UCSB Reads

Want to meet other Gauchos who care about racial justice?

UCSB Library is organizing student-led small group reading discussions for UCSB students to dive into the UCSB Reads 2021 book When They Call You A Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir by Patrisse Cullors and asha bandele. 

The UC Santa Barbara Library and the Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor are pleased to announce the selection of the 2021 UCSB Reads book, When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir by Patrisse Cullors and asha bandele.

The UCSB Reads Committee has announced its shortlist of titles under consideration for UCSB Reads 2021. This year, in recognition of the extraordinary and necessary attention to race in this country, all the titles grapple with race. The list includes memoirs, a novel, a book of poetry, and for the first time ever, a podcast.

Elizabeth Rush, UCSB Reads 2020 author of Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore, gave a free online community talk on Earth Day about Rising and the impact of climate change and sea level rise. The talk was moderated by David Pellow, Dehlsen Chair and Professor of Environmental Studies.

In lieu of planned tours of the Carpinteria Salt Marsh and the Coal Oil Point Reserve, Dr. Andrew Brooks, Director of the Carpinteria Salt Marsh, UC Natural Reserve System, and Charles Lester, Director of the Ocean & Coastal Policy Center at the Marine Science Institute, provide insight on how sea level rise will affect these local habitats via a video talk in conjunction with UCSB Reads 2020.   

What Thi Bui first set out to do was to turn a graduate school oral history project into something more accessible outside academia. Safe to say: she succeeded wildly.

That oral history became the basis for “The Best We Could Do,” Bui’s illustrated memoir documenting her family’s escape from Vietnam in the 1970s and the difficulties they faced building new lives in America. It received widespread critical and popular acclaim, winning a 2018 American Book Award, named a finalist for 2017 National Book Critics Circle and Eisner awards and landing on a host of “Best Of” lists.

UC Santa Barbara Library and the Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor are pleased to announce the selection of a book for UCSB Reads 2019 — “The Best We Could Do,” an illustrated memoir by Thi Bui.

For over ten years, since the program’s start in 2007, UCSB Reads has brought the campus and Santa Barbara communities together to read a common book that explores important issues of our time.