Grateful for small illuminations

If you liked the Indigenous Voices program last year, you’ll love our new statewide book series: The NEA Big Read: Reconsidering the American Dream. This year we’re pairing texts highly relevant to current conversations about class, migration, and belonging: Sarah Smarsh's Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth and Patricia Engel's Infinite Country. Thanks to support from the National Endowment for the Arts Big Read grant, we’ve been able to significantly grow the number of book group sites statewide. This year we have 18 book groups stretching from Galesburg to Granite City, Princeton to Chicago, all open to the public and ready to welcome new readers! 

When we come together over a shared text – be it a book, a performance, or an exhibition - we unlock the humanities’ power to center people’s experiences, histories, and cultures. This is no small act in a state with such diverse residents. We are rural, urban, and suburban. We are home to people whose lives span myriad classes, races, genders, ethnicities, sexual orientations, and national origins. We brighten the political spectrum with colors familiar and new.  

At Illinois Humanities we believe we have a responsibility to make and protect space for the exchange of challenging ideas, meaningful dialogue, and personal reflection. This fall, whether you visit a humanities organization, attend a program, or read a story about the humanities in action, I hope Illinois Humanities will help you encounter ‘small illuminations’ with one another.