The One Book One Community is pleased to announce the 2024 campus read choice: Rising Class: How Three First-Generation College Students Conquered Their First Year by Jennifer Miller (ISBN 9780374313579).

This book tells the story of three first-generation college students in their transition from high school into their first year in higher education. As New York Times-bestselling author Dashka Slater stated, [it is] "a riveting ride through the first year of college that also manages to be an incisive examination of the class divide on college campuses and the myriad personal challenges first-generation students must navigate before they open a single book. Briani, Conner and Jacklynn will stay with you long after you finish reading."

Two youth traveled far from home for school while one stayed closer to home, but all of them face similar challenges, struggles and success as our students right here on campus! In addition, "I think this book will have a special meaning and impact for our students as it delves into their lives as the COVID outbreak changed the world forever in early 2020," said Lauren Copley Sabon, chair of the One Book One Community Committee. 

The book's publisher shares this description: 

This eye-opening YA narrative nonfiction follows three first-generation college students as they navigate their first year — and ultimately a global pandemic. Making it through the first year of college is tough. What makes it even tougher is being the first in your family to do so. Who can you turn to when you need advice?

Rising Class follows three first-generation freshmen, Briani, Conner and Jacklynn, as they not only experience their first semester of college, but the COVID-19 pandemic that turned their spring semester upside down. From life in the ivy league to classes at a community college, this nonfiction book follows these students' challenges, successes and dreams as they tackle their first year of college and juggle responsibilities to their families back home. Eye-opening and poignant, Jennifer Miller writes a narrative nonfiction story that speaks to new beginnings, coming of age and perseverance.

We are looking forward to bringing this book and author to our campus community in fall 2024 and hope to collaborate with offices, courses and programs across campus to get the book into as many hands as possible.

If you are a faculty member and would like to review the book for inclusion in your fall 2024 courses, please contact Sabon at copley@uark.edu or oboc@uark.edu to get a copy. Please consider including this as an ancillary text, and you still have a few days to add it to your book adoptions! We will be working towards having a discussion guide available for faculty.

If you work with students and would like to discuss connecting with One Book One Community and the 2024 campus read for the fall semester, please also reach out.