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One Book, One U 2024

<b><i>If I Survive You</i>, by Jonathan Escoffery</b>

This year's One Book, One U selection is If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery.

One Book, One U Common Reading Program

The One Book, One U program selects a book for each Spring semester to provide a shared educational experience in our university community.  Find information on upcoming events as well as research resources, dicussion guides, and more!

<b>Pick up a copy of the book</b>!

Visit Richter Library's Access Services desk to receive a free print copy of the One Book, One U selection, while supplies last!

Find a copy of the book in a library!

If you are a member of the UM community, use the links below to get access to the ebook and audio book:
If you are a member of the South Florida community, check your local library to find a copy of the ebook available for check out.

Events

We are still planning events for Spring 2023.  Please check back for updates.  Find the full list of events on the One Book, One U website.  If you are planning an event related to If I survive you, please feel free to let us know about here: https://forms.gle/nk7zYSGQ6Sbwvbu38

 

<b>SAVE THE DATE: Spring 2024 Author Event</b>

Jonathan Escoffery will be speaking in person at UM!
Save the date!
Thursday, Feb. 15, 2024, 6pm

Databases

Search for research based on themes in If I survive you.  Most resources focus on sociology, gender studies, and related fields.
  • ProQuest Research Library
    ProQuest Research Library provides in-depth coverage of the top 150 core academic subject, including 5,060 titles -over 3,600 in full text- from 1971 forward. It features a highly-respected, diversified mix of scholarly journals, trade publications, magazines, and newspapers.
  • Sociological Abstracts
    Sociological Abstracts indexes and abstracts research literature published worldwide in journals and other serial publications.Social Planning/Policy Development (SOPODA) is included as a subfile, providing additional literature on policy issues addressing violence, abuse, housing, the environment and other social issues.
  • Nexis Uni
    Nexis Uni™ features more than 15,000 news, business and legal sources from LexisNexis®—including U.S. Supreme Court decisions dating back to 1790—with an intuitive interface that offers quick discovery across all content types, personalization features such as Alerts and saved searches and a collaborative workspace with shared folders and annotated documents.
  • Refugee Health Information Network
  • Sociological Abstracts
    Sociological Abstracts indexes and abstracts research literature published worldwide in journals and other serial publications.Social Planning/Policy Development (SOPODA) is included as a subfile, providing additional literature on policy issues addressing violence, abuse, housing, the environment and other social issues.
  • CultureGrams
    CultureGrams is a reference for concise and reliable cultural information on the countries of the world. The database provides up-to-date country reports on 200+ cultures of the world, all 50 United States, and the Canadian provinces, that go beyond mere facts and figures to deliver a one-of-a-kind perspective on daily life and culture, including the background, customs, and lifestyles of the world's people.
  • America: History and Life
    America: History and Life abstracts and indexes journals and dissertations on the history of the United States and Canada.
  • Gender Watch
    GenderWatch indexes and provides the full-text of articles in 175 publications that focus on the impact of gender across a broad spectrum of subject areas. GenderWatch contains archival material, in some cases as far back as the 1970's with additional archival material continually added, making this the repository of historical perspective on the evolution of the  women's movement and the changes in gender roles and understandings over the last fifteen to twenty years.

UM Libraries Specialists

UM Instructional Designers

Want more ideas and activities?  Reach out to the Learning Innovation & Faculty Engagement team at Academic Technologies!  Contact them at life@miami.edu.  Find more information on the Academic Technologies website.

Reading Guides

Instructor guide on If I suvive you is forthcoming.

<b>Instructor Reading Groups: Fall 2023</b>

Are you interested in including the 2023-2024 One Book, One U common reading selection, Jonathan Escoffery's If I Survive You in your teaching?  Join us for a facilitated reading group to discuss how to teach If I Survive You, for UM faculty, staff, and graduate students.  Organized by the Platform for Excellence in Teaching & Learning (PETAL) and the Learning Innovation and Faculty Engagement departments, this initiative allows interested instructors to explore how to incorporate the text into their classrooms.
 
Please join us for our Instructor Group session: November 15th, Noon to 1pm
Sessions will be held over Zoom. 

Register now using this link: https://miami.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEudO2vqD8sG90vy1ZUdGd5oXZEnliB5VbO

 

Discussion questions

Using the Chapter Summaries document, select a chapter that relates to your class or group and host a discussion session.  As a starting point, you can use the questions below, adapted from the American Library Association Book Discussion Group online guide.

Questions to Discuss (Fiction)
  1. How did you experience the book? Were you immediately drawn into the story--or did it take you a while? Did the book intrigue, amuse, disturb, alienate, irritate, or frighten you?
  2. Do you find the characters convincing? Are they believable? Compelling? Are they fully developed as complex, emotional human beings--or are they one-dimensional?
  3. Which characters do you particularly admire or dislike? What are their primary characteristics?
  4. What motivates a given character’s actions? Do you think those actions are justified or ethical?
  5. Do any characters grow or change during the course of the novel? If so, in what way?
  6. Who in this book would you most like to meet? What would you ask—or say?
  7. If you could insert yourself as a character in the book, what role would you play? You might be a new character or take the place of an existing one.
  8. Is the plot well-developed? Is it believable? Do you feel manipulated along the way, or do plot events unfold naturally, organically?
  9. Is the story plot or character driven? In other words, do events unfold quickly? Or is more time spent developing characters' inner lives? Does it make a difference to your enjoyment?
  10. Consider the ending. Did you expect it or were you surprised? Was it manipulative? Was it forced? Was it neatly wrapped up--too neatly? Or was the story unresolved, ending on an ambiguous note?
  11. If you could rewrite the ending, would you? In other words, did you find the ending satisfying? Why or why not.
  12. Can you pick out a passage that strikes you as particularly profound or interesting--or perhaps something that sums up the central dilemma of the book?
  13. Does the book remind you of your own life? An event or situation? A person--a friend, family member, boss, co-worker?
  14. If you were to talk with the author, what would you want to know? (Many authors enjoy talking with book clubs. Contact the publisher to see if you can set up a phone chat.)
  15. Have you read the author’s other books? Can you discern a similarity—in theme, writing style, structure—between them? Or are they completely different?

Contact Information

This guide is maintained by the following individual(s):

Subject Specialist

Find your teaching partner here!