The Indianapolis Star features an interesting column about Dana Gioia, the Los Angeles-born poet who has dedicated his NEA tenure to getting American’s reading again. Russ Pulliam writes:

With his working-class background in California, Dana Gioia didn’t look destined to lead a national literacy movement. Of Sicilian descent, his father seldom read books. Nor did his mother, of Mexican heritage, though she did read periodicals and recited poetry to him while he was young. He grew up speaking Italian in a Mexican neighborhood. An uncle’s premature death left his family with books filling the shelves of their apartment. Gioia now credits those books for his intellectual development, two master’s degrees and a career as a writer of prose and poetry. Lately, he’s been chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts.

Pulliam continues:

What Gioia didn’t realize was how his experience would be verified in an NEA reading study … The NEA study indicates that shelves of books are more important than income or parental educational background. “A poor family, with books in the house, will produce a child, on the average, who will do better in those subjects than a rich kid with no books in the house,” Gioia explained. “The data just shows the power of the home environment.”

Read more here.

Read more about the NEA’s Big Read here.

Browse the Big Read book list and the latest grants for communities in California and elsewhere here.