Smith Reads: Leaning on Joy

“Magical”; “serendipitous”; “delightful.”

That’s how organizers of this year’s Smith Reads program describe what’s new about the college’s summer reading experience for entering students.

Part of the charm lies in the 2023 book choice: Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights—a collection of essays that celebrates the search for “ordinary wonders” in challenging times.

The book addresses racism and inequality, an intentional focus of Smith Reads. It also highlights the necessity of joy, which is a unifying motif at the college this year. Cromwell Day, on Thursday, Nov. 2,  for example, will celebrate "Finding Joy on Our Journey to Racial Justice."

“In her very first announcement, our new president talked about joy,” notes Lyda Martin ’26, who served on the Smith Reads selection committee. “Thinking about what a first-year student would want to read—this book feels like it!”

Author Gay—who was already scheduled to give a reading at the Boutelle-Day Poetry Center on Tuesday, Sept. 26—will hold a special session with new entering students on Thursday, Sept. 28, at 4:30 p.m. in John M. Greene Hall. 

“Ross Gay’s coming here really is kind of magical,” says Jane Stangl, dean of the first-year class and longtime coordinator of Smith Reads. “Students will have an opportunity to ask him questions and explore how his book intersects with larger issues, as well as their lives as college students.”

Some other things to look forward to about Smith Reads this year:

• Book discussions led by staff and faculty during orientation will be held in locations across campus to increase opportunities for new students to engage with Gay’s work and with each other. Tiana Clark, Grace Hazard Conkling Writer-in-Residence, and Anaiis Cisco, assistant professor of film and media studies, will help prepare discussion leaders by exploring ”notions of Black Joy as it relates to the book and beyond.”
• Collaborations with the Office for Equity and Inclusion, the Wurtele Center for Leadership and the Jacobson Center for Writing, Teaching and Learning, which will offer participants in the reading program a chance to write about their experience for the Smith Writes online journal of work by new students.
• A broadside offering one of Ross Gay’s poems and designed by Barry Moser, Irwin and Pauline Alper Glass Professor of Art, will be distributed to new students.
• In a bit of publishing serendipity, Gay will be signing copies of his newest collection, The Book of (More) Delights, after his reading at the Poetry Center on September 26.

Matt Donovan, director of the Boutelle-Day Poetry Center and a member of the Smith Reads selection committee, first encountered Gay’s book in 2020, during the pandemic lockdown.

“I’ve started to read it again and it truly is delightful,” Donovan says. “The book talks about exercising the delight muscle—how the more you find yourself seeking delight in the world, the more likely you are to find it. I really love that idea of training ourselves to become more attuned to what matters.”

The book also underlines a connection between joy and justice, says fellow book committee member Megan Lyster, assistant director of the Wurtele Center. “For Ross Gay, appreciating things is a way of fighting for justice,” she says. “That’s such an important idea for us to hold in our hearts.”

Martin, who plans to major in English, says participating in Smith Reads as a new student last fall helped her feel welcome on campus, “like I was already being taken seriously.”

Coming from south Texas, an area of the country where some books are currently being banned, Martin says she is grateful for the way the Smith Reads program builds community through a shared text.

What would she like to say to Gay when he visits the campus?

“I want to tell him how much I loved reading his book in airports because so many of the essays take place in airports and are about those small moments of intimacy,” Martin says. “And I’d like to talk to him about the instances in the book where he could have gotten angry or defensive, but instead, leans on joy.”

photo of author Ross Gay by Natasha Komoda