Community Read 2011

This is the fourth year of the Ashe County's Literary Festival, On the Same Page.  The theme this year is Family Matters.  The kick-off was the month-long community read Night by Elie Wiesel.  Night is the story of the author's year long internment in a Nazi concentration camp during the last year of World War II.  After being freed, Wiesel struggles with his guilt of letting his father die alone and with his loss of faith.

There was a book discussion at the library led by Rosemary Horowitz, a Judaic scholar at ASU.  After the war, Wiesel wrote a book about his time in captivity.  It was 800 pages long and written in Yiddish.  He later translated the book into French and then English, and it became only 120 pages long.  There has been much controversy about what was left out of the translations, and why.

What I can't figure out is why they chose this particular book as the Community Read.  It was not written by a North Carolina author and it has nothing to do with North Carolina at all.  As for family, Wiesel did stay with his father while he was held by the Nazi's, but abandoned him at the end for fear of being beaten for helping him.  His mother and younger sister never got out alive, but his two older sisters did.  They are briefly mentioned in the book.  Before the war, his father spent little time with his family as he was a Biblical scholar and his life revolved around his studies.

I hope next year they chose something a little more uplifting and easy to read.  Concentration camp memories do not lead fun conversation or lively discussions.