About Taos Big Read

Over the past several years, in communities across the country, the National Endowment for the Arts has been promoting a program called THE BIG READ.  Each participating community chooses a single book from a list of about twenty supported titles, buys a lot of copies, and distributes them, free, to all those who want to be a part of the program. Over the course of a month, the sponsoring organizations host a variety of fun events to encourage everybody to read and discuss the book.

The idea is to draw in lapsed or “reluctant” readers, and to spur conversation across differences – differences in age, in race or ethnicity, in economic background; differences in lifestyle and opinion and experience – all in the service of celebrating literature and understanding each other a little better.

For 2009-2010, the NEA has offered matching funds to help 250 communities across the country participate.  Here in Taos County, the Taos Public Library and S.O.M.O.S. teamed up and were awarded a grant to bring THE BIG READ to our area. 

We decided to adopt Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima, and to fashion the month of November around the theme of “New Mexico Then and Now." We can offer a number of aids to teachers who are interested in using the book as part of their curriculum.  We have teachers’ guides with full lesson plans and auxiliary information; readers’ guides; graphic support; and a variety of other fun stuff.  A member of our team can visit classrooms to talk with students, and we’ll offer a bunch of extracurricular activities geared toward young people.  For classrooms that do not have access to copies of the book, we may be able to provide them.
 
But the program is not exclusively for students, and is definitely not confined to the academic setting.  We’re hoping to get EVERYBODY reading this book, and interacting with literature in creative ways.  Art, video, performance, formal and informal discussions groups, workshops on herbal healing – there’s no limit to the ways Taoseños  can be part of THE BIG READ.
 
And the book we chose?  Bless Me, Ultima is a beautiful novel set in the eastern plains of New Mexico during the 1940’s.  It is a coming-of-age story that tracks one year in the life of Antonio, a thoughtful young boy whose brothers are off at war.  Antonio is slated to become a cowboy like his father … unless he becomes a priest to the farmers of his mother’s community – and, either way, he’s bound to disappoint somebody.  He’s a boy in a quandary, and when Ultima comes to live with his family he learns that there are many different ways to look at a situation.  Ultima, La Grande, is an old woman with the skills of a curandera and a guardian owl who is never far from her side, and her powerful presence sets in play many of the events in the book.

Bless Me, Ultima is a novel that will appeal to young and old, to those born here and those more recently arrived, and we’ve got all kinds of events and displays lined up to engage the community and make this program fun and rewarding for everybody.  We want to pull in students at the middle school, high school, and university level, to engage our community of ancianos, and to get the participation of the business community and artists and people in every walk of life.
 
The Taos Public Library is the physical base for the project, but there are also a number of satellite sites where people will be able to request a copy of the book, get information, sign up for activities, buy raffle tickets for the fundraiser, and enjoy the event-specific display – while being, in many cases, newly introduced to the separate offerings of that place.  We’ll launch the month-long program with a kickoff Saturday November 7 that starts at the Library and then guides people to each of these satellite sites, and culminates with a keynote presentation at the Taos Center for the Arts.

To learn more about the national program, and to download a filmed interview with Rudolfo Anaya, please visit www.neabigread.org.  You can also learn more about SOMOS, the primary sponsor of THE BIG READ in Taos, at www.somostaos.org.

WE WELCOME YOUR INPUT AND SUGGESTIONS!!!
 
Please help us make this program a success for our students and for all of Taos County.
 
For more information, or to offer help or ideas, please contact SOMOS at 575-758-0081.