Wheelock to Explore Belonging and Identity in America with Convocation Ceremony

Wheelock College will formally open its doors for the 2015-2016 academic year on September 2 with a Convocation Ceremony featuring an address by Matthew Salesses, author of the novel The Hundred-Year Flood. In his address, Salesses will discuss the Convocation theme of “Belonging and Identity in America,” a theme which runs through both his novel and Wheelock’s summer reading assignment, Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. The two authors experience different journeys, yet both speak similarly regarding the struggle of understanding themselves and where they belong in America.

Convocation is Latin for “coming together,” and this important Wheelock tradition is part of a day of learning for the campus, with special activities planned for students, faculty, staff, alumni, and the larger community. All incoming students, for example, read Americanah prior to arriving on campus, discuss the book in small faculty- and staff-led discussion groups prior to the Convocation Ceremony, and will continue the conversations throughout their first-year courses. In addition, Wheelock will continue its popular Senior Symposium Luncheon with the senior class and guest author.

“We are pleased to have selected two distinguished authors as part of 2015 Convocation to explore important issues around social justice, identities and belonging in a global context,” said Wheelock President Jackie Jenkins-Scott. “I am confident that our community will benefit from the discussions deriving from Matthew Salesses’ Convocation speech and our community summer reading selection Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

Author Matthew Salesses was adopted from Korea. In his most recent book, The Hundred-Year Flood, he weaves together the tangled threads of identity, love, growing up, and relationships. He has written for a wide range of venues, including NPR, The New York Times, Salon, the Center for Asian American Media, The Toast, and The Good Men Project, and has been featured on WGBH, Al Jazeera America, OPB, Tribune Media Services, TWiB, and elsewhere. He has received awards and fellowships from the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference, Inprint, the University of Houston, Emerson College, Glimmer Train, Mid-American Review, and [PANK]. His previous books include I’m Not Saying, I’m Just Saying (a novel) and Different Racisms: On Stereotypes, the Individual, and Asian American Masculinity (essays).

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel Americanah received the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, was selected as one of the 10 Best Books of 2013 by the New York Times Book Review, and was shortlisted for the 2014 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction of the United Kingdom. This contemporary interpretation of a coming-of-age novel is a powerful, tender story of race and identity.

For more information on Convocation and the day’s events, visit www.wheelock.edu/convocation