State-Journal.com - Still in awe of his aunt's novel

Photo By Kelly MackeyKentucky State University kicked off its third Big Read Frankfort with the featured book “To Kill A Mockingbird” by Harper Lee. Lee’s nephew, KSU’s Dr. Edwin Conner, spoke about the book at the kickoff Thursday.

When Edwin Conner read a galley copy of “To Kill a Mockingbird” shortly before it was published in 1960, he was “absolutely amazed.”

He didn’t see his aunt, Harper Lee, as someone who would pen a classic of American literature.

“I didn’t know that my aunt – whom I thought of simply as my aunt, the way you think of your aunt – I had no idea she could do something like that,” said Conner, a faculty member in Kentucky State University’s Whitney Young School of Honors.

“I read it all in about two days, and I was bowled over and continued to be bowled over for years to come with the unfolding story of that novel.”

Conner spoke Thursday at KSU’s student center ballroom, where faculty, students and other bibliophiles kicked off the third-annual Big Read.

The community-wide book study will run until Nov. 15, with discussions in the Paul Sawyier Public Library, KSU’s Paul G. Blazer Library and in local high schools. There will also be movie screenings throughout the month.

“I’m not an expert on this novel,” Conner said. “I do have a certain relation to the author that gives me some knowledge that I just happen to have fallen into.”

The novel, set in 1930s Alabama, follows the trial of Tom Robinson, an African American accused of raping a white woman. Atticus Finch, a white lawyer, takes his case, and he and his two children face threats and ridicule.

Lee wrote the novel during the mid-1950s, as the civil rights movement was awakening. The U.S. military had been integrated, the Supreme Court ruled against segregation in public schools, and figures like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. began getting national attention, Conner said.

“Meanwhile in New York City, Harper Lee was beginning her novel,” he said. “In fact, at that point, it began as only one or two short stories – a novel was not yet envisioned.”

“To Kill a Mockingbird” went on to win the Pulitzer Prize, and was made into an Academy Award-winning film. In 2007, President George W. Bush presented Lee with the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her contribution to literature.

Now 83, Lee lives a private life, rarely speaking publicly or making appearances. She never published another novel.

Conner said Thursday that he has never talked to the press about his aunt.

Instead he spoke about the novel’s social and historical background, including the impact of the Great Depression on racial tension in the South.

He drew parallels between the trial of Tom Robinson in “To Kill a Mockingbird” and the real-life case of the Scottsboro Boys, nine black men charged with rape in Scottsboro, Ala.

Both involved charges of rape by poor, white women against African Americans, he said. In both trials, only white males sat on the jury, but attorneys and judges stood up for the defendants’ rights.

The U.S. Supreme Court eventually ruled in the Scottsboro case that prospective jurors cannot be excluded on the basis of race, Conner said.

Lee called her novel a love story, Conner said, though not in the traditional sense.

“The advice of Atticus Finch to his daughter, Scout, holds true,” he said. “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view – until you climb into his skin and walk around.

“That’s at the heart of ‘Mockingbird’s’ timelessness, I think. It is, at heart, a love story.”

The aim of the community-wide book study, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts, is to raise the level of literacy and interest in literature.

So far, KSU has handed out more than 1,100 copies of the novel to local residents. Readers are asked to pass the book on when they finish.

At the formal announcement Sept. 28 about the new book, KSU’s Peter Smith, who secured the grant, said “To Kill A Mockingbird” was an ideal choice because it is already required reading in many local high schools.

Parents and siblings could join local high school students in reading the book, and then they could discuss it as a family. It’s also a great novel that stands the test of time, he said.

“You can pick it up at various times in your life, and it will still speak to you in a different way.”

This year, the Big Read will include high schools and community groups in Owen, Scott and Anderson counties as well as Franklin County.

KSU was one of 268 Big Read grant recipients this year. The Big Read is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services and Arts Midwest.