by Rod Jones
The Let鈥檚 Talk About It, Oklahoma book discussion series at 野狼社区 University will return in January under the theme 鈥淧lay Ball鈥�: The American Sport Meets the American Dream. The discussions are held in Walker Center room 151, located near the center of campus at N.W. 26th Street and Florida Avenue.
The series is made possible through a grant from the Oklahoma Humanities Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The first session will be at 7 p.m. Jan. 12 with 鈥淢iko Kings: An Indian Baseball Story鈥� by LeAnne Howe. For the Choctaws, the timeless game of baseball is exactly that鈥攁 game without the constraints of time, a game that connects and enables intertribal diplomacy. In the book, Lena Coulter, a journalist, returns to Oklahoma to restore her grandmother鈥檚 home but soon searches for her family history and her sense of self as a Choctaw. Interwoven with both fiction and historical fact, the world of dreams intersects with history.
The series theme seeks to explore the literary side of the game of baseball. Harbour Winn, director of the Center for Interpersonal Study through Film & Literature at OCU, says the game has held up as America鈥檚 pastime in its richness, breadth and depth of literature written about it.
鈥淭hrough the common territory of the diamond on which these human dramas are played, they accomplish a great deal more in chronicling American dreamers and showing us how to live our lives authentically,鈥� Winn said.
At each session in the five-part series, a humanities scholar makes a presentation on the book in the context of the theme. Small group discussions follow with experienced discussion leaders. At the end, all participants come together for a brief wrap-up.
Those who are interested in participating are encouraged to preregister and borrow the reading selections and theme brochure by calling Winn at 405-208-5472, e-mailing him at [email protected] or dropping by the Dulaney-Browne Library room 211 or 207.
