About
The Library received its first Sheila Johnson grant in 2003 with the purpose of 鈥渆ncouraging reading and informing our patrons of the diversity of literature available today.鈥 As of 2020, the collection consists of 2,960 books and 606 DVDs. The most recent books in the collection are located on the library鈥檚 first-floor Reading Room while older items are shelved in the general collection on the library鈥檚 second floor. By making these titles available, the Library hopes to encourage our patrons to become familiar with contemporary Black, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, and LGBTQ+ authors. Over the past few years, we have also added graphic novels, fantasy fiction, and science fiction by authors representing many different backgrounds and cultural experiences to the collection. The Library is greatly indebted to the Sheila Johnson Institute for providing funding for materials that we otherwise would not be able to purchase with Library funds. As evidenced by high circulation rates year after year, Sheila Johnson books are extremely popular with the campus community. The Library looks forward to the continued support of the Sheila Johnson Institute.
Interested in requesting a book to be added to the collection? Then please contact us via email at library@morrisville.edu or stop in and chat with a librarian.
Who is Sheila Johnson?
Sheila Johnson is an American entrepreneur and co-founder of the BET (Black Entertainment Television). She was also the first African American woman to have a net worth of over one billion dollars. A long-time equine enthusiast Sheila became interested in the Morrisville campus in the early aughts because of the college鈥檚 roots in equine education and programming. It is through her generous donations that made several initiatives across campus possible.
New Book Highlights
As Many Souls As Stars
By Natasha Siegel
"An inventive and romantic speculative novel about two women鈥攁 witch and an immortal demon鈥攚ho make a Faustian bargain and are drawn into a cat-and-mouse chase across multiple lifetimes." - From the publisher
One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
By Omar El Akkad
"On October 25, 2023, after just three weeks of the bombardment of Gaza, Omar El Akkad put out a tweet: 鈥淥ne day, when it鈥檚 safe, when there鈥檚 no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it鈥檚 too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.鈥 This tweet has been viewed more than 10 million times.
As an immigrant who came to the West, El Akkad believed that it promised freedom. A place of justice for all. But in the past twenty years, reporting on the War on Terror, Ferguson, climate change, Black Lives Matter protests, and more, and watching the unmitigated slaughter in Gaza, El Akkad has come to the conclusion that much of what the West promises is a lie. That there will always be entire groups of human beings it has never intended to treat as fully human鈥攏ot just Arabs or Muslims or immigrants, but whoever falls outside the boundaries of privilege. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is a chronicle of that painful realization, a moral grappling with what it means, as a citizen of the U.S., as a father, to carve out some sense of possibility in a time of carnage." - From the publisher
Martyr!
By Kaveh Akbar
"Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother鈥檚 plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident; and his father鈥檚 life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past鈥攖oward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed." - From the publisher