Damon is originally from Western New York, and came to Boston University to study public relations in the College of Communication. He first discovered the Howard Thurman Center through Coffee & Conversation. For him, this is one of the only programs on campus that encourages students to take part in healthy debate, and it’s facilitated in a way that ensures everyone in the room can find their voice and use it without putting others down. Attending Coffee & Conversation every week helped Damon see the HTC as a space for meaningful, shared experiences, an element central to Thurman’s philosophy of the Search for Common Ground.
In his free time, Damon is an avid music listener and the music director at WTBU, the University’s radio station. He’s also a voracious reader, which aligns perfectly with his appointment to lead the HTC Book Club in the upcoming academic year. Here’s what to expect from his selected books:
“The books we’ll discuss will largely focus on where we are as Americans, both historically and culturally. I want to explore what the American identity is, was, and what it could be. I hope these books and our experience of them will get us to take a closer look at who we are as a nation – indivisible or not.”
This book embraces difficult American dichotomies. I selected it, in part, for my love of the experimental novel. I also like how it explores the gray areas of American history, music, culture, and more in a new and inventive way. Written before the 2016 election, it grapples with this idea of the “right” path for America.
Whereas Shawdowbahn grapples with what it means to identify as American, Rocket Men explores the space race, a time in our nation’s history when we truly (seemed) to feel united.
A Thousand Steps was recommended to me by HTC Director, Katherine Kennedy, and is the book that really set the tone for the fall semester. This novel takes a look at the early history of our nation as told through the story of two women, one an abolitionist and the other a runaway slave, on a journey to Native American territory in 1855.