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Posted: 10/03/16

TAMIU Reading the Globe Welcomes Author Park

 

Reading the Globe
Author Yeonmi Park visited campus Oct. 7.  

Human rights activist Yeonmi Park is this year’s Texas A&M International University (TAMIU) Reading the Globe featured author. Park, author of “In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl’s Journey to Freedom,” will present a lecture, based on her book, to the University’s freshmen, Friday, Oct. 7 at 12:30 p.m. in the TAMIU Center for the Fine and Performing Arts Recital Hall.

Park is also scheduled to give a lecture at the Joe A. Guerra Laredo Public Library, 1120 E. Calton Road, Saturday, Oct. 8 at 10:30 a.m. Admission is free and open to the public.

Park fled North Korea with her mother in 2007 when she was 13 years old and eventually made it to South Korea two years later after a traumatic experience. Hers is a story of being sold with her mother into slave marriages by Chinese brokers, but she shares her story in order to inspire others and to perhaps find her sister who escaped and vanished into China.

Launched in 2008, the Reading the Globe program requires all First Year students to read a book focused on an international topic. This book is read and discussed as part of the UNIV 1101 freshman seminar curriculum, Learning in a Global Environment I. The Common Read Program provides the opportunity for discourse about issues relevant to students, and raises social awareness on a local and global scale. TAMIU also shares the experience with the City of Laredo as the selected book is part of its ‘One City, One Book’ program.

After application, competitive essay and interview, a group of students is selected for a study-travel opportunity related to the setting of the Common Read utilized. This year, students will travel to China. To date, students have traveled to Poland, Ghana, Cambodia, Chile, Turkey, Bosnia, and India.

To learn more about TAMIU’s “Reading the Globe” Program, including student experiences in each program, visit www.tamiu.edu/spotlight/

Information is also available by contacting Dr. Catheryn J. Weitman, University College Dean, at 956.326.2134, visiting offices in the Senator Judith Zaffirini Student Success Center, Suite 223 or by emailing catheryn.weitman@tamiu.edu