Tulane profs’ books to be city reads in Philly and New Orleans

Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS

Novels by two Tulane University professors have been chosen for next year’s One Book, One City reading and discussion programs in New Orleans and Philadelphia.

One Book, One Philadelphia chose Jesmyn Ward’s novel “Sing, Unburied, Sing,” while One Book, One New Orleans will feature “Vengeance” by Zachary Lazar, a Tulane news release said.

Ward’s book is about a 13-year-old boy whose drug-addicted mother takes him and his toddler sister on a road trip to pick up their white father from prison in Mississippi.

Lazar’s narrator tries to unravel the truth behind the supposed crime of a man serving a life term in the Louisiana State Penitentiary for murder.

“Sing, Unburied, Sing,” published in 2017, won the National Book Award for fiction and a $625,000 grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Ward was the first black author and the first woman to receive two National Book Awards.

Her memoir, “Men We Reaped,” is the One Book, One Philadelphia adult companion selection for 2019.

Published in 2018, “Vengeance” was inspired by a passion play called “The Life of Jesus Christ” which Lazar saw at the prison in Angola.

The One Book, One City movement is a community reading program that began in 1998 and invites everyone in a city to read and discuss the same book.