The Diversity Common Reader series is underway and its most recent event was a discussion centered around the role that land and identity plays in author Luis Alberto Urrea’s “Nobody’s Son.”

Event coordinator and Associate Director of NMU’s Multicultural Education and Resource Center Shirley Brozzo shared elements of the book she hoped to cover while discussing it with students who attended the event.

“It’s a book discussion similar to others that have been done in the past, so we’ll just be talking about the book, but what we’ll be focusing on is the language that [Urrea] used and how it relates to land and how it relates to people’s identity,” Brozzo said.
The purpose of this event was to analyze the language and the cultural connections to Urrea’s personal stories of life with a diverse background, she added.

“Language is something that is very important obviously, as well as people’s identity. The two are really intertwined,” Brozzo said. “You know who you are. You know your identity by the language that you grew up with so I think it’s important that we have more discussions like this.”

The event was an opportunity for the students who read the book to learn Urrea’s purpose for writing “Nobody’s Son.”

“I think it gives everybody a common understanding or a way to understand where others may be coming from,” Brozzo said. “We all look at it through whatever cultural lens that we bring with us so it’s good to see how others have received the book or looked at the words.”

The next event, Histories of Exclusion: U.S. Policy, Global Migration and the American Dream, will be held at 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 21, in Jamrich Hall room 1320.