CBU Reads
2024 Memphis Reads: Tell Me How It Ends by Valeria Luiselli
Memphis Reads, the Memphis community common reading program based at Christian Brothers University and affiliated with CBU Reads, is pleased to announce its book selection for 2024. A book is selected each year that engages Memphians in issues that are relative to daily societal topics and themes, and this year’s selection — Tell Me How It Ends by Valeria Luiselli — goes beyond in fitting this criteria by sharing with readers the stories of undocumented children in order to “humanize these young migrants and highlight the contradiction of the idea of America as a fiction for immigrants with the reality of racism and fear both here and back home.”
Publishers Weekly states that Tell Me How It Ends “… is a vital document for understanding the crisis that immigrants to the U.S. are facing, and a call to action for those who find this situation appalling.” Author Valeria Luiselli was born in Mexico City and grew up in South Korea, South Africa, and India. An acclaimed writer of both fiction and nonfiction, she is the author of the essay collection Sidewalks; the novels Faces in the Crowd and The Story of My Teeth; and, most recently, Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions. She is the recipient of a MacArthur Genius Grant; the winner of two Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, an American Book Award, and the 2021 Dublin Literary Award. She has been nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award twice and the Kirkus Prize on three occasions. She has been a National Book Foundation “5 Under 35” honoree and the recipient of a Bearing Witness Fellowship from the Art for Justice Fund. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Granta, and McSweeney’s, among other publications, and has been translated into more than twenty languages. She now lives in New York City.
CBU Reads Welcomes Valeria Luiselli
Register today for your invitation to the livestreamed event!Memphis Reads 2024 Events
- Wednesday, October 2, 7:00 pm | Writers’ Talk
Christian Brothers University | University Theater - Thursday, October 3, 9:00 am | Writer’s Talk
Location TBD - Thursday, October 3, 6:00 pm | Communities in Conversation
Rhodes College | McNeill Concert Hall
2024 Partners and Sponsors
Sponsors include SouthArts, the Tennessee Arts Commission, FirstBook, Follet, Penguin Random House, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
This Presentation is funded, in part, by a grant from South Arts in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and the Tennessee Arts Commission.
The Memphis Reads/CBU Reads project is funded under a Grant Contract with the State of Tennessee.
Community Partners
Memphis Reads is a community partnership between Christian Brothers University, Rhodes College, The University of Memphis, City Leadership, Literacy Mid-South, Memphis Public Libraries, City of Memphis, NOVEL Bookstore, Memphis-Shelby County Schools, Respect the Haven CDC, Memphis Museum of Science and History, Barth House Episcopal Center, Carpenter Art Garden, Brown Missionary Baptist Church, Junior League of Memphis, National Civil Rights Museum, Uplift Westwood CDC, and many others.
CBU Reads (originally Fresh Reads) is CBU’s first-year summer reading program and is the basis for the Memphis community common reading program, Memphis Reads. The program gives new students a common academic experience and connects them with the campus community, as well as the Memphis community. First-year students, upperclassmen, and faculty members read the same book and have numerous opportunities to discuss it throughout the school year at various First Year Experience events.
CBU Reads
As you arrive at CBU and embark on a new chapter of your life as a college student, we hope that your CBU Reads book will move you to think about your life so far and the lives of those around you, motivating you to change, serve, respond, and consider. You will receive a rental copy of the book when you arrive on campus for Orientation. Other versions of the book can be acquired via the Plough Library or via our local partner, NOVEL Memphis.
Previous CBU Reads Book Titles:
- 2023: His Name is George Floyd by Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa
- 2022: Noor by Dr. Nnedi Okorafor
- 2021: Thick and Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom
- 2020: We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast by Jonathan Safran Foer
- 2019: Memphis: 200 Years Together by a collection of Memphis authors
- 2018: The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
- 2017: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
- 2016: Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
- 2015: What is the What by Dave Eggers
- 2014: The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu
- 2013: The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore
- 2012: The Noticer by Andy Andrews
- 2011: The Soloist by Steve Lopez
Questions?
