The One Book program engages our college community in a dialogue about a common text that addresses a current issue. Students, faculty and staff share the experience of reading a text and examining its effects upon our community. Faculty who incorporate the text into their curriculum receive copies for their students. Programming is provided throughout the year to continue the discussions that begin in the classrooms of various disciplines. The culminating event happens each spring semester when the college invites the author of the chosen text to visit, interact and speak with our student body. The One Book program promotes literacy in an innovative way and creates interest within a subject that students may be encouraged to pursue and advocate for in the future. The program invites analysis, promotes critical thinking, and encourages positive change.
2023-2024 One Book Selection
Bunker Hill Community College’s 2023-2024 One Book selection is Caroline Kautsire’s memoir Some Kind of Girl: An African Girl Looking for America.
Born in Malawi, Africa, Caroline Kautsire is a Boston-based author, public speaker, and educator. She mentors at Brown University for the Women’s Launch Pad Program and teaches English composition and literature at Boston-area schools, including Bay State College and Bunker Hill Community College. Kautsire is the author of the books, What Kind of Girl? and Some Kind of Girl, both of which explore contemporary issues of gender, race, class, language and sexuality. In 2020, she was selected by the town of Weymouth to recite her poetry for the Black Lives Matter Peace Vigil honoring the passing of George Floyd. She has also been a keynote speaker for the Elite Foundation's African Young Scholars Summit for The Elite Foundation. Ms. Kautsire has appeared as a notable author on WCVB Chronicle, CBS Boston, and her work has been featured in The Boston Globe and The Patriot Ledger.
Synopsis from the publisher
Some Kind of Girl recounts the story of Caroline, a Malawian girl, who, after facing the impossibility of following both African and Western roles and standards for women in her adolescent years, finally moves to America to escape the Malawian traditions she still struggles inwardly to understand. Upon arriving in America, Caroline discovers that the America she saw on television was not an accurate representation of the life she lives in Boston. Caroline’s process of self-discovery awakens her to different kinds of insecurities about gender, race, class, language and sexuality. As Caroline grapples with the tension between maintaining her well-cultured Malawian persona and fitting into an American society, she discovers her desire to become a film actress shifting to a professional life she never saw coming: teaching and writing. Meanwhile, Caroline must face the complexities of the American immigration system as she struggles to maintain legal status as a working student. With the guidance of mentors and, sometimes, with misdirection from wild friends, Caroline takes risks to earn money and respect in America in order to be the kind of girl who successfully seizes the American dream, abandoning her home country, Malawi.