Big Read aims to bring readers together

COMMON GROUND: Events relating to Amy Tan's novel 'The Joy Luck Club', the story of mothers and daughters, are being featured at local bookshops, libraries and art exhibitions.

By TRACEY CURRY
editor@cgazette.com  

What started out as a conversation between two people who love books has mushroomed into an event that is slowly enveloping Wayne County.

Southwestern Wayne County's version of The Big Read, inspired locally by the National Endowment for the Arts' program, kicks off in March with events in Macedon, Palmyra, Walworth and Newark.

'With The Big Read, we put ourselves on the map in a positive way,' said John Cieslinski, owner of Books, ETC on Main Street in Macedon. 'We live in a great community with very intelligent, literate people who watch out for each other are bonded to each other. The Big Read shows that bond.'

Cieslinski said he and fellow organizer, Marcia Marsille, owner of the Village Bookmarket in Palmyra, looked into becoming part of the national organization like Canandaigua, whose featured book right now is Jack London's 'Call of the Wild', but didn't quite make the deadline for matching grant funding. When they researched further, however, Cieslinski said they discovered that the cost to qualify for grant funding would actually leave them little to work with.

The decision was made to go forward on their own with the support of local literary, arts and library organizations.

Choosing 'The Joy Luck Club' by Amy Tan as their Big Read selection, they approached area libraries, who welcomed them with open arms and offered program support.

'The Joy Luck Club', a 1989 novel whose vignettes chronicle the lives of four mothers who immigrated from China in the 1940s and their Americanized daughters, will be reviewed and discussed at Macedon, Palmyra and Walworth-Seely public libraries. In 1993, the novel was adapted into a feature film.

'I found the most interesting thing was the mothers and daughters who just happen to be Chinese have very individual stories,' said William Preston, of Macedon, who is a member of the Wayne Writers Guild. 'They are in little world's of their own and don't know one another's stories. It's about the generation gap and the gradual conversion toward appreciation of (mother and daughter).'

Cieslinski, who recently re-read 'The Joy Luck Club', said he was inspired by the women's stories.'

'Imagine people putting their lives in a suitcase and moving forward,' he said. 'Would I have enough courage to do that? I don't know.'

He praises Tan for her ability to weave two different points of view into the same story.

'The way this brilliant woman, Amy Tan, can take two things and put them together plays every note on the keys that I have,' he said. 'I do believe her work will last a long, long time.'

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