It has been some time since any AJEDI activities have taken place.  We know that many of you are tied up with end of the semester coursework, exams, projects, and life changes, we hope that this engagement can serve to reignite future AJEDI functions.

Feel free to partake in some Star Wars trivia, and see how high you can score! Also, we aim to build the AJEDI library, book club, and other resources as we move forward. We’ve provided some unique and interesting reads that you may consider for yourself, or as recommendations for AJEDI activities ahead.

May the 4th Be With You!

May the 4th be with you!

4 Minute Star Wars Trivia: http://form-timer.com/start/591afb66
Prize will be awarded to the winner. Deadline participate will be 11:59PM Wednesday, May 4th.

A-JEDI Book Recommendations:

The World According to Star Wars, by Cass Sunstein

• There’s Santa Claus, Shakespeare, Mickey Mouse, the Bible, and then there’s Star Wars. Nothing quite compares to sitting down with a young child and hearing the sound of John Williams’s score as those beloved golden letters fill the screen. In this fun, erudite, and often moving book, Cass R. Sunstein explores the lessons of Star Wars as they relate to childhood, fathers, the Dark Side, rebellion, and redemption. As it turns out, Star Wars also has a lot to teach us about constitutional law, economics, and political uprisings.

Asian Pacific American Heritage Month

Interior Chinatown, by Charles Yu

• From the infinitely inventive author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe comes a deeply personal novel about race, pop culture, immigration, assimilation, and escaping the roles we are forced to play.

Fairest, by Meredith Talusan

• A singular, beautifully written coming-of-age memoir of a Filipino boy with albinism whose story travels from an immigrant childhood to Harvard to a gender transition and illuminates the illusions of race, disability, and gender.

At Least You Have Your Health, by Madi Sinha

• Dr. Maya Rao is a gynecologist trying to balance a busy life. With three young children, a career, and a happy marriage, she should be grateful–but when an opportunity arises to work at a concierge wellness clinic that specializes in house calls for a clientele of wealthy women for whom no vitamin infusion or healing crystal is too expensive, May jumps at the chance. But behind the chic veneer of the wellness clinic lies a dangerous secret, in this compelling women’s fiction novel from the author of The White Coat Diaries.

Rebels Against the Raj, by Ramachandra Guha

• An extraordinary history of resistance and the fight for Indian independence–the little-known story of seven foreigners to India who joined the movement fighting for freedom from British colonial rule.

Other good reads

Nudge, by Richard Thaler & Cass Sunstein

• Since the original publication of Nudge more than a decade ago, the title has entered the vocabulary of businesspeople, policy makers, engaged citizens, and consumers everywhere. The book has given rise to more than 400 “nudge units” in governments around the world and countless groups of behavioral scientists in every part of the economy. It has taught us how to use thoughtful “choice architecture”—a concept the authors invented—to help us make better decisions for ourselves, our families, and our society.

Fascism, A Warning, by Madeleine Albright

• The twentieth century was defined by the clash between democracy and Fascism, a struggle that created uncertainty about the survival of human freedom and left millions dead. Given the horrors of that experience, one might expect the world to reject the spiritual successors to Hitler and Mussolini should they arise in our era. Fascism: A Warning is drawn from Madeleine Albright’s experiences as a child in war-torn Europe and her distinguished career as a diplomat to question that assumption.