Building on last year’s success, the First Year Reading Program has expanded its program for faculty and staff. Starting Monday, June 16, 15 small groups will meet throughout the summer to discuss New York University law professor Kenji Yoshino’s acclaimed book, “Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights.” All participants will receive a free copy of the book.
Yoshino defines “covering” as downplaying traits society frowns upon, to better blend into the mainstream. For Yoshino, that meant a lifetime of denying his identity as an Asian and a homosexual.
Published in 2006, “Covering” was widely praised by both by academics and book critics. O Magazine called the book “warmly personal, elegantly written, and threaded with memorable images” while the Chicago Sun-Times praised “Covering” as “a sober, rigorous and touching treatise on behalf of the disenfranchised that comes not a moment too soon . . . In times to come, this book could be viewed as a seminal work.”
Legal scholar Harold Hongju Koh, former U.S. assistant secretary of state, calls “Covering” a classic.
“This stunning book introduces three faces of the remarkable Kenji Yoshino: a writer of poetic beauty; a soul of rare reflectivity and decency; and a brilliant lawyer and scholar, passionately committed to uncovering human rights,” Koh says. “Like W.E.B. DuBois’ ‘The Souls of Black Folk’ and Betty Friedan’s ‘The Feminine Mystique,’ this book fearlessly blends gripping narrative with insightful analysis to further the cause of human emancipation.”
Sessions will meet the week of June 16, July 14 and Aug. 11. To register, visit Human Resources.