The Summer Reading:
Swing Time by Zadie Smith
Muhlenberg is asking all members of the incoming class of 2022 to read the novel Swing Time by Zadie Smith before arriving on campus in late August. Please purchase a copy of this book and bring it with you to campus. The book is available at many bookstores and online. It is published in paperback by Penguin; the ISBN number is 978-0-14-311164-1. The cost is $17.
Zadie Smith’s 2016 novel Swing Time is a story about growing up, starting with the narrator’s childhood years and continuing on through her early thirties. Set in London, but also in New York City, West Africa, and other places among which the narrator moves, the novel is a story about identity—actually multiple identities and how these do and do not fit together for the narrator, who, like the author, grew up in London as the daughter of a Jamaican mother and a white, working-class British father. The novel’s title is taken from a film of the same name in which Fred Astaire danced in black-face—a feature of the film that, to her surprise, the narrator did not initially notice. The novel takes shape as the story of complicated relationships, chiefly with a childhood friend (who, like the narrator, is bi-racial), with the narrator’s first major employer (an Australian pop star), and with the narrator’s parents, one of whom (her Jamaican mother) finds a sense of mission in the world through reading and education.
One reason you are being asked to read this book is that the author, Zadie Smith, will be visiting campus during the fall semester as part of the Living Writers program. Another reason is that the novel can provide you with narratives and with language for talking about an important fact of contemporary life: that all of us in some way blend more than one cultural identity, and that all of us must find a way to enter into the worlds of other people whose identities have been shaped from experiences both like and unlike our own. The novel also has much to teach us about the role that writing can play in helping us to sort out the diverse and sometimes conflicting impulses and encounters that go into the making of a self.
Assignment for Orientation: As you read the novel, please write down sentences and short passages you find interesting, both personally and in your goal to understand the novel's ideas and themes. Once you have finished the novel, review your list of sentences and passages and compile a list of 10 you find most important. You will be meeting with your First Year Seminar (FYS) so bring your copy of the novel and your list with you to use with for writing activities and opportunities to share ideas about Swing Time with others.
For links to more information about the novel, see Trexler Library’s reading guide: http://libraryguides.muhlenberg.edu/swingtime
