About Danzy Senna ! Read Danzy Senna's biography here.

Read more about it! Links to information about Danzy Senna and Caucasia on the Web.

About Two Towns: One Book! Read more about the thoughts behind planning this event and the book selection.

Contact us! Call or email the Community Coalition with any questions about the events.

Two Towns: One Book is sponsored by the South Orange/Maplewood Community Coalition on Race, in partnership with the Maplewood and South Orange Public Libraries and Seton Hall University.

About Danzy Senna!
Born in 1970, Danzy Senna grew up in Boston where her parents, who are both writers, were active in the Civil Rights Movement.  After graduating from Stanford, she received her MFA in creative writing from UC-Irvine.  Senna has worked as a journalist for several major magazines, and her critical writings on race and gender have been anthologized.  Senna’s first novel, "Caucasia," a national best seller, has been translated into seven languages. It was the winner of the Book-of-the-Month Club Stephen Crane First Fiction Award, the Alex Award by the American Library Association, was nominated for Britain's Orange Prize and the IMPAC Dublin Prize.

Senna's essays and short stories have been widely anthologized in such books as: "To Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism," edited by Rebecca Walker (Doubleday); "Half and Half: Writers on Growing Up Biracial and Bicultural," edited by Claudine O'Hearn (Pantheon); "Giant Steps: A New Generation of African-American Writers," edited by Kevin Young (Harper Perrenial).

Her journalistic writing has appeared in The Nation; O: The Oprah Magazine; Salon.com; the UTNE Reader; and Newsweek.
Senna was recently awarded the 2002 Whiting Award, given each year to 10 writers of exceptional talent. She holds the Jenks' Chair of Contemporary American Letters at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., and is working on a second novel.

She currently lives in Brooklyn, NY.

"Lucid and magnificent." —James McBride, author of The Color of Water

"Senna's remarkable first novel [will] cling to your memory. There's Birdie, who takes after her mother's white, New England side of the family—light skin, straight hair. There's her big sister, Cole, who takes after her father, a radical black intellectual. It's the early seventies, and black-power politics divide their parents, who divide the sisters; Cole disappears with their father, and Birdie goes underground with their mother...Senna tells this coming-of-age tale with impressive beauty and power." —Newsweek

"[An] absorbing debut novel...Senna superbly illustrates the emotional toll that politics and race take on one especially gutsy young girl's development as she makes her way through the parallel limbos between black and white and between girl and young woman...Senna gives new meaning to the twin universal desires for a lost childhood and a new adult self by recounting Birdie's struggle to become someone when she can look and act like anyone." —New York Times Book Review

"Brilliant...a finely nuanced story that explores the matter of race through the eyes and heart of another white black girl." —Ms.


Read more about it!
Read an excerpt of the book: click here.



About Two Towns: One Book!
The South Orange/Maplewood Community Coalition has held several successful community forums in which authors of books related to the Coalition's mission have spoken. In preparation for the forums, the community was encouraged to read the books. Over twenty book groups took up the challenge in 1999 and read Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria (and other conversations on race) by Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum. Nearly 600 residents attended the author's forum! Early in 2002, over 350 residents joined us to hear Jane Lazarre discuss her life experiences described in Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness. Enthused by those outstanding receptions, Eleanor Winslow, a librarian at the Maplewood Public Library contacted the Community Coalition to suggest that we partner in a major undertaking: a community-wide read of a single book The Coalition took up the challenge, setting as its objective: To help build community through the shared experience of reading and discussing a book. The librarians at the South Orange Public Library were equally enthusiastic and quickly signed on! Many months and many, many books later, on Labor Day 2002 John Henry Days was announced as the first book for the first community-wide book read in New Jersey: Two Towns - One Book.

Click on the links to see the archive for last year’s book, the list of books suggested and considered by the selection committee, and to view the criteria established for the selection of the book. Suzy Metz and Natalie Thigpen chaired this year’s selection committee with able assistance from William Robinson and Nancy Janow.

Do you have an idea for a book for our 2004 read? Would you like to join the committee to work on Two Towns: One Book 2004? Send an email to info@twotowns.org with your interest.

TWO TOWNS:ONE BOOK ARCHIVE

Contact Us!
South Orange/Maplewood Community Coalition on Race
email: info@twotowns.org
voice: 973-761-6116 EXT. 3
fax: 973-761-1507

About the Community Coalition:
The South Orange/Maplewood Community Coalition on Race is a non-profit 501 (c)(3) organization dedicated to preserving our two towns as communities of choice for all, regardless of race. Our vision is for a community that is truly inclusive and racially integrated – free of segregation in housing patterns and community involvement. through the Community Coalition, residents can participate in a myriad of community-building tasks that contribute to sustained, diverse and robust community appeal.

For more information on our committees visit http://www.twotowns.org/joinus.php.

To view other upcoming events visit http://www.twotowns.org/news.php

To make a donation to support events like Two Towns:One Book and other community initiatives, visit http://www.twotowns.org/pledge.php