NPR
Americanah: A novel May 14, 2013 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
One of The New York Times Book Review’s Ten Best Books of the Year
LONGLISTED 2015 – International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
From the award-winning author of Half of a Yellow Sun, a dazzling new novel: a story of love and race centered around a young man and woman from Nigeria who face difficult choices and challenges in the countries they come to call home.
As teenagers in a Lagos secondary school, Ifemelu and Obinze fall in love. Their Nigeria is under military dictatorship, and people are leaving the country if they can. Ifemelu—beautiful, self-assured—departs for America to study. She suffers defeats and triumphs, finds and loses relationships and friendships, all the while feeling the weight of something she never thought of back home: race. Obinze—the quiet, thoughtful son of a professor—had hoped to join her, but post-9/11 America will not let him in, and he plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London.
Years later, Obinze is a wealthy man in a newly democratic Nigeria, while Ifemelu has achieved success as a writer of an eye-opening blog about race in America. But when Ifemelu returns to Nigeria, and she and Obinze reignite their shared passion—for their homeland and for each other—they will face the toughest decisions of their lives.
Fearless, gripping, at once darkly funny and tender, spanning three continents and numerous lives, Americanah is a richly told story set in today’s globalized world: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s most powerful and astonishing novel yet.
Amazon.com