In the summer of 2021, for the second time, the Summer Tales Book Club gathered students virtually in Rutgers-New Brunswick to take short mental breaks from their summer session studies. #SummerTales is a three-month long program first offered online in the summer of 2020 and renewed in 2021. As a virtual reading club, it focuses on reading poems and short stories and discussing them in a forum with fellow students enrolled in summer courses.
Designed from the start as “born virtual,” so to speak, the non-credit course was delivered in Canvas from June 1 to August 18. While in 2020 the program focused on an ongoing discussion of three short stories, this summer, in response to a renewed interest in poetry, four poems were offered in addition to two new short stories. A group of New Brunswick librarians and graduate students teamed up to facilitate the discussions.
In addition to the benefits from an instant online community, the exposure to Rutgers Librarie
In the summer of 2021, for the second time, the Summer Tales Book Club gathered students virtually in Rutgers-New Brunswick to take short mental breaks from their summer session studies. #SummerTales is a three-month long program first offered online in the summer of 2020 and renewed in 2021. As a virtual reading club, it focuses on reading poems and short stories and discussing them in a forum with fellow students enrolled in summer courses.
Designed from the start as “born virtual,” so to speak, the non-credit course was delivered in Canvas from June 1 to August 18. While in 2020 the program focused on an ongoing discussion of three short stories, this summer, in response to a renewed interest in poetry, four poems were offered in addition to two new short stories. A group of New Brunswick librarians and graduate students teamed up to facilitate the discussions.
In addition to the benefits from an instant online community, the exposure to Rutgers Libraries via supplementary material from RUL also empowered students with valuable library research skills. During the summer they became more familiar with many resources and services the Libraries offer remotely, including finding additional reading material with QuickSearch, using LibGuides, and finding research help.
Among the various live events, two guest authors visited Summer Tales virtually. After an inspiring conversation with Joyce Carol Oates in 2020, this summer authors Carmen Maria Machado and Natalie Díaz were the guests for an hour-long conversation each. Open to the public, the two well-attended events were moderated by graduate specialist Nicholas Allred, PhD candidate at the English Department, based on questions submitted by participants upon registration.
Our guest on June 23, Carmen Maria Machado, is an American short story author and essayist. She is the author of two books: Her Body and Other Parties, a short story collection, and In the Dream House, a memoir on her experience in an abusive queer relationship, published in 2019. In Summer Tales, leading up to Machado’s talk, students read and discussed “Eight Bites” from Her Body and Other Parties, a short story about a woman who struggles with her body image and eventually undergoes gastric bypass surgery. Students were most fascinated by the relationships in the main character’s life. Machado gave insight during the event about the mother-daughter relationship at play and the chorus role of the narrator’s sisters. She also spoke about bodily transformation and her personal relationship to the story.
The second open session discussed poetry with Natalie Díaz as our guest on July 14th. Born and raised in the Fort Mojave Indian Village in Needles, California, she is an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Tribe. Most recently, she is the 2021 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Postcolonial Love Poem. Díaz’s work focuses on the intersection of identity, language, and the impact of these ideas on the individual. The Summer Tales discussion of Díaz’s “My Brother at 3 A.M.” from her book of poetry When My Brother Was an Aztec has centered around form and language, two aspects of poetry which are of particular importance to the poet. The one-hour conversation was based on four poems read by Díaz––”My Brother at 3 A.M.,” “Why I Hate Raisins,” “Manhattan is a Lenape Word,” and “Run and Gun”––as well as questions submitted by over 380 registrants. Natalie Díaz has very generously allowed us to share our conversation with her online. Two ASL interpreters were present, switching off at 15-minute intervals, at both events.
Other than reading, Summer Tales also encourages creativity in all areas. The Summer Tales Creative Contest produced some exceptional results, such as Aaradhana Natarajan’s essay on Joyce Carol Oates last year. This year’s best works showed an incredible connection with the text, such as a book talk video by Harmony Birch on one of the short stories, or proved an extremely creative use of resources, as in the 3D image created by Alissa Renales. Both Harmony and Alissa also participated in the program as SC&I student assistants.
A collaboration between New Brunswick Libraries and the Division of Continuing Studies, Summer Tales Book Club was brought to you by Books We Read, which was launched by Judit Ward as a pilot recreational reading initiative in the physical Chang Science Library in Summer 2019. The pages are hosted on the Rutgers WordPress site–– viewed 10,465 times since its inception––featuring blog posts written by librarians and students affiliated with the program. In addition to checking out the LibGuides Summer Tales 2020, Summer Tales 2021, and Poetry, everyone is invited to read some of the Summer Tales-related posts.
-Submitted by Judit Ward and Nicholas Allred
Harmony Birch and Alissa Renales also contributed to the article
