D.C. Success Story Gets Maryland Reading, Talking

At a kickoff event last week at Montgomery College's Rockville campus, the organization spotlighted Cedric Jennings, the protagonist in the book selected for the first One Maryland One Book program.

The 31-year-old Ballou High School graduate's tale of overcoming meager beginnings is poignantly recounted in "A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League," a nonfiction account by journalist Ron Suskind that was published 10 years ago. The humanities council selected the book from more than 80 others after a lengthy vetting process aimed at finding a book that would appeal to teenagers and adults.

Although some localities in the state have long had reading programs to encourage community conversation, this is the first time the Maryland council has decided to try to get everyone in the state reading and discussing the same book.

"There is the well-documented decline of reading in the adult population, and that is a strong inspiration for communities to do this," said Andrea Lewis, who is managing the project for the council. "The other thought is that it really is a great way to get people talking within their community. And it is part of our initiative to generate discussion around the state about race and race relations," during the 40th anniversary year of the assassination of civil rights leader the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

High schools throughout the state have made the book required reading. At Montgomery College, Esther Schwartz-McKinzie, director of the Paul Peck Humanities Institute, said students and faculty members will read the book this fall and discuss it in classes, small groups and other settings.

The community college's three campus libraries, in Germantown, Rockville and Takoma Park, also are sponsoring community conversations about the book.

"At the college, we are very excited to have that," Schwartz-McKinzie said. "Reading used to be much more of a communal experience. People don't read for pleasure anymore."

The book has special resonance at Montgomery College, where many students are the first in their families to attend college, are foreign born and, in many instances, are struggling financially.

"We are dedicating our lives to the social issues that underlie the book, providing equity in education," Schwartz-McKinzie said.

Jennings, an African American who was raised by his mother, Barbara, a U.S. Agriculture Department employee, spoke to a rapt audience at the college last week.

He described the complex decision-making when he was 16 that eventually led him to allow Suskind to examine his life for what was to be a single article in the Wall Street Journal. The first article led to a second and eventually the book.