Don’t “Bowl Alone”
An invitation to our new Reading Group
By Marie Milner
In his widely-acclaimed book Bowling Alone, Robert D. Putnam laments the loss of community in the United States. As we all know, the San Jose Area Writing Project is the very antithesis on that notion, and in fact, we promote community. In that spirit we have begun a reading group. We are meeting for the first time October 22, 2006 at Marie Milner’s house in Campbell, and we will be discussing Frank McCourt’s memoir Teacher Man. About 10 people are expected to attend this first meeting, mostly participants from this summer’s Invitational Summer Institute.
We hope to increase the number of teacher consultants who can join us the next time we meet, and so are extending an invitation to all San Jose Area Writing Project teachers. Our plan is to read books in which we celebrate authors and the writing process. With this in mind, I chose Teacher Man for the first group meeting, because although the book is chiefly about McCourt’s more than 30 years in public schools in New York City, he also discusses the seeds of his desire to become the writer he has in fact become. His success began with the publication of Angela’s Ashes, a book many of you may have already read.
I hope people will recommend other books that teachers/writers might especially enjoy, and I’m hoping the reading will inspire some writing from participants. Perhaps we can inspire some writing for the very publication you are now reading.
If you are interested, please contact me at mariemilner@yahoo.com.