KCC Common Reading is an extension of KCC Reads, a faculty-led program, initiated in 2001, which has invited the Kingsborough community to talk and think together on a selected, powerful book every year. 

The Common Reading aims to broaden this conversation to include every incoming freshman. All first-year students will begin their introduction to the intellectual life at the College during the summer before by being provided the book as they are advised and registered for Fall.  Students are expected to read the book and be prepared to participate in faculty-led discussion sessions during the New Student Orientation. 

By establishing the Common Reading, Kingsborough hopes to create common, shared experiences—particularly intellectual experiences—that set an academic tone and expectation for students.  Expanding the number of common experiences can generate a greater sense of community and connectedness to the college, leading to better retention and success of students. 

Through KCC Reads/Common Reading and other co-curricular activities and events, we aim to create an “engaged campus” where students gain global knowledge and understanding, and learn the competencies to become responsible world citizens.

KCC Reads/Common Reading is a program under the umbrella of the CUNY Coordinated Undergraduate Education (CUE) Initiative and Campaign for Student Success, and is supervised at Kingsborough by Dr. Reza Fakhari, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs, Reza.Fakhari@kbcc.cuny.edu.  Dr. Lea Fridman (LFridman@kbcc.cuny.edu) coordinates KCC Reads; Dr. Enid Stubin (EStubin@kbcc.cuny.edu) coordinates KCC Common Reading.

“According to a recent study by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the amount of reading done for pleasure is down in this country, especially reading of literature such as fiction, poetry and drama. It is happening across all age groups, all genders and races, regardless of income, education, or region. Perhaps most disturbing, the steepest decline has come among young adults, ages 18 to 24, over the past two decades.

“We read so much every day. We are surrounded by text, and it has become a primary tool of communication whether in email, instant messaging, or the news crawls at the bottom of a TV screen. We've even adapted the voice technology of the cell phone to send text to each other. And yet with all this reading that we do from hour to hour, why do national trends seem to point to a decline in reading for pleasure?

“One answer might be that we cannot-and must not-read literature the same way we read email. As technology continues to provide us with ever-faster ways of communicating with text, the message has become faster, shorter, leaner, and nearly subsumed of all art. It is written quickly to be read quickly, then processed, and discarded, forgotten.

“But literature stays with you. When we pick up a great book, we are entering into a new world that has been crafted and expressed in a very personal way. It is a one-on-one process that is never experienced exactly the same way by any two people, and yet the best writing can affect and move each of us in very similar ways.

"Reading is the best thing we can do, for ourselves and each other. Not only does it enrich our lives, but it can enrich the world around us. As the NEA survey also indicates, people who read for pleasure are many more times more likely than those who don't to visit museums and attend concerts, and almost three times as likely to perform volunteer and charity work. Readers are active participants in the world around them, and that is the best kind of person to be.”

Common Reading for 2007-08: The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

“This is one of those unforgettable stories that stays with you for years.  All the great themes of literature and of life are the fabric of this extraordinary novel: love, humor, guilt, fear, redemption.”
- Isabel Allende

“An astounding and humbling story of corruption, guilt and redemption. Epic in scope and intimate in its emotions, this terrific novel opens a window into a devastated country and takes us deep into the hearts and minds of those pierced by violence.”
- Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“Stunning…a complete work of literature that succeeds in exploring the culture of a previously obscure nation that has become a pivot point in the global politics of the new millennium.”
- Publishers Weekly

“Like Gone with the Wind, this extraordinary first novel locates the personal struggles of everyday people in the terrible sweep of history.”
- People

“Poignant…The Kite Runner offers a moving portrait of modern Afghanistan, from its pre-Russian-invasion glory days through the terrible reign of the Taliban.”
- Entertainment Weekly (Grade: A)

“This powerful first novel, by an Afghan physician now living in California, tells a story of fierce cruelty and fierce yet redeeming love…In The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini gives us a vivid and engaging story that reminds us how long his people have been struggling to triumph over the forces of violence – forces that continue to threaten them even today.”
- New York Times Book Review

“From the first lines of The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini shows how an engaging novel begins – with simple, exquisite writing that compels the reader to turn the page. But The Kite Runner, Hosseini’s first novel, is more than just good writing. It is also a wonderfully conjured story that offers a glimpse into an Afghanistan most Americans have never seen, and depicts a side of humanity rarely revealed.”
- The Philadelphia Inquirer

“A powerful book…no frills, no nonsense, just hard, spare prose…an intimate account of family and friendship, betrayal and salvation that requires no atlas or translation to engage and enlighten us. Parts of The Kite Runner are raw and excruciating to read, yet the book in its entirety is lovingly written.”
- The Washington Post Book World

About the Author

Khaled Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1965. His father was a diplomat with the Afghan Foreign Ministry and his mother taught Farsi and History at a large high school in Kabul. In 1976, the Afghan Foreign Ministry relocated the Hosseini family to Paris. They were ready to return to Kabul in 1980, but by then Afghanistan had already witnessed a bloody communist coup and the invasion of the Soviet army. The Hosseinis sought and were granted political asylum in the United States. In September of 1980, Hosseini's family moved to San Jose, California. Hosseini graduated from high school in 1984 and enrolled at Santa Clara University where he earned a bachelor's degree in Biology in 1988. The following year, he entered the University of California-San Diego's School of Medicine, where he earned a Medical Degree in 1993. He completed his residency at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles. Hosseini was a practicing internist between 1996 and 2004.

While in medical practice, Hosseini began writing his first novel, The Kite Runner, in March of 2001. In 2003, The Kite Runner, was published and has since become an international bestseller, with more than 4 million copies in print in this country and 8 million worldwide. The book has become a cultural phenomenon, winning numerous prestigious awards.  His second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, [8] published in May of 2007, is like The Kite Runner set in Hosseini’s native Afghanistan.  Propelled by the same narrative instincts and emotional insights that made The Kite Runner a beloved classic, A Thousand Splendid Suns is compelling and universal: the passionate search for love, family, home, acceptance, a healthy society, and a promising future, regardless of the obstacles. Like its predecessor, this novel transcends boundaries of all kinds as it illuminates the people and culture of a region that has been reluctantly thrust into the international spotlight.

In 2006 Hosseini was named a goodwill envoy to UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency.  Dr. Hosseini lives in northern California with his wife and two young children, Haris, 6, and Farah, 4.

Resources

Khaled Hosseini’s Website
The author’s website is at http://www.khaledhosseini.com.  It allows readers to blog their observations of his books. 

Reviews of The Kite Runner
Reviewed by Edward Hower in The New York Times on August 3, 2003.  Click here to see the text of the review, titled “The Servant.”  Also available at: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9504E0DF123FF930A3575BC0A9659C8B63

“Wrenching Tale by an Afghan Immigrant Strikes a Chord,” is another review of the book in The New York Times by Edward Wayatt which was published on December 15, 2004. Click on the title to see the text of the review.  Also available at:
http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F70617FF3C540C768DDDAB0994DC404482

“Pulled by the past: An immigrant returns to Kabul in Bay Area author's first novel,” is a provocative review of the book in the San Francisco Chronicles.  The reviewer sees more meaning to the term “Kite Runner”: “But Hosseini could have deepened the symbolism even further if he hadn't ignored what, in essence, a kite fight really is: a proxy war. Here's Afghanistan, jerked around like a kite for most of its 20th century history by the British, the Soviets, the Taliban and us, played off against its neighbors by distant forces pulling all the strings, and Hosseini never once makes the connection.”  See the review at:  http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/06/08/RV24780.DTL

“'Kite Runner' catches the wind,” in USA TODAY, April 18, 2005, is an informative article, reviewing the book, interviewing the author and asking him whether it autobiographical, and detailing its astonishing success in literary and reading circles.  See the article at: http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2005-04-18-kite-runner_x.htm

The San Francisco Chronicles Interview with the Author
See the June 8, 2003 interview, with Hosseini explaining how and when he writes his novels given his full-time job as a physician.  Access the article, “Success made easy – or so it seems,” at:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/06/08/RV140807.DTL

National Public Radio (NPR) Interview with the Author
NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday host Liane Hansen speaks with Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner (Riverhead Books, 2003), a new novel about a young boy who flees Afghanistan for America, but cannot forget the friend he left behind to suffer under the Taliban.  Aired on July 27, 2003; listen to it at: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1358775

NPR’s Fresh Air Program Interviews the Author
Terry Gross, host of Fresh Air, interviewed Khaled Hosseini on Aug 11, 2005.  Listen to it at: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4795618

PBS Interview with the Author
Khaled Husseini, author of the best-selling novel "The Kite Runner," talks about his latest book, A Thousand Splendid Suns, which focuses on life for women in Afghanistan.  Read it at: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/jan-june07/husseini_06-15.html

A Short Video of Khaled Hosseini Discussing his New Book, A Thousand Splendid Suns
See it at: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1137156815273081040

About Afghanistan
For an excellent website on Afghanistan—which contains information about Afghan history, people and culture, Afghanistan’s ethnic groups, map of Afghanistan, a political timeline, Soviet intervention, Al-Qaida in Afghanistan, the Talibans, and current news about the country--visit the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) site “Afghanistan and the War on Terror” at: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/indepth_coverage/asia/afghanistan

Afghanistan: The Other War
In this PBS’s FRONTLINE/World video, correspondent Sam Kiley reports from the frontlines of the conflict, where dual battles are being fought to win the trust of the Afghan people and combat the extremists living among them.  See the film’s website at: http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/afghanistan604/
This film is available in the Library’s Media Center.

Women in Afghanistan: Afghan Women’s Rights
“Afghanistan Unveiled,” the PBS’s Independent Lens film, contrasts the harsh lives of the rural women of Afghanistan with those of the film’s young camerawomen, who are experiencing newfound freedom and opportunity while attempting to use their work to change the condition of women in their country. Despite the suffering they encounter, the filmmakers also manage to find moving examples of hope for Afghanistan's future and emerge from the experience committed to revealing not only these stories to the world, but also the personal stories of the women behind the cameras: women who were not allowed to appear in public, let alone travel, during the Taliban era.  See the film’s website at: http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/afghanistanunveiled/women.html
This film is available in the Library’s Media Center.

About Islam
An excellent book about Islam and its deep interrelationship with Judaism and Christianity is No God but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, by Reza Aslan, an internationally acclaimed writer and scholar of religions. See his website, including information about the book and his other writings at: http://www.rezaaslan.com Reza

Empire of Faith” is a PBS’s film on the origin of Islam and its spread. The film website has very useful information on Islam at: http://www.pbs.org/empires/islam
This film is available in the Library’s Media Center.

“Islam in America: A Special Report,” a cover story which appeared in the July 30, 2007 issue, is very informative about Muslims in America and their lives and dreams.  Access it at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19876834/site/newsweek/

“Want to Understand Islam? Start Here.,” is an excellent primer on the religion of Islam which appeared in the Washington Post on July 22, 2007.  See it at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/20/AR2007072002137.html

On Immigration to U.S. and Assimilation to the American Society
“The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini Life of an Afghan Immigrant – Review,” at About.com: Immigration Issues (http://immigration.about.com/od/immigrantstories/fr/kiterunner.htm).  Every immigrant has as story. In The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, not only do we get a rare glimpse into a fascinating and sometimes tragic childhood in a foreign land, but that land also happens to be very significant to current events in the United States in the 20th and 21st centuries.

“House of Sand and Fog,” a novel by by Andre Dubus.  In this page-turning, breathtaking novel, the characters will walk off the page and into your life.  And a small house will seem like the most important piece of territory in the world.  On a road crew in California, a former colonel in the Iranian Air Force under the Shah yearns to restore his family's dignity.  When an attractive bungalow comes available on county auction for a fraction of its value, he sees a great opportunity for himself, his wife, and his children.  But the house's former owner, a recovering alcoholic and addict down on her luck, doesn't see it that way, nor does her lover, a married cop driven to extremes to win her love and get her house back.  House of Sand and Fog is a narrative triumph in which a traditional immigrant success story and a modern love story are turned upside down with brutal, heartrending consequences. It is an American tragedy, and a shockingly true picture of the country we live in today.  See: http://www.amazon.com/House-Sand-Oprahs-Book-Club/dp/0375727345.  See the website of the film based on the novel, also called “House of Sand and Fog,” at: http://www.dreamworks.com/houseofsandandfog/
The film is available in the Library’s Media Center.

“The Namesake.”  This is the bestselling and award-winning Novel by Jhumpa Lahiri (2003). Hopscotching across 25 years, it begins when newlyweds Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli emigrate to Cambridge, Mass., in 1968, where Ashima immediately gives birth to a son, Gogol-a pet name that becomes permanent when his formal name, traditionally bestowed by the maternal grandmother, is posted in a letter from India, but lost in transit. Ashoke becomes a professor of engineering, but Ashima has a harder time assimilating, unwilling to give up her ties to India. A leap ahead to the '80s finds the teenage Gogol ashamed of his Indian heritage and his unusual name, which he sheds as he moves on to college at Yale and graduate school at Columbia, legally changing it to Nikhil. In one of the most telling chapters, Gogol moves into the home of a family of wealthy Manhattan WASPs and is initiated into a lifestyle idealized in Ralph Lauren ads. Here, Lahiri demonstrates her considerable powers of perception and her ability to convey the discomfort of feeling "other" in a world many would aspire to inhabit.  See the book at: http://www.amazon.com/Namesake-Novel-Jhumpa-Lahiri/dp/0395927218
See the movie website based on the book at: http://www.foxsearchlight.com/thenamesake
The film is available in the Library’s Media Center.

“West of Kabul, East of New York.” This fascinating novel by Tamim Ansary, another Afghani author.  Ansary, the son of a Pashtun Afghan father and Finnish-American mother, lived as a Muslim outside of Kabul until the early '60s, when he left on scholarship to attend an American high school, eventually going on to college and becoming an educational writer ("if you have children, they have probably read or used some product I have edited or written") with a family of his own in San Francisco. This book chronicles, with calm insight and honesty, Ansary's feelings at all points: his childhood spent within his "clan" ("our group self was just as real as our individual selves, perhaps more so"), a narrative of his often fascinating 1980 trip ("Looking for Islam") throughout the Muslim world that makes up the bulk of the book, and dissections of the differing paths taken by his sister, brother and himself. While Ansary's political insights can be detached or perhaps purposefully aloof his descriptions of having lived in and identified alternately with the West and the Islamic world are utterly compelling. See: http://www.mirtamimansary.com/

Study Guide for Students

INTRODUCTION: The Kite Runner follows a young boy, Amir, as he faces the challenges that confront him on the path to manhood—testing friendships, finding love, cheating death, accepting faults, and gaining understanding. Living in Afghanistan in the 1960s, Amir enjoys a life of privilege that is shaped by his brotherly friendship with Hassan, his servant's son. Amir lives in constant want of his father's attention, feeling that he is a failure in his father's eyes. Hassan, on the other hand, seems to be able to do no wrong. Their friendship is a complex tapestry of love, loss, privilege, and shame.

Striving to be the son his father always wanted, Amir takes on the weight of living up to unrealistic expectations and places the fate of his relationship with his father on the outcome of a kite running tournament, a popular challenge in which participants must cut down the kites of others with their own kite. Amir wins the tournament. Yet just as he begins to feel that all will be right in the world, a tragedy occurs with his friend Hassan in a back alley on the very streets where the boys once played. This moment marks a turning point in Amir's life—one whose memory he seeks to bury by moving to America. There he realizes his dream of becoming a writer and marries for love but the memory of that fateful day will prove too strong to forget. Eventually it draws Amir back to Afghanistan to right the wrongs that began that day in the alley and continued in the days, months, and years that followed.

READER’S GUIDE: The Kite Runner has a Reader’s Guide in the end of the book (after page 371) which contains Discussion Questions.  These discussion questions can also be accessed online at the Penguin Group Book Clubs/Reading Guides webpage at: http://us.penguingroup.com/static/rguides/us/kite_runner.html

Students are urged to review these questions and answer them as best as they can.  The faculty-led discussion sessions during the New Student Orientation will draw on these questions.  Students can raise any of these questions during the discussion sessions and have them addressed by fellow students and faculty leaders.

A very useful guide to the book, explaining the plot and the characters, is also provided by Wikipedia at: http://www.answers.com/topic/the-kite-runner

Another very useful guide, providing questions, is provided by About.com: Bestsellers at: http://bestsellers.about.com/od/bookclubquestions/a/thekiterunner_q.htm

Finally, TheBestNotes.com provides a useful guide to the book, although not all of it is free.  It can be accessed at: http://thebestnotes.com/booknotes/Kite_Runner/Kite_Runner01.html

Common Reading Faculty Blog

This faculty blog is created to provide a space for the KCC Reads/Common Reading faculty share ideas regarding discussion of the book during the New Student Orientation, integration of the Common Reading in courses, utilizing other resources related to the Common Reading, and any other innovative pedagogy.  Access is open to all faculty. To log onto the Blog, click here
(http://kcccommonreading.blogspot.com).

Events

August 30, 2007: New Student Orientation
Faculty-led Discussion Sessions of the Common Reading will be held for ASAP students right after the morning gathering in the PAC.  ASAP students should look for Student Ambassadors in front of the PAC who will escort them to the assigned Discussion Session in the MAC Building.

April 2008: Author’s Visit
The KCC Reads/Common Reading Program is inviting Khaled Hosseini to Kingsborough campus for early April 2008, before the Spring break.  Stay tuned to the exact date of visit.