One City, One Book Author Visit
Written by admin, Oct 7, 2014, Comments Off
Courtesy Xochitl Mora,
Trials during war continue to be theme of program, books span the globe, time
For the seventh year, the Laredo Public Library’s One City, One Book (OCOB) program invited the entire community of Laredo to read, learn and share a common experience by reading a powerful, thought-provoking book by a modern-day author.
This year’s selection was The River Runs Salt, Runs Sweet: A Memoir of Visegrad, Bosnia, by Jasmina Dervisevic-Cesic.
The OCOB initiative will culminate with a visit by the author this weekend. Dervisevic-Cesic’s visit will start with an address at TAMIU on Friday, October 10. The next day, Saturday, October 11, the general public will be able to meet and greet Dervisevic-Cesic at a reception at 9:30 a.m. and hear her lecture at 10:30 a.m. at the Laredo Public Library Multi-Purpose Room, 1120 East Calton Road.
“At 15, Jasmina Dervisevic had typical teenage problems. How could she talk to the boy she liked without making a fool of herself? Would she find the right shoes to wear to the high-school party? She had heard the old stories about World War II, when neighbor turned against neighbor, but she seldom gave them a second thought. That had all happened ages ago, and she was living in a modern Yugoslavian city where Serbs and Muslims were close friends. Then Yugoslavia began to break apart. The national army turned its guns against its own people, and Jasmina had to grow up fast.” Review from Amazon.com
This book was selected by Texas A&M International University as the Global Read for the freshman class. This joint program is funded in part by Humanities Texas.
“It is important that we take the lessons we learn from the stories selected for One City, One Book and apply them to very real problems in our community,” said Soliz. “By understanding the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual toll the author faced, we can better appreciate our freedoms of expression and right to read books of any subject. This is just one more benefit of reading: becoming aware of the problems and challenges in the world around us and finding solutions to them.”
Everyone in the community is invited to stop by the Laredo Public Library to check out a copy of The River Runs Salt, Runs Sweet. The book is also for sale at Books-A-Million bookstore.
For more information about One City, One Book, call Hilary Frazier at the Laredo Public Library at 795-2400, x 2252, or visit the Laredo Public Library website at www.laredolibrary.org.
