National Endowment tor the Arts READER'S GUIDE MuseumandLibrary To me, imagination is the closest thing we have to compassion. To have compassion you have to be able to imagine the lives of others, including people who are suffering, and people whose lives are affected by us." —AMY TAN Preface Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club is itself a joyful study in luck. An intricately patterned novel whose author thought she was writing a short-story collection, it is also a mother-daughter saga by a writer whose own mother wanted her to be anything but a writer. Published in 1989 by an unknown first-time writer, The Joy Luck Club became a reviewers' darling and then an international best seller.The novel tells the story of new waves of immigrants who are changing and enriching America. The Big Read is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts designed to revitalize the role of literary reading in American popular culture. Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America, a 2004 NEA report, identified a critical decline in reading for pleasure among American adults.The Big Read aims to address this issue directly by providing citizens with the opportunity to read and discuss a single book within their communities. A great book combines enlightenment with enchantment. It awakens our imagination and enlarges our humanity. It can even offer harrowing insights that somehow console and comfort us. Whether you're a regular reader already or a nonreader making up for lost time, thank you for joining the Big Read. 2^^'< Dana Gioia Chairman, National Endowment for the Arts Amy Tan, 2003 "Now the woman was old. And she had a daughter who grew up speaking only English and swallowing more Coca-Cola than sorrow. For a long time now the woman had wanted to give her daughter the single swan feather and tell her, 'This feather may look worthless, but it comes from afar and carries with it all my good intentions.' And she waited, year after year, until she could tell her daughter this in perfect American English:' — from The Joy Luck Club 2 THE BIG READ • National Endowment for the Arts Introduction to the Novel Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club was written as a collection of short stories, but the tales of memory, fate, and self-discovery interlock to create a colorful mural that reads like a novel. All four sections open with a Chinese fable, then shift to the stories of four pairs of mothers and daughters. The tone switches from mundane to magical to the darkly humorous. The tales, particularly those set in China, are by turns beautiful and harrowing. The first story begins two months after Jing-mei "June" Woo loses her mother, Suyuan, to a brain aneurysm. Her mothers best friends — Junes "aunties" — invite June to take Suyuan's place at their mah jong table so she can sit at the East, "where everything begins." Suyuan Woo had invented the original Joy Luck Club in China, before the Japanese invaded the city of Kweilin. They had used the group to help shield themselves from the harshness of war. As they feasted on whatever they could find, they transformed their stories of hardship into ones of good fortune. After Suyuan reaches the United States, she resurrects the Joy Luck Club with three other Chinese emigres, and the four reinvent themselves in San Francisco's Chinatown. These four mothers hope the mix of "American circumstances with Chinese character" will give their daughters better lives. In each section of the novel, June recounts her late mother's fantastic tales on evenings after "every bowl had been washed and the Formica table had been wiped down twice." Every time Suyuan tells her daughter about Kweilin, she invents a new ending. But one night she reveals the real ending — how she lost her twin daughters while fleeing the Japanese invasion: "Your father is not my first husband. You are not those babies." After her mother's death, June realizes that she had not fully understood her mother's past or her intentions. She journeys to China to discover what her mother had lost there. She is feverish to find out who she is, where she came from, and what future she can create — so she can finally join the Joy Luck Club. National Endowment for the Arts • THE BIG READ 3 Major Characters in the Novel Mothers Daughters SuyuanWbo Suyuan's story is told through her daughter. She was forced to leave her twin babies on the road in China while fleeing the Japanese invasion. Jing-mei "June" Woo June is a sensitive child whose mother wants her to become a piano prodigy. After learning the truth about her mothers past, she travels to China to find her lost sisters. An-mei Hsu At age nine, An-mei joins her widowed mother, who is exiled as a rich man's fourth wife. Her mother commits suicide. In the U.S., An- mei questions her faith when her youngest son drowns. Rose Hsu Jordan Timid Rose is overwhelmed by American choices, but she finds conviction in the midst of a bewildering divorce. Lindo Jong As a child, Lindo outwits her mother-in-law to escape her arranged marriage. Later, she brags about her American-born daughter but also longs for Waverly to notice their similarities. Waverly Jong A chess champion as a child, Waverly grows up to become a successful tax attorney. She worries about her mothers opinion of her white fiance. Ying-ying St Clair When her philandering husband dies, Ying-ying leaves her wealthy family and starts over as a shopgirl. She marries an American merchant and emigrates, but suffers from episodes of depression as an adult. Lena St. Clair Generous Lena shares her mothers powers of intuition, but remains powerless to act on them. The prickly division of household expenses reveals the impoverishment of her marriage. 4 THE BIG READ • National Endowment for the Arts Amy Tan (b. 1952) Amy Tan was born February 19, 1952, in Oakland, California. Her parents shared some of the dark history fictionalized in The Joy Luck Club. Her mother, Daisy, was born to a wealthy family and left Shanghai and a disastrous marriage right before the Communist takeover in 1949. She was forced to leave behind her three daughters. Tans father, John, a Baptist minister and electrical engineer, also fled the civil war in China. Tan and her two brothers were raised in Santa Clara, California. Tan was a good student. At age eight, her treatment of the theme "What the Library Means to Me" won her a transistor radio and mention in the Daisy Tan photographed by John Tan in Tientsin, China, 1 945 local newspaper. When Tan was 14, her brother Peter and her father died within seven months of each other, both from brain tumors. A neurosurgeon gave no explanation other than bad luck. This twin tragedy spurred Daisy Tan to hoist anchor and move the family to The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) forms, 1921. Chiang Kai-shek unites the Nationalists, 1928. 1930s The Long March helps Mao Tse- tung consolidate power, 1934-35. Japan launches a full-scale war with China, 1937. Nanking, the newly established capital of China, falls to Japan, December 13, 1937. Daisy Tan, age 8 (center) Hangzhou, China, c. 1924 National Endowment for the Arts • THE BIG READ 5 1940s Japan bombs Pearl Harbor. China and America form an alliance, 1941. The People's Republic of China is established. Daisy Tan boards the last boat safely out of Shanghai, 1949. The Tan family in Oakland, CA, the day after Amy's birth, 1952 Switzerland. After they returned to California, Tan was ready for college, where she eschewed her mothers wish for her to study medicine and studied literature instead. She met her husband, Lou DeMattei, on a blind date in Oregon while enrolled in one of the seven undergraduate institutions she attended. Tan followed him to San Jose, California, where she later earned an MA. in linguistics in 1973. While in a doctoral program in linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, Tan's best friend was murdered. Shocked by the event, Tan left school and started working with children as a language development consultant. Her love of reading reawakened in 1985, when she read many woman novelists for the first time, including Louise Erdrich and Maxine Hong Kingston. Tan settled into a lucrative business-writing career, but restlessness led her to a writing workshop. Her second story, "Waiting Between the Trees," was noticed by a literary agent. i 1950s Socialist realism becomes the popular artistic form, deemed most appropriate for the new republic. Amy Tan born in Oakland, California, 1952. Chairman Mao Zedong launches the Cultural Revolution. Bourgeoisie values and an older generation of artists and intellectuals are attacked and 3 million are killed. Amy Tan wins her first writing contest, 1960. Tan family moves to Montreux, Switzerland, 1968. 1970s Nixon is the first U.S. President to visit China, 1972. Maxine Hong Kingston publishes The Woman Warrior, 1975. Mao Zedong's death ends the Cultural Revolution; the "Gang of Four" take the fall for its chaos, 1977. Diplomatic ties established between China and America, 1979. 6 THE BIG READ • National Endowment for the Arcs Tan started The Joy Luck Club two years after her first trip to China with her mother in 1987, and she completed it in less than five months. The book stayed on the bestseller list for nine months and has been translated into 36 languages. Tan co-wrote the screenplay for the 1993 movie, and she and her husband appear in the movie as guests at the opening dinner party. Besides writing, she tours with the benefit cover band the Rock Bottom Remainders, which includes fellow writers Stephen King, James McBride, and Matt Groening. Her fifth novel, Saving Fish from Drowning, was published in 2005. Tan lives in northern California with her husband and dogs, Bubba and Lilli. 8-year-old Amy Tan wins essay contest, Santa Rosa, CA, 1 960 < [W]hen she was born, she sprang from me like a slippery fish, and has been swimming away ever since. All her life, I have watched her as though from another shore. And now I must tell her everything about my past. It is the only way to penetrate her skin and pull her to where she can be saved." — YING-YING ST. CLAIR in The Joy Luck Club Maya Lin's design for Vietnam Veterans Memorial is chosen by an NEA-funded design competition, 1982. Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor wins nine Oscars, the first feature film to show The Forbidden City, 1987. The Joy Luck Club is published, 1989. Breakthrough decade for Chinese-American fiction and movies. Tan publishes four more books. Amy Tan's essay "Mother Tongue" is chosen for Best American Essays, 1991. The Joy Luck Club, co-written by Amy Tan and Ronald Bass, is released as a feature film, 1 993. 2000s "Sagwa" becomes a PBS cartoon series for children, based on Tan's book, The Chinese Siamese Cat, 2000. Tan's fifth novel, Saving Fish from Drowning, is published, 2005. Sagwa National Endowment for the Arts • THE BIG READ 7 WorldWarlland San Francisco's Chinatown The War The Joy Luck Club is set in two places: China in the 1930s and 1940s and San Francisco's Chinatown from the 1960s through the 1980s. Since Chinatown was a haven within an isolated country, the experiences of Tan's fictionalized daughters differ sharply from their mothers' generation, which was displaced by war. The turn of the 20th-century hailed massive upheavals for China, with the end of the Imperial dynastic system and the opening of China to global influences. These changes led to civil wars between the Nationalists and the Communists. The leader of the Nationalist Party, or the Kuomintang, was Chiang Kai-shek, and Mao Tse-tung led the Communist Party. The Long March, a 6,000-mile-long retreat of the Red Army in 1934-35, enabled Mao to consolidate his power. (Survivors of the march are heroes to this day.) The Chinese peasantry was lifted by Mao's doctrine, which encouraged his soldiers to "not take a Mao Tse-tung single needle or a piece of thread from the masses" — masses often terrorized by the nationalist Kuomintang. The Nationalists, made strong by the need to combat Western hegemony, clashed with the Communists, who were strengthened by their appeal for the many rural poor. These two groups formed fragile alliances to fight a guerilla war against the waves of Japanese invaders. Although few in number, the Japanese gained control of major Chinese cities and coasts. As the United States entered World War II in 1941, the marriage of convenience between the Kuomintang and Communists against Japan was falling apart. The U.S. backed the Nationalists, although corruption among Kuomintang generals diverted supplies and information to the Japanese. This corruption and Honan Battlefront, China: The Mori Unit of the Japanese army pushes its way forward in the area North of the Yangtze River, 1 94 1 . political instability, coupled with the establishment of the People s Republic of China in 1949, drove many Chinese to emigrate. The Neighborhood These Chinese took the already well-worn route to California, which to this day retains the largest Chinese population in the United States. The Chinese still refer to San Francisco as "Old Gold Mountain," because the first wave of emigres had come through the Port of San Francisco at the start of the Gold Rush. They had formed tight networks and built "Little Shanghai," because exclusionary laws made it difficult for Asian immigrants to assimilate or gain citizenship. For decades the Exclusion Act of 1882 had limited imported labor. The World War II alliance between China and the United States became instrumental in repealing this and other exclusionary laws. The immigrant population slowly shifted from male sojourners to permanent citizens. Even though racial bias persisted in immigration law until at least 1965, families thrived in Chinatown, with San Francisco's Chinatown in 1945. its familiar Chinese customs, food, and merchandise. By the 1960s Chinatowns seedy intrigues existed only in movies, and it became an alluring tourist destination — an exotic island of a different culture in the middle of a major American city, complete with temples, fortune cookie factories, and, of course, Chinese restaurants. The famous Chinatown gate went up in 1970. Nine years later, diplomatic ties were reestablished between the two countries, making it easier for Chinese-American families to reunite. National Endowment for the Arts • THE BIG READ 9 An Interview with Amy Tan On August 7, 2006, Dana Gioia, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, interviewed Amy Tan at her home in Berkeley, California. An excerpt from their conversation follows. Dana Gioia: You were born in Oakland in a family where both parents had come from China. Were you raised bilingually? Amy Tan: Until the age of five, my parents spoke to me in Chinese or a combination of Chinese and English, but they didn't force me to speak Mandarin. In retrospect, this was sad, because they believed that my chance of doing well in America hinged on my fluency in English. Later, as an adult, I wanted to learn Chinese. Now I make an effort when I am with my sisters, who don't speak English that well. It's such a wonderful part of me that is coming back, to try and speak that language. W : *■* «#* i M\ .- r silfl [ wi- ?^n v-- «^ Tr^^ 1 Amy Tan with her dogs, Bubba and Lilli DG: Would you explain the special symbolism of the your title, The Joy Luck Club? AT: I don't think joy and luck are specific to Chinese culture. Everybody wants joy and luck, and we all have our different notions about from where that luck comes. Many Chinese stores and restaurants have the word 'luck' in there. The idea is that, just by using the word 'luck' in names of things, you can attract more of it. Our beliefs in luck are related to hope. Some | THE BIG READ • National Endowment for the Arts people who are without almost any hope in a situation still cling to luck. DG: This is a great book about the American immigrant experience. Did you think about that theme consciously when writing the book? AT: If I thought about this at all, it was the immigrant experience according to my mother and father. This influenced the way I took their immigrant story — the things that I rejected, the things that I thought were American. The basic notion of this country is that with self-determination, you can create who you are. That, in turn, allows an amazing freedom to a writer, because freedom is also creativity. DG: Why is reading important? AT: In childhood, reading provided a refuge for me, especially during difficult times. It provided me with the idea that I could find an ending that was different from what was happening at the time. Imagination is the closest thing that we have to compassion and empathy. When you read about the life of another person, you are part of their lives for that moment. This is so vital, especially today, when we have so much misunderstanding across cultures and even within our own communities. DG: What did you read as a child? AT: I read every fairy tale I could lay my hands on at the public library. It was a wonderful world to escape to. DG: Do you feel that your early love of fairy tales expressed itself in The Joy Luck Club, or did you look on its content as realistic? AT: As a minister, my father told us many stories from the Bible that were like fairy tales. Those stories can reflect very strong beliefs that Christians have, but they also have all the qualities that are wonderful about fairy tales. Life is larger than we think it is. Certain events can happen that we don't understand, and we can take it as faith in a particular area, or as superstition, or as a fairytale, or something else. Its wonderful to come to a situation and think that it can be all kinds of possibilities. I look at what's happened to me as a published writer and, sometimes, I think it's a fairytale. National Endowment for the Arts • THE BIG READ ! f Tan's Style and Her Other Works Saving Fish >m Drowning "So easy to read!" was Daisy Tan's reaction to her daughter Amy's stories. Tan's style is deliberately transparent and neat. Her writing captures the different "Englishes" with which she grew up — her mother's "broken English," her own "watered-down" translation to English from Chinese, and the "simple" English used by the generations to communicate with each other. Tan crystallizes these forms to capture Chinese imagery and rhythms. She strives to give accurate voice to the characters, expressing the immigrant experience by borrowing the unique characteristics of the melded languages. Tan's much-anthologized essay "Mother Tongue" illuminates how she developed this unique writing style. The themes of The Joy Luck Club include family, heritage, assimilation, and fate. Many of Tan's characters struggle to reconcile American individuality and freedom of choice with Chinese wisdom and respect for tradition. Tan excavates the bones of human relationships through singular characters, quick pacing, and sharp storytelling. Tan transforms family history to serve "emotional memory." As depicted in The Joy Luck Club, her grandmother was a fourth wife, a concubine who ended her life by swallowing an overdose of opium. Tan's mother was the small child who witnessed the suicide. Tan has said, "When I place that memory in a fictive home, it becomes imagination [. . .] It has the power to change my memory of the way things really happened." I 2 THE BIG READ • National Endowment for the Arts The Opposite of Fate: Memoirs of a Writing Life (2003) is a collection of essays, speeches, and articles. Here Tan writes that her mother told her, "For many years, I carried this shame on my back, and my mother suffered, because she couldn't say anything to anybody." Tan's joy-luck stories grew out of the will to give her mother back her voice. Tan's first four novels feature generations learning to understand one another and the clash between cultures. In The Kitchen Gods Wife (1991), Winnie tells her daughter Pearl the stories of war-torn China in the 1940s. The Moon Lady (1992) and The Chinese Siamese Cat (1994) are illustrated children's books. The Moon Lady retells Ying-ying St. Clair's story of the Moon Festival from The Joy Luck Club for children. The second book, inspired by Tan's favorite cat, was later turned into "Sagwa," a children's cartoon series for PBS. Ghosts are a prevalent symbol in Tan's third novel, The Hundred Secret Senses (1995). Olivia, the first-generation American protagonist, meets Kwan, her Chinese step-sister, who can see "At the end of the [CliffsNotes] booklet was a list of questions. I read one: 'Which daughter in the book is most like Amy Tan? Why?' What luck. This very question was often asked of me in interviews, and I had never known what to say. Here in my quaking hands, just one page turn away, was the definitive answer." —AMY TAN from The Opposite of Fate "yin people" — or ghosts. In The Bonesetters Daughter (2001), the heroine translates her Alzheimer s- afflicted mother's journal in an attempt to understand their shared past. Most of the action in Saving Fish from Drowning (2005) takes place in the present as 12 American tourists travel to Burma. The narrator, Bibi, is a travel-agent ghost. True to Tan's style, the depiction of the characters' lives is deeply convincing, as if channeled from the chorus of many ghosts. Tan's recent work breaks from the theme of mothers and daughters, but her gift of storytelling — passed on from her mother — endures. At the peak of her career, Tan's deceptively simple handiwork lasts, ensuring her work will be shared and enjoyed between new American generations and around the world. National Endowment for the Arts • THE BIG READ | 3 Discussion Questions Which story is your favorite and why? Do you prefer the stories set in China or California? How are the notions of balance (yin and yang) and energy flow (feng shut) an important theme in the novel? Does the Chinese notion of balance and flow translate to the characters' lives in America? The Joy Luck Club was written as a collection of short stories. Is the order important? Could this have been told as a single story? What would that change? 4. In your experience, does the book reinforce or shatter stereotypes of Chinese culture? 5. By telling a story from the perspective of Chinese immigrants and first- generation Americans, what does the book reveal about American culture? 6. Tan has said that she wishes to break from "the ghetto of ethnic literature." Does The Joy Luck Club cross from the ethnic to the universal? 7. Although June is not sure why her mother gives her the jade necklace, she assumes it's because of her humiliation by Waverly Is she right? Movie stills from the 1993 movie. The Joy Luck Club. | 4 THE BIG READ • National Endowment for the Arts 8. How do the struggles of the daughters mirror the tragedies of their mothers? What does this suggest about the relationships between parents and children? 9. Ying-ying sees herself as both a tiger and a ghost. Why does she use these characterizations? How would Lena? How would they be different? 10. The "broken English" of the mothers is often more colorful than the "perfect English" of their daughters. How does the way the mothers choose to express themselves reflect their identities? What is lost in translation? 'They see that joy and luck do not mean the same to their daughters, that to these closed American-born minds 'joy luck' is not a word, it does not exist." — JING-MEI "JUNE" WOO in The Joy Luck Club 1 1 . How do the mothers decide to use their mah jong winnings? Does this show assimilation? Why, or why not? 12. The ritual of mah jong is central to the story. What rituals do American women perform that reflect culture and identity? If you want to read some of Amy Tan's favorite books, you might enjoy: Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre (1847) J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye ( 1 95 1 ) Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita (1955) Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera (1988) If you want to read books that influenced Amy Tan as a storyteller, you might enjoy: Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts (1975) Louise Erdich's Love Medicine ( 1 983) Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits ( 1 985) National Endowment for the Arts • THE BIG READ | 5 Additional Resources Books by Amy Tan The Kitchen God's Wife, 1991 The Moon Lady, 1992 The Chinese Siamese Cat, 1994 The Hundred Secret Senses, 1995 The Bonesetters Daughter, 2001 The Opposite of Fate, 2003 Saving Fish from Drowning, 2005 Other Works about Chinese History and Culture "Becoming American: The Chinese Experience." A Bill Moyers Special from PBS. (See www.pbs.org/ becomingamericanl for more information.) Chang, Iris. The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II. New York: Penguin, 1998. Chang, June. Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China. 1991. New York: Touchstone, 2003. Zee, A. Swallowing Clouds: A Playful Journey Through Chinese Culture, Language, and Cuisine. 1990. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002. Amy Tan, 2005 Web sites Amy Tan's Web site www. amy tan. net Library of Congress: Overview of Chinatown http: I /memory, loc.gov.80811 ammemlaward99lcubhtmll theme2.html Academy of Achievement www. achievemen t. o rgl autodoclpageltanOpro- 1 | 6 THE BIG READ • National Endowment for the Arts «9 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS . .INSTITUTE ol „ .. MuseurriandLibrary SERVICES gu Am MIDWEST &£7^/Afl7 The National Endowment for the Arts is a public agency dedicated to supporting excellence in the arts — both new and established — bringing the arts to all Americans, and providing leadership in arts education. Established by Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government, the Endowment is the nations largest annual hinder of the arts, bringing great art to all 50 states, including rural areas, inner cities, and military bases. The Institute of Museum and Library Services is the primary source of federal support for the nations 122,000 libraries and 17,500 museums. The Institutes mission is to create strong libraries and museums that connect people to information and ideas. The Institute works at the national level and in coordination with state and local organizations to sustain heritage, culture, and knowledge; enhance learning and innovation; and support professional development. Arts Midwest connects people throughout the Midwest and the world to meaningful arts opportunities, sharing creativity, knowledge, and understanding across boundaries. One of six non-profit regional arts organizations in the United States, Arts Midwest's history spans more than 25 years. Boeing is the world's leading aerospace company and the largest combined manufacturer of commercial jetliners and military aircraft. As a leading contractor to the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), Boeing works together with its DoD customers to provide U.S. Armed Forces and U.S. allies around the world with fully integrated high-performing systems solutions and support. Additional support for the Big Read has also been provided by the WK. Kellogg Foundation in partnership with Community Foundations of America. Works Cited Excerpts from THE JOY LUCK CLUB by Amy Tan, copyright © 1 989 by Amy Tan. Used by permission of G.E Putnam's Sons, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Tan, Amy. Interview. Salon. 12 November 1995 . The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a "Writing Life. New York, Penguin, 2003. Acknowledgments David Kipen, NEA Director of Literature Writer: Maryrose Flanigan for the National Endowment for the Arts, with preface by Dana Gioia Series Editor: Erika Koss for the National Endowment for the Arts Image Editor: Liz Edgar Hernandez for the National Endowment for the Arts Graphic Design: Fletcher Design/Washington, D.C. Image Credits Cover Portrait: John Sherffius for the Big Read. Inside Front Coven © Christopher Felver/CORBIS. Page 1: Dana Gioia, image by Vance Jacobs. Page 2: Book cover used by permission of G.R Putnam's Sons, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Swan feather, Geoff Brighding/Getty Images. Page 4: © Royalty-Free/Corbis. Page 5: Courtesy of Amy Tan. Page 6: The Tan Family, courtesy of Amy Tan; Nixon in China, National Archives and Records Administration. Page 7: Amy Tan, courtesy of Amy Tan; Sagwa, © 2000 - CineGroupe Sagwa Inc. Page 8: Mao Tse-tung, National Archives and Records Administration; Honan Battlefront, © Bettmann/CORBIS. Page 9: © Bettmann/CORBIS. Page 10: Courtesy of Pat Boyd Photography. Page 12: Book cover of A Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan, courtesy of Vintage Books, an imprint of The Knopf Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York; all other book covers used by permission of G.R Putnam's Sons, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Page 14: Photofest. Page 16: © Marc Brasz/Corbis/Corbis. This publication is published by: National Endowment for the Arts • 1 1 00 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. • Washington, D.C. 20506-000 1 (202) 682-5400 • www.nea.gov www.NEABigRead.org sm mmrn w 'When you read about the life of another person, you are part of their lives for that moment. This is so vital, especially today, when we have so much misunderstanding across cultures and even within our own communities." —AMY TAN NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS The Big Read is an initiative of the National Endowment American culture. The NEA presents The Big Read in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services and in cooperation with Arts Midwest. The Big Read brings together partners across the country to encourage reading for pleasure and enlightenment. A great nation deserves great art. v.. Museum,odLibrary The Big Read for military communities is made possible b) 0£F&A/£Z