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Are you looking to connect with others? Do you love reading all kinds of books? If you answered yes, the Community Book Club is for you! The August/September book is The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong.

The hardest thing in the world is to live only once…

One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning, and heartbreak, with the power to transform Hai’s relationship to himself, his family, and a community on the brink.

Following the cycles of history, memory, and time, The Emperor of Gladness shows the profound ways in which love, labor, and loneliness form the bedrock of American life. At its heart is a brave epic about what it means to exist on the fringes of society and to reckon with the wounds that haunt our collective soul. Hallmarks of Ocean Vuong’s writing—formal innovation, syntactic dexterity, and the ability to twin grit with grace through tenderness—are on full display in this story of loss, hope, and how far we would go to possess one of life’s most fleeting mercies: a second chance.

The Community Book Club will meet via Zoom on Thursday, August 21 (1/3rd of book read), Thursday, September 4 (2/3rd of book read), and Thursday, September 18 from 6–7:30 p.m. to discuss the book in its entirety.

To register, please send an email to abunton1@illinoistech.edu, and you will receive the meeting credentials.