The city of brotherly love takes literacy very seriously. From Ben Franklin;'s establishment of the nation's first public library to the city's history of supporting literacy for freed African-Americans and runaway slaves. That's why few will find it surprising that the city sponsors a program in which all of the city's 1.6 million inhabitants are encouraged to read the same book.
This year they will be reading "My Broken Language" by Quiara Alegria Hudes. "In this memoir, Quiara Alegría Hudes was the watchful girl on the stairs while her family danced their defiance in a tight North Philly kitchen. She was awed by her Puerto Rican mother, grandmother, aunts, and cousins, but haunted by the silences, untold stories, and systemic injustices of el barrio. In My Broken Language, her musical memoir of searching for her own voice while coming of age in 1980s and 1990s Philadelphia, Hudes strives to become an artist and tell the stories of her family and community. She finds herself surrounded by many languages, in many forms—written and spoken, English and Spanish, bodies and books, Western art and sacred altars—as she navigates experiences of history, migration, spirituality, and home." reads the One Book One Philadelphia press release.
