When Elie Wiesel accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, he told his audience of his belief that, “No one may speak for the dead, no one may interpret their mutilated dreams and visions.”
These words might explain why Wiesel instead decided to speak for himself when he wrote “Night,” his first-person account of surviving Nazi concentration camps Auschwitz-Birkenau and Buchenwald as a 15-year-old Romanian Jew.
And the intensity of the resulting narrative is part of the reason why “Night” has been chosen for the spring installment of One Book, One Chicago, says Nanette Alleman, assistant director of neighborhood services and an assistant librarian for the Chicago Public Library.
A spin-off of a similar program started by the Seattle Public Library in 1996, One Book, One Chicago is a joint effort of the Chicago Public Library and the City of Chicago to encourage reading in the city.
“The mayor did this to create a culture of reading,” says Margot Burke, the library’s press secretary. “It’s no secret that reading scores at the Chicago Public Schools are down.”
Chicago’s program was set in motion after Mayor Richard M. Daley gathered 11 teachers, school administrators and city officials for a Reading Round Table last April. By August, Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” was announced as the program’s inaugural title. The book then became the focal point of Chicago Book Week in October.
The citywide reading of “Night” will come to a close during National Library Week, April 14 to April 20, when 14 branch libraries, five Starbucks coffee shops and bookstores around the city will host discussions about the book. On April 17, Wiesel will be interviewed at the Harold Washington Library Center on State Street by Chicago journalist Mara Tapp before moving on to the University of Chicago to lecture on religion and violence in the context of Judaism.
The week will also include two screenings of Holocaust documentaries and a discussion moderated by Ken Bode, the former dean of Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, titled “What is Our Universe of Obligation?”
“We are trying to get people to read and get together to discuss books,” says Alleman, who was on the committee that chose “Night.”
“It’s a very powerful story that’s accessible to adults and young adults,” she says. “There’s a lot of relevancy right now. Survivors will be able to come and talk about this book and their experiences. It seemed like it was the book that could reach the most people.”
Reaching people has been the goal of the program since its inception, but some say it isn’t necessarily all-inclusive.
In the fall, all 15 copies of “Mockingbird” at the Portage-Cragin Branch Library on the northwest side of the city were checked out, says Helena Zolkowski, the reference and Polish collection librarian there. But nobody showed up for the Book Week discussion.
“We are an immigrant community. Many people do not have a good knowledge of (the English) language. The books that are chosen are not of interest for them,” says Zolkowski. “Mothers are working, fathers are working. Many people don’t have time to attend discussions.”
As “Night” has only been on display since last Saturday, the response to the second round of One Book, One Chicago at Portage-Cragin isn’t yet clear. But Zolkowski says Wiesel’s story is a familiar one to many in the community served by the library, which is predominantly Romanian, Czech, Polish, Spanish and Arab.
“There are many (Holocaust) survivors within our community,” she says. “But some of them don’t want to talk about it. It’s too painful.”
While English is not the first language of many of Portage-Cragin’s patrons, the library has 20 English-language copies of “Night” available. Burke says the Chicago Public Library has considered the possibility of language barriers in developing One Book, One Chicago.
“We ordered some (books) in Russian, and we’re working diligently to find them in Polish,” Burke says. “None are printed in Spanish.”
Other branch libraries had a better turnout for “Mockingbird” discussions.
“We had overload capacity,” says Michael Leonard, the head of humanities and fine arts at Sulzer Library in Lincoln Square. “Seventy people showed up.”
Leonard said the people at the discussion ranged in age from 16-year-old high school students to library patrons older than 60.
But Celene Cole, the library director at the Martin Luther King Jr. Branch Library in Bronzeville, worries that One Book, One Chicago excludes younger readers – the ultimate target of Mayor Daley’s reading directive.
“I think they should offer a book for the elementary kids while we read the other book,” says Cole.
Both the writing style and the content of “Night” put the book beyond an elementary reading level, but Burke says the “Night” resource guide may offer titles more appropriate for younger readers, although the list is specifically directed toward teens.
In his opening speech at the Reading Round Table, Mayor Daley said he wants every child in Chicago to be able to read by third grade or sooner.
“He wanted to bring the city together through reading,” Burke says. “Studies have shown that the more parents read and the more they are excited about reading, the more kids will read.” nyou
