Maryland Humanities recently announced it had selected the selection of Myriam J.A. Chancy’s “What Storm, What Thunder” as its 2024 One Maryland One Book program.
This marks the 17th year of Maryland Humanities’ state-wide reading and discussion program.
The Haitian-Canadian-American author’s novel follows a cast of characters during the 2010 earthquake that struck Haiti. They realize that everything they thought was certain suddenly isn’t as they endure the chaos of a natural disaster.
Readers witness an NGO architect, a water-bottling executive, a drug trafficker, an immigrant cab driver, and others in scenes before, during and after during the earthquake.
“The novel takes its title in part from an epigraph by Frederick Douglass,” Chancy said in a news release, “himself from the Baltimore area, writing in his essay, ‘What to the Negro is the fourth of the July?’ in 1852: ‘For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.’ Of course, Douglass was not calling for disaster, but for seismic change in America’s social order in ways that I believe the reality of the earthquake called for in the Haitian context in more recent years.”
“What Storm, What Thunder” made the shortlist for the Aspen Words Literary Prize and the long-list for the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. Chancy’s 2010 novel “The Loneliness of Angels” also made the latter list.
Her next novel “Village Weavers” is scheduled to be released in April.
Maryland Humanities will announce details on the One Maryland One Book summer tour, a calendar of free events as well as an author tour will be released online within the next few months.
A selection committee of 18 Marylanders — including teachers, scholars, librarians, writers, booksellers, and community workers representing 10 counties and Baltimore — chose the novel.
A public call for books under the theme of “Restorative Futures” garnered nearly 250 titles, from which the committee made its selection.
“This year’s One Maryland One Book theme feels important and timely,” Maryland Humanities CEO Lindsey Baker said in the release. “I’m looking forward to seeing what resonates with Marylanders about ‘What Storm, What Thunder’ and the amazing programming I know our partners will come up with.”
Through its Maryland Center for the Book program, Maryland Humanities created the One Maryland One Book program to bring together diverse people in communities across the state through the shared experience of reading the same book, and invites readers to participate in book-centered discussions and related programs at public libraries, high schools, colleges, museums, bookstores, and community and senior centers.
For more information, go to www.mdhumanities.org.
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