Great River Regional Library is excited as One Book | One Minnesota, the statewide book club, has its second book announced. The program asks Minnesotans to read a common title and come together to reflect and discuss. The summer title for the program is A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota, edited by Sun Yung Shin.
A Good Time for the Truth, published in 2016 by the Minnesota Historical Society Press, is a series of essays in which sixteen of Minnesota’s best writers provide a range of perspectives on what it is like to live as a Native person or a person of color in Minnesota. With unflinching generosity, these authors take readers into their lives, sharing experiences that we all must understand if we are to come together in real relationships.
As the authors of A Good Time for the Truth confront and consider the realities that lie beneath the numbers, this book provides an important tool to those who want to be part of closing those gaps. Editor Sun Yung Shin writes in the introduction: “These essays…are intended to enlarge our understanding of, and deepen our connections to, one another. These writers are here to feed our spirits, if we let them. We can read their stories and leave each one with a deeper, more complex understanding of how race and culture are lived in Minnesota – and better prepared for the conversations and changes ahead.”
During the summer months, you are invited to take part in reading the selected novel together. A statewide virtual discussion with the editor, Sun Yung Shin, will be held in August. A Good Time for the Truth is available on multiple platforms. Readers can access the digital book for free on Ebooks Minnesota for ten weeks, until August 23.
Looking for more? Find resources and details at www.thefriends.org/onebook
One Book | One Minnesota is presented by The Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library, as the Minnesota Center for the Book, in partnership with State Library Services. Program partners also include Council of Regional Public Library System Administrators, Minitex (a joint program of the University of Minnesota and the Minnesota Office of Higher Education), the Minnesota Department of Education, and Minnesota Historical Society Press. This program is made possible in part by the State of Minnesota through a grant to the Minnesota Center for the Book through the Minnesota Department of Education. Great River Regional Library is participating in this opportunity to bring unity in central Minnesota.
