Romeo Reads 2023

What is Romeo Reads?

Read Attend Connect

Romeo Reads is…

An invitation to all community residents to read a Michigan-authored book and to attend free programs connected with its content.

We wish to:

• promote literacy
• foster an appreciation of books and reading
• provide a forum to connect and
• enhance civic unity through literature.

This is our third year of Romeo Reads. We hope you’ll join in.

We are reading Call me Athena: Girl from Detroit by Colby Cedar Smith.

What’s this year’s book about?

In depression-era Detroit, the world seems like a place full of contradictions to Mary…

Promised to a much older man and told to curb her desire to own a business like her father, while courted by a boy who sees her for who she is and who she wants to be, Mary sees her future as more uncertain by the day…

By flashing back to Mary’s parents’ adolescences in WWI-era Greece and France, they… exist as people whose dreams have been blunted by trauma.

Call Me Athena[‘s]… real strength is the way it takes such different times, places, and stories and shows how commonalities like love, grief, and hope can connect a family over the course of generations.

Who is the author?

Colby Cedar Smith grew up in the Midwest, and she still dreams of the cold northern woods and the smell of lake water.

She holds degrees from Colorado College and Harvard University. She has been a finalist for several poetry awards and prizes, and her poems have been published in many publications.

Call Me Athena is a Library of Michigan 2022 Michigan Notable Book selection.

Colby lives with her husband and two children in Hopewell, New Jersey, and teaches creative writing at the Arts Council of Princeton. Read more of her work at www.colbycedarsmith.com.

What do others think of the book?

“… the author’s sense of history brings details of the different times and cultures to life… Her blank verse serves the tale well, with lines such as “Death walks the halls / naked, / without pride, asking for his mother,” to convey the youth and despair of injured young men. A strong debut written with heart and strength. —Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission

“This novel in verse captures one young woman’s struggle for independence, equality, and identity as the daughter of Greek and French immigrants in tumultuous 1930s Detroit.” —Back Cover Review

“This is an exceptional novel in verse that at times devastated me in the best way, bringing out the anguish that these characters suffered and with only such few words. I also laughed and smiled at the joyful moments… Highly recommended YA novel that will transport you to historical times in which women had to fight for every bit of freedom. —Danielle, Amazon review