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| Students at Black Graduation, April 28, 2026 |
Every Fall and Spring at SIUE’s Black Graduation, there is a table of books where graduates are invited to select a free title as a parting gift, before taking their seat after their names are called. The moment is brief but may reveal something about how readers make choices under pressure. It also creates a rare setting where selection happens publicly and in real time.
A group of selective readers often return to the table at the end of the ceremony, uncertain about the books they had initially chosen. Many of them had already stood out earlier as those who took longer to decide, in contrast to graduates who quickly selected a familiar name, such as Frederick Douglass, or bypassed the table altogether. Their return suggested that the first choice had not fully settled the question of what they wanted to read.
These readers lingered, at times frustrating event coordinators and slowing the line of graduates behind them, but their behavior was notable. With 175 graduates and a wide range of available titles, some repeated editions, fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and comic books by Black authors, the table offered more than enough choice. What distinguished this group was not indecision alone, but a visible effort to match themselves with a text that felt worth carrying forward.
Their selectiveness suggests a form of reading awareness that is often difficult to observe in more controlled settings like classrooms or surveys. Faced with abundance rather than assignment, these readers treated the act of choosing as consequential, even within a brief and public moment. Professors of African American literature are familiar with how selection shapes reading, considering debates over range and depth in syllabus design, but we often take this process for granted when considering students’ reading practices; paying closer attention to these moments may clarify how readers define value, relevance, and intellectual commitment.
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