Press

The Courier-Tribune, Sunday June 1, 2008 page A3

© The Courier-Tribune
Reprinted with permission

By Chip Womick
Staff Writer

ASHEBORO — Randolph Reads “A Home on the Field” is a simple idea.
Encourage lots of local folks to read the book.

It is the story of how a high school soccer team in the Chatham County town of Siler City helped bridge a cultural gap between Hispanics and the rest of the community.
Then get those readers to come together to talk about the book.
And what is happening in Asheboro and Randolph County.
In public forums.
At civic club meetings.
In churches.
In schools.
On the street.
At the watercooler.

The goal is to improve race relations and increase the understanding of the greater community about who the Latino immigrants are, why they are here, how they came, and what challenges they face.

“The idea first came to me when I went to speak to the Kiwanis Club,” said Joyce Gamarra, executive director of the Latino Coalition of Randolph County.
“The basic questions made me realize how little information there is in the Anglo community. I just think Paul Cuadros does a great job of explaining the issues from all sides. I just think he does a great job of presenting immigration issues as they are.”

Cuadros is the award-winning reporter who wrote about the Jordan-Matthews High School Jets soccer team in “A Home on the Field.”

During their improbable run to the state championship in just their third season as a team, the Jets found themselves with devoted fans who crossed cultural, racial and economic lines to cheer for their hometown heroes. The team brought black, white and brown together, a convergence that took place on the field but which could also be felt on Main Street.
It is not the book Cuadros set out to write.

He headed south from Washington, D.C., in 1999 to see firsthand the effects of a flood of Latinos who came to Siler City to work in the poultry industry. He planned to gather his facts and figures and return home to write about how a town unaccustomed to immigration was dealing with rapid change.
He envisioned a somewhat “boring” book, one that might attract the attention of policy makers and think tankers.

But a few things happened that he had not envisioned. He fell in love with the countryside; he fell in love with the players on the soccer team; and he fell in love with a fellow reporter. He stayed in Chatham County; he became the coach of the soccer team; he got married; and he wound up writing a much more compelling tale than he’d imagined, one which prompted this review in The Boston Globe:
“The story of the ascent of the Jets would be dramatic enough, but Cuadros also explores the tensions that arise in a community suddenly swelling with Hispanic workers and their families ... (It) ought to be required reading for anybody who favors the construction of a wall along the country’s southern border.”

The story of the Jets occurred in a place where in 2000 an anti-immigration rally attracted hundreds of people, including former Louisiana Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, to the front lawn of Siler City town hall.

Curadros said the common cause of diverse fans cheering for a team did not erase all tensions between longtime county residents and Latino newcomers. But the experience helped bring some people just a little closer together.
U.S. census data showed that Asheboro’s Latino population grew from less than 1 percent in 1990 to nearly 20 percent in 2000.

As executive director of the Latino Coalition, which was established in 2003, Gamarra’s primary job is to provide social, educational and cultural services to the Latino community. But she also believes that bridging the gap — helping the greater community learn more about the Latino community — is important.
“It may be a fantasy,” she said last year, after less than two weeks on the job as the Coalition’s first executive director, “but I think if we can start to make a difference, one little family at a time, we could have a multicultural community. A healthy one. We have one now.”

Gamarra hopes Randolph Reads “A Home on the Field” can help bridge the gap and make a difference.

Organizers of the project represent a diverse cross-section of the community — from the Randolph Public Library, the Friends of the Library, the Randolph Arts Guild, the Asheboro Police Department, Primer Banco, city and county schools, and Randolph Community College. There are a couple of Latino grassroots leaders, three Latino students, an African-American student, a pair of Anglo college graduates.

“It’s an amazing team of people,” said Gamarra.

The library already had a few copies of Cuadros’ book. He spoke at a Friends of the Library program in 2006, when “A Home on the Field” was published. They have ordered 28 more and most of those have been distributed. Anyone interested in reading the book can call and have his name put on a waiting list.
The project has received a $1,500 grant from a group called Fund for Democratic Communities, a private Greensboro-based foundation that supports community-based initiatives and institutions that foster authentic democracy to make communities better places to live.

“We very much liked your proposal,” wrote the fund’s executive director in a letter about the grant approval, “and particularly appreciated the diversity of your organization’s planning group, your well-planned process, and your flexibility and openness to suggestions.”

Organizers are seeking funding from other sources, too, money that will be used to buy hundreds of copies of the book and to hire a facilitator trainer to train people who will lead discussions at a variety of venues, including the county’s library branches.

Randolph Reads “A Home on the Field” activities are being scheduled to loosely coincide with Hispanic Heritage Month, which will be Sept. 15-Oct. 15. Plans are still coming together, but organizers have scheduled a kickoff for Sept. 6 in Bicentennial Park in downtown Asheboro, with music, dancing and other festivities.

There will be a student art show and a youth panel discussion.
The author is scheduled to speak at the Sunset Theatre on Oct. 16.
Events will wind down during another gala in Bicentennial Park, a celebration called Dia de la Raza, on Oct. 19.

Ross Holt, assistant director of the Randolph Public Library, said the idea of getting a lot of people in a community to read a particular book and then talk about it is not new. It is common across the nation and has even been encouraged in Randolph County before, he said.

For instance, a few years back, local residents read Harper Lee’s classic “To Kill a Mockingbird,” watched the film version of the novel and talked about it. “It was quite successful,” he said.

Holt said organizers hope Randolph Reads “A Home on the Field” touches even more people. “What you hope is that people will read it and talk about it and that will spur more people to read it,” he said. “We hope there will be spontaneous discussion.”

And there is no reason to wait until September to start reading.
“If they want to go ahead and get the book,” Gamarra said, “after they read it, if they want to be involved with some of the planning of the events, then we would love that. “The whole purpose of this is to unite the community a little more.”
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For more information about Randolph Reads “A Home on the Field,” call Joyce Gamarra of the Latino Coalition at 626-0052.

-Contact: 626-6122 or
cwomick@courier-tribune.com