Oswego Reading Initiative (ORI)
2011 EOP Summer Program
Students in the upcoming 2011 EOP Summer Program will be provided with one of two Oswego Reading Initiative (ORI) books as their summer texts. The choices include the first ORI selection (2002), Haven by Ruth Gruber. The second choice is the most recent ORI selection (2011), Bonobo Handshake by Vanessa Woods.
Read the summaries of both selections. After reading these, you will be asked to make a choice as to your preference. Please understand that your preference will be considered, but not guaranteed. You will need to use your SUNY Oswego LakerApps sign in to access the survey below.
Haven by Ruth Gruber
"Haven tells the story of nearly one thousand Jewish and other refugees who came to Fort Ontario in Oswego, New York as guests of President Franklin Roosevelt during World War II. Ruth Gruber, an experienced journalist, who was working for the Department of the Interior during the war, tells the story of the immigrants-their arrival, their stay at Fort Ontario, and what happened to them after leaving Fort Ontario in 1946. The story is important to many in our local community who actually experienced it. The themes in the book are as relevant today as they were nearly [sixty-five] years ago." --2002 ORI Committee
Additional information for Haven can be found at http://www.oswego.edu/alumni/publications/magazine/haven.pdf.
Bonobo Handshake by Vanessa Woods
Bonobo Handshake is Vanessa Woods' autobiographical narrative of finding herself and her identity, while also trying to turn a hasty marriage, to a man she's not certain she loves, into something meaningful and lasting. Woods, an Australian research scientist, follows her American husband Brian, a primatologist with a PhD. from Harvard, to the Congo to study the bonobo, an endangered simian species closely related to chimpanzees, that share 98.7% of our DNA. Their goal, by studying chimps and bonobos, is to find out what makes us human. For this, they must travel to Lola, a national forest and bonobo preserve in the Congo. Outside the gates of Lola though, the Congo still reels from European colonialism and decades more exploitation from the West. Resource rich with gold, oil, diamonds, and other valuable deposits, war and genocide afflicts the Congo as the people and the nation try to come into their own. Woods graphically depicts the atrocities of war in the Congo, including cannibalism, rape and female genital mutilation, and the stories of survivors, those she works with at Lola, in an attempt to understand the violence and suffering humans are capable of causing one another.
-Phil Goodwin
Additional information for Bonobo Handshake can be found at http://www.bonobohandshake.com/?page_id=19
