This series is co-sponsored by the Humanities Center at Texas Tech which provides a copy of the book selection to reading group members. The book selection aligns with the 2021–2022 theme of "Anti-racism."
Please join the Libraries' virtual reading group series on Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption.
Just Mercy is an unforgettable account of an idealistic, gifted young lawyer’s coming of age, a moving window into the lives of those he has defended and an inspiring argument for compassion in the pursuit of true justice. It has won numerous honors including the Carnegie Medal of Excellence in Nonfiction and the NAACP Image Award for Nonfiction.
Book Preview
Tuesday, Oct. 5 | 5:30–7 p.m.
Book Discussion
Tuesday, Oct. 12 | 5:30–7 p.m.
The reading group meetings are open to everyone, but registration is required. Please register for the Zoom meetings and to request a copy of the book. Contact Kimberly Vardeman for more information about the series.
Oct. 5
Kenton T. Wilkinson is Regents Professor and Director of the Thomas Jay Harris Institute for Hispanic & International Communication in the College of Media & Communication at Texas Tech University. His research interests include international communication and U.S. Hispanic-oriented media. He is a member of the Lubbock Scapes Collective, an interdisciplinary group of faculty who challenge academic boundaries by creating holistic projects that problematize questions of landscapes through scholarly collaborations that seek to understand, define, evaluate, and represent spaces people inhabit. His book, Spanish-Language Television in the United States: Fifty Years of Development, was published by Routledge in 2016.
Leslie Jill Patterson teaches in the creative writing program at Texas Tech University, where she specializes in narrative nonfiction. Her essays on the death penalty have appeared in Gulf Coast, The Rumpus, Hunger Mountain, Creative Nonfiction, and elsewhere. Her awards include an Embrey Human Rights Fellowship; a Soros Justice Fellowship, funded by the Open Society Foundations; the Richard J. Margolis Award for Social Justice Writing; and a Pushcart Prize. In 2009, she began working as the storyteller for public defenders representing indigent men charged with capital murder and facing the death penalty; she has served on over thirty-five cases.
Oct. 12
Miguel Levario is an associate professor of United States history and Borderlands Studies and is the program coordinator for the Mexican American & Latina/o Studies minor. The Mexican American and Latina/o Studies is an 18-hour minor in a dynamic interdisciplinary course of study based in the humanities, social sciences, arts, and evolution of ethnic studies. The Mexican American and Latina/o Studies minor offers a unique curricular structure through which to examine one of the predominant ethnic groups in the American Southwest, and the fastest growing nationally.