{"id":19474,"date":"2018-01-03T16:17:31","date_gmt":"2018-01-03T21:17:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=19474"},"modified":"2018-01-10T16:31:51","modified_gmt":"2018-01-10T21:31:51","slug":"strangers-with-the-same-dream-selected-for-one-book-one-aurora-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/strangers-with-the-same-dream-selected-for-one-book-one-aurora-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"“Strangers with the Same Dream” selected for One Book One Aurora 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

The selection has been in the works for some months, but a recent move by U.S. President Donald Trump to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel has lent both a sense of urgency and timeliness \u2013 and certainly no shortage of discussion points \u2013 for 2018\u2019s One Book One Aurora campaign.
\n\u201cStrangers with the Same Dream\u201d, the acclaimed 2017 novel by Toronto-based author Alison Pick, will form the centrepiece of this book\u2019s One Book One Aurora, an annual initiative of the Aurora Public Library to get all of Aurora reading on the same page.
\nLater this year, small lending libraries will be popping up across Aurora brimming with paperback copies of the novel, which is set in 1921 Palestine, intended to allow all Aurorans to pick up and enjoy the book, bring it back, and keep the books circulating. As Aurora reads, the Library will host a series of events and discussions around the various themes of the book, culminating in a talk at the Library with Ms. Pick set for this November.
\n\u201cIt is so exciting and it is very meaningful,\u201d Ms. Pick tells The Auroran of her novel being selected for the seventh annual One Book One Aurora (OBOA) program. \u201cWriting is so kind of isolating, which suits me because I am very introverted and like being at my desk for long periods of time by myself, but I always think of it as the circle being completed when [the book] goes out to reach readers and you get feedback, have conversations and it feels satisfying. I am really grateful.\u201d
\nThe Man Booker Prize-shortlisted author\u2019s book centres on a band of young Jewish pioneers, some facing violence in their homelands, founding a kibbutz which will one day become a part of modern-day Israel.
\nFeaturing a cast of characters ranging from two young single women, a charismatic leader, and a tapestry of true-to-life, flawed individuals, it is a study of \u201chow idealism quickly turns into pragmatism, and how the utopian dream is punctured by messy human entanglements.\u201d
\n\u201cAugust is when I start to focus all of my reading on Canadian authors I think could be my next One Book One Aurora,\u201d says RecciaMandelcorn of the Aurora Public Library (APL). \u201cI read nothing beyond that, go through the Writers\u2019 Union of Canada, all the publishers at Word on the Street, and I couldn\u2019t find anything that intrigued me. Then I picked up \u2018Strangers with the Same Dream\u2019 on a Saturday and I read it through Sunday morning, basically reading it within a 24 hour period with a four hour nap in between. I couldn\u2019t put it down and I just knew it had to be that book.\u201d
\nBooks for OBOA not only have to be \u201cbeautiful from a literary perspective\u201d but also have to provide various themes around which a whole season of programming can be based. With themes ranging from faith, to politics, idealism to the very essence of community, \u201cStrangers with the Same Dream\u201d does not disappoint.
\nAnd it generated no shortage of important conversations while Ms. Pick toured with the book throughout 2017.
\n\u201cAfter being on tour all fall, I have a sense of the themes that rise out of the conversations, some of which are maybe more obvious than others,\u201d says Ms. Pick. \u201cThere is early Zionism, the creation of Israel, and there is often a piece around feminism and mothering and the female pioneers\u2019 experience.
\n\u201cThere is something mysterious about the creative process, and it is not as calculated as wanting [a specific character to represent a specific theme]. As I play with them on the page, they begin to come alive and I feel like I am kind of listening; that it is a collaborative process between me and the other characters. When I was in Israel for the second time on a Kibbutz I looked in an archive and the archivist was hugely helpful in my process introducing me to some diaries and letters.
\n\u201cI hadn\u2019t heard these stories before so I knew early on I wanted issues of gender and parenting, and the collective versus the individual to come into it. \u201c
\nKnowing that themes surrounding the foundation of Israel are often polarizing and political, Ms. Pick says she tried not to think about the politics as she \u201ccollaborated with her characters\u201d on the story. She pondered \u201cwhat story I had the right to tell and what story I would be able to tell well.\u201d
\n\u201cI felt I couldn\u2019t tell the story without including Palestinian or Arab characters and they would have to be secondary characters because it wasn\u2019t my lived experience,\u201d says Ms. Pick.<\/p>\n

Next week, The Auroran will continue its look at \u201cStrangers with the Same Dream,\u201d the 2018 selection for One Book One Aurora with Ms. Pick\u2019s own lived experience and how these experiences impacted the story.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Acclaimed novel by Allison Pick looks at early foundations of modern Israel<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":19462,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27,4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-and-culture","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/2018-01-04-04.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-546","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-10 22:11:19","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19474\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}