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Common Read 2023-2024

The purpose of the MCW Common Read Program is to unite individuals across our campuses, create a sense of community and offer a forum to introduce timely topics which enrich our learning experiences.

"That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour" by Sunita Puri

We are excited to announce that our 2023-2024 Common Read is That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour by Sunita Puri. Our book selection committee reviewed many recommended titles this year, and after careful consideration we have selected this book to share with the MCW community in our mission to promote meaningful, ongoing discussion.

About the book

Common Read That Good NightAs the American born daughter of immigrants, Dr. Sunita Puri knew from a young age that the gulf between her parents’ experiences and her own was impossible to bridge, save for two elements: medicine and spirituality. Between days spent waiting for her mother, an anesthesiologist, to exit the OR, and evenings spent in conversation with her parents about their faith, Puri witnessed the tension between medicine’s impulse to preserve life at all costs and a spiritual embrace of life’s temporality. And it was that tension that eventually drew Puri, a passionate but unsatisfied medical student, to palliative medicine–a new specialty attempting to translate the border between medical intervention and quality-of-life care.

Interweaving evocative stories of Puri’s family and the patients she cares for, That Good Night is a stunning meditation on impermanence and the role of medicine in helping us to live and die well, arming readers with information that will transform how we communicate with our doctors about what matters most to us.

About the author

Sunita Puri is a writer of memoir and nonfiction, as well as a palliative medicine physician and the Program Director of the Hospice and Palliative Medicine Fellowship at the University of Massachusetts Memorial Medical Center. She is gifted in the art of finding compassionate ways to discuss life and death.

We are looking forward to a heartfelt and rich discussion on what it means to live and die well as a Common Read community this year!

The MCW Common Read
#MCWreads

Spiritually grounded, poetic, and brilliant . . . Puri has claimed her place in the ranks of illustrious physician-writers.

Katy Butler, author of Knocking on Heaven’s Door

Quotes from Common Read Members

”Our role in listening to and believing our patients, and in advocating for resources to help overcome barriers makes this especially important to physicians.”

“Many of us care for patients impacted by sexual violence and stand to learn a tremendous amount from this courageous first-person account.”

"As a member of the Council on Women's Advocacy, however, I am intrigued about Know My Name. We have organized several events related to #MeToo and harassment concerns, and there are several active leadership groups exploring these topics on campus."

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Participate in Common Read

There are a number of ways to participate in this year's Common Read, from receiving a copy to hosting a book discussion!

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Suggest a Book

Got a book in mind that would be perfect for MCW Common Read? Let us know!

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Support Black-Owned Bookstores web

Support Black-Owned Bookstores

While we were sadly unable to live up to our goal of purchasing books from Black-owned bookstores due to budgeting restrictions, we hope our readers will consider supporting these businesses if possible. If your department is holding its own book club, we highly encourage contacting one of these businesses for bulk orders if you haven’t already ordered through Common Read.

View More Black-Owned bookstores in the U.S.

Past Common Read Selections

The MCW Common Read program began in the academic year of 2018-2019. All of the MCW Common Reads have been archived. You will find the book description, the links to the author’s Kern Grand Round recordings, and book resources.
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2022-2023: Catastrophic Rupture

Catastrophic Rupture tells the story of Dr. Lee, a bioethics and critical care trained pediatrician who has cared for many children with neurodevelopmental disabilities. When a complicated delivery resulted in a severe brain injury for her second child, she found that her life as a parent was more challenging and ultimately richer than she could have imagined. This book allows the reader to walk alongside the author as she struggles to bond with and love her child, as she reconciles what is happening at home with her ongoing role as a physician to patients and families in similar circumstances, and as she shifts from the medical perspective of disability that sees an impaired body to the mother’s perspective that sees the beauty and value in the person that is her child.

Copies are available to MCW students, faculty, staff, and community members through the following venues:

  • Borrow a copy from the MCW Library
  • Purchase a copy from Amazon
  • Purchase a copy from Matthews Book Store
  • Follow @MCWREADS on Instagram and Twitter
2021-2022: Know My Name

Know My Name is the first person account of Chanel Miller, a victim of sexual assault. She brilliantly describes the coping and aftermath of this life altering experience — inviting the reader deep into the psyche of a recovering victim. It is bold and unapologetic, important, and incredibly timely. Know My Name initiated a conversation that is very much needed, not only at MCW, but in the medical community as a whole.

Copies are available to MCW students, faculty, staff, and community members through the following venues:

  • Borrow a copy from the MCW Library
  • Purchase a copy from Amazon
  • Purchase a copy from Matthews Book Store
  • Follow @MCWREADS on Instagram and Twitter
2020-2021: How to be an Antiracist

In How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi takes listeners through a widening circle of antiracist ideas - from the most basic concepts to visionary possibilities - that will help listeners see all forms of racism clearly, understand their poisonous consequences, and work to oppose them in our systems and in ourselves.

Kendi weaves an electrifying combination of ethics, history, law, and science with his own personal story of awakening to antiracism. This is an essential work for anyone who wants to go beyond the awareness of racism to the next step: contributing to the formation of a just and equitable society.

Copies are available to MCW students, faculty, staff, and community members through the following venues:

  • Borrow a copy from the MCW Library
  • Purchase a copy from Amazon
  • Purchase a copy from Matthews Book Store
  • Follow @MCWREADS on Instagram and Twitter
2019-2020: Your Heart is the Size of Your Fist by Dr. Martina Scholtens

Your Heart is the Size of Your Fist: A Doctor Reflects on Ten Years at a Refugee Clinic touches on several themes throughout the book, including cultural humility, trauma and health systems and policy. Use the questions in the PDF to help guide your discussion of the book.

Dr. Martina Scholtens spent a decade in a Vancouver, British Columbia clinic for newly-arrived refugees, providing health care for families from the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. But her real mission – the challenge that shines through her fascinating book – was to accompany them on their journeys in ways that went far beyond what she learned in medical school or during her family medicine residency.

Copies are available to MCW students, faculty, staff, and community members through the following venues:

  • Borrow a copy from the MCW Library
  • Purchase a copy from Amazon
  • Access an ebook version via Ebook Central
  • Purchase a copy from Matthews Book Store
  • Follow @MCWREADS on Instagram and Twitter

The author's visit was cancelled due to the impact of COVID-19 and in accordance with MCW's event guidelines.

View the discussion Questions (PDF)

2018-2019: In Shock by Rana Awdish

It was with great excitement that we announced the selection of Dr. Rana Awdish’s novel, In Shock, as our first MCW Common Read during the 2018-2019 school year. In Shock was recommended to the Common Read Steering Committee by Dr. Cassie Ferguson. Dr. Ferguson is a Pediatric Emergency Medicine doctor by day (and night), Director of the Kern Student Pillar, Director of the QuIPS Scholarly Pathway, and a driving force behind the MCW Common Read. In Shock follows Dr. Awdish’s journey through a life-threatening medical emergency and its aftermath. Throughout the course of her story, she flips the lens on the medical system and balks at the gaps in caring and compassion. She also expertly reflects on her own training and seeks answers for the dissonance that exists between her training and her actual experiences. Themes of caring, competence, and character weave in and out of this purposely raw novel, demanding that readers take a critical look at themselves.

Pick up a copy of the book:

  1. Borrow a copy from the MCW Library.
  2. Borrow a copy from your local public library.
  3. Purchase a copy from Amazon.
  4. Listen to In Shock on Audible by starting a 30-day free trial.

Find a list of book discussion questions here. (PDF)

Watch Dr. Awdish's Kern Grand Rounds

Contact Us

MCW Common Read Steering Committee

commonread@mcw.edu

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MCW Common Read imagery created by MCW medical student Rushi Patel