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.

2022-2023 One Book Selection

The 2022-2023 One Book selection is Jennifer De Leon’s essay collection, White Space: Culture, Race, & Writing, winner of the Juniper Prize and published by UMass Press in 2021. Born in the Boston area to Guatemalan parents, Jennifer De Leon is an author, editor, speaker, and creative writing professor. She is the editor of Wise Latinas: Writers on Higher Education, an anthology that won an International Latino Book Award. She served as the 2015–2016 Writer-in-Residence at the Boston Public Library, a 2016–2017 City of Boston Artist-in-Residence, and the second recipient of the We Need Diverse Books grant. An Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Framingham State University and faculty member in the MFA Program at Bay Path University, she has published prose in over a dozen literary journals, including Ploughshares, Iowa Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and more.

Hispanic Heritage Month - Listen! A Conversation with One Book Author Jennifer De Leon

As a freshman in college, Jenn was not prepared for the academic, social, cultural, and institutional differences she would confront at her private liberal arts college in New England which she says resembled a country club. In this heartfelt, honest talk, Jennifer De Leon describes moments of conflict, roadblocks really, that she experienced as an undergraduate who dreamed of being a writer — roadblocks that she ultimately turned into stepping-stones. An inspirational keynote geared toward first-gen and students of color, but really for anyone who has ever faced adversity in any way, it concludes with a reading from her award-winning essay collection, White Space: Essays on Culture, Race, & Writing and an audience Q & A.

She is the 2022-2023 BHCC One Book Program author.

Upcoming Events

Join us on Thursday, April 27, 2023 at 1 p.m. 

Welcome by Dr. Naoko Akai-Dennis, Assistant Professor, English Department and the One Book Coordinator

Moderator, Carolina Rojas-Pion, Assistant Director of Dual Enrollment and Early College for Chelsea High School

Sponsored by the Division of Humanities and Learning Communities in collaboration with the BHCC One Book Program

Join by Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89675055585?pwd=TXBOODZ3MkVremw0eTg5K2lkak9tdz09

Meeting ID: 896 7505 5585

Passcode: 037851

Dial by location: +1 646 876 9923 US (New York) 

Meeting ID: 896 7505 5585

Passcode: 037851