Southside Buddhist: Essays by Ira Sukrungruang will be the featured selection for NMU's 2020 Diversity Common Reader Program (DCRP). Students can obtain free copies at the start of the winter semester at the Multicultural Education and Resource Center in C.B. Hedgcock. Faculty members are encouraged to incorporate the text into a class, organize an event related to the book or facilitate a book discussion.
Southside Buddhist: Essays builds off of themes present in Sukrungruang's memoir Talk Thai: The Adventures of Buddhist Boy, and his poetry collection In Thailand It Is Night. The book details his experiences in Chicago, where he battles depression and suicide, causes mischeif with men in his working-class neighborhood and marries a Caucasian woman.
The Diversity Common Reader Program (DCRP) is a semester-long initiative focused on embracing diversity by exposing a new cultural or ethnic idea at a campus-wide level. For information on the Common Reader book launch, contact DCRP committee co-chair Lynn Domina at ldomina@nmu.edu or the Office of Diversity and Inclusion at diversity@nmu.edu.