Reading Requirements
All first-year students are expected to read Cion, this year’s Common Reader. There will be campus lectures and readings tied to Cion as well as as a variety of activities in sections of ENG 151, COMS 103, and Learning Communities, as well as other courses.
This Year’s Selection
Cion, written by renowned author Zakes Mda, follows Toloki, a professional mourner from South Africa, as he arrives in the United States for the first time in 2004, bewildered by the culture and fascinated by the strange family that takes him in. Toloki learns from the mother a tradition of quilting that links her family to the escaped slaves that first settled the area. He discovers in the quilts a portal to the story of their ancestors: two boys, Nicodemus and Abednego, who have escaped a slave-breeding farm in Virginia. Instead of a map, they have two intricate patchwork quilts, each sewn with coded clues that will lead them across the Ohio River to their future as free men
The boys’ story alternates with Toloki’s own, and these parallel adventures cast a new light on America in the twenty-first century, and on an undiscovered legacy of the Civil War and the Underground Railroad.
About the Author
Zakes Mda, novelist and playwright, is also the author of Ways of Dying (2002) and She Plays with Darkness (2004). He has won every major South African literary prize, including the Amstel Playwright of the Year Award.
As a Professor of Creative Writing at Ohio University, Dr. Mda teaches senior and graduate creative writing seminars, and is a vital part of the English Department.