The Dallas College Common Experience program was developed to help break down the walls that frequently exist between disciplines across campuses, allowing everyone — from faculty and staff to students and administrators — to have one shared experience.
Each academic year, we offer a series of events that connect students to Dallas College as an academic community. These events and activities range from film screenings, lectures, workshops, author Q&As and contests. Every two academic years, a Common Book is selected by the college and events are related to the theme of the book. Additionally, instructors may incorporate the book into their lesson plans and assignments. The Common Book Experience aims to create engaging, thought-provoking dialogue across the Dallas College Community.
Digital copies will be available for request shortly before Fall semester. Physical copies have been ordered, and will be available at all Dallas College Libraries soon.
Michele Norris is one of America’s most trusted voices in journalism, earning several honors over a long career, including Peabody, Emmy, Dupont, and Goldsmith awards. She is a columnist for The Washington Post Opinion Section, the host of the Audible Original Podcast, Your Mama’s Kitchen, and from and from 2002 to 2012 she was a cohost of NPR’s All Things Considered. Norris is also the founding director of The Race Card Project, a Peabody Award–winning narrative archive where people around the world share their reflections on identity—in just six words. Her first book, The Grace of Silence, was named one of the best books of the year by the San Francisco Chronicle, The Christian Science Monitor, and The Kansas City Star. Before joining NPR, Norris spent almost ten years as a reporter for ABC News covering politics, policy, and the dynamics of social change. Early in her career, she also worked as a staff writer for The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times.
Summary
The prompt seemed simple: Race. Your Thoughts. Six Words. Please Send.
The answers, though, have been challenging and complicated. In the twelve years since award-winning journalist Michele Norris first posed that question, over half a million people have submitted their stories to The Race Card Project inbox. The stories are shocking in their depth and candor, spanning the full spectrum of race, ethnicity, identity, and class. Even at just six words, the micro-essays can pack quite a punch, revealing, fear, pain, triumph, and sometimes humor. Responses such as: You’re Pretty for a Black girl. White privilege, enjoy it, earned it. Lady, I don’t want your purse. My ancestors massacred Indians near here. Urban living has made me racist. I’m only Asian when it’s convenient.
Many go even further than just six words, submitting backstories, photos, and heirlooms: a collection much like a scrapbook of American candor you rarely get to see. Our Hidden Conversations is a unique compilation of stories, richly reported essays, and photographs providing a window into America during a tumultuous era. This powerful book offers an honest, if sometimes uncomfortable, conversation about race and identity, permitting us to eavesdrop on deep-seated thoughts, private discussions, and long submerged memories.
The breadth of this work came as a surprise to Norris. For most of the twelve years she has collected these stories, many were submitted by white respondents. This unexpected panorama provides a rare 360-degree view of how Americans see themselves and one another.
Our Hidden Conversations reminds us that even during times of great division, honesty, grace, and a willing ear can provide a bridge toward empathy and maybe even understanding.
Awards
Norris and collaborators won a 2014 Peabody Award for the Race Card Project.
NPR and Washington Post journalist Norris hoped that the book tour for her memoir, The Grace of Silence (2011), which shared the stories about racism that her family had held close until the election of President Obama, could provoke candid conversations about race. In order to give her audience a starting point, she created the Race Card Project: postcards with the prompt "Race. Your Thoughts. 6 words. Please send." Over the next 14 years, she received thousands of cards in the mail and online. Strangers sent their six words, expanding on why they chose them and how their lives had shaped them. In Our Hidden Conversations, Norris explores themes that emerged from the thought-provoking, insightful, and often painful experiences people shared. Each chapter tells stories from one postcard, interspersed with six-word responses from others. Norris creates a picture of a complicated moment in American history, in which what it means to be American is a fraught question, and at a time when demographic shifts, political extremism, and violence have increased awareness of ongoing racism in the U.S. This is an eye-opening read and an affecting examination of how race affects our lives.--Laura Chanoux
YA: YAs interested in contextualizing their own experiences and learning more deeply about others will appreciate this wide-angle look at others' thoughts on race. LC.
Source Citation
Chanoux, Laura. "Our Hidden Conversations: What Americans Really Think about Race and Identity." Booklist, vol. 120, no. 7-8, 1 Dec. 2023, p. 90. Gale Books and Authors, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A777512416/BNA?u=txshracd2500&sid=bookmark-BNA. Accessed 11 Oct. 2024.
Author and narrator Michele Norris delivers an approachable audio performance about Americans' candid, sometimes shocking responses to the prompt: "Race. Your Story. Six Words. Please Send." This audiobook is part of Norris' project, The Race Card, and the collection gives a unique voice to each of hundreds of responses, some delivered by the familiar voices of professional narrators emotionally connecting to stories full of hope and heartbreak. Other responses are delivered by the people that originally submitted them, which adds candor and authenticity as the readers frequently delve into the personal stories that explain how race affected their lives. Despite the sometimes poor recording and/or audio quality, the respondents' honesty and sincerity are elevated. Norris, with her background as an NPR reporter, has a particularly enjoyable voice that takes a conversational approach to her leisurely paced narration, which allows listeners space to process sometimes difficult subject matter. This audiobook presents a spectrum of ideas around identity: hopeful, humorous, painful, sometimes ignorant. An accompanying PDF can be downloaded along with the audio and features photos of postcard submitters next to their six-word stories. In a thoughtful adaptation for listeners, Norris comments in the audiobook when it is especially helpful to reference those photos.--Alex Richey
Source Citation
Richey, Alex. "Our Hidden Conversations: What Americans." Booklist, vol. 120, no. 14, 15 Mar. 2024, p. 86. Gale Books and Authors, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A788125105/BNA?u=txshracd2500&sid=bookmark-BNA. Accessed 11 Oct. 2024.