The City of East Lansing and Michigan State University announce “The Yellow Birds” as the 2013 One Book, One Community book selection. Written by debut novelist and Iraq War veteran Kevin Powers, “The Yellow Birds” has received critical acclaim and was a 2012 National Book Award finalist.
Community members can meet the author as he kicks off the month-long OBOC program at 7 p.m. Aug. 25 with a community talk and book signing at the East Lansing Hannah Community Center Performing Arts Theatre. On Aug. 26 he also will address the incoming MSU freshman class at the Academic Welcome in the Jack Breslin Student Events Center. Both events are free to the community.
A series of community and campus events are planned around the themes in “The Yellow Birds” throughout the month of September.
About the Book
The title of the book is derived from a traditional U.S. Army marching cadence or call-and-response marching song sung by military personnel when preparing for combat. In Kevin Powers’ powerful and touching novel, “The Yellow Birds,” the finality and futility of war comes to life. Innocence is lost, one way or another, and no one escapes.
In exquisite prose, Powers’ story is told through the eyes of 21-year-old Pvt. John Bartle, whose platoon is fighting a bloody battle to control the Iraq city of Al Tafar. Fighting next to him is Pvt. Daniel Murphy, an 18-year-old with little mental capacity to comprehend the violent world around him. In a careless moment, Bartle had made an impossible promise to Murphy’s mother to bring him back alive.
The Iraq War unfolds around their platoon in sudden bursts of chaos and death. Bartle tries to detach himself by drifting into the movement of the clouds; the play of light in an orchard and the rise of the setting sun; even though he knows there is no safe place in Iraq. In spite of Bartle’s efforts, Murphy is drawn into the shock of the brutality and suffering of war, takes it in and can’t let it go. Their ruthless sergeant badgers and dominates them, anything to keep them alert, smart and alive in the death-filled Iraqi landscape. In powerful scenes; the waiting, filth, fatigue and endless fear play out in Powers’ precise, graphic and evocative language.
Bartle’s story is about the responsibility - that is imposed and accepted - to survive. But when he comes home an internal war begins. He must explain what he saw, justify what he did to himself and face the blank stares of those who can’t begin to understand what it was like to be there.
About the Author
Kevin Powers served in the U.S. Army in 2004 and 2005 in Iraq, where he was deployed as a machine gunner in Mosul and Tal Afar. Born and raised in Virginia, he holds a Master of Fine Art from the University of Texas in Austin, where he was a Michener Fellow in Poetry. “The Yellow Birds” was a finalist for the National Book Award and received the 2013 PEN/Hemingway Award for first fiction. Powers’ story of war captures the harsh reality and aftermath of combat and raises complex questions about the sanity of war. “The Yellow Birds” is being compared with Tim O’Brien’s classic story of war, “The Things They Carried.” This is his first novel.
About the Program
The annual OBOC program, sponsored by the City of East Lansing and Michigan State University, encourages the city-university community to read the same book and come together to discuss it in a variety of settings. First launched in 2001 by City and University representatives with Ray Bradbury’s classic “Fahrenheit 451,” the program has brought East Lansing’s diverse community together each academic year with a new book and distinguished author.
For additional information, visit www.onebookeastlansing.com.