Bestseller Book Brings People Together

Veterans of teaching in Central Asia and Central Oregon Community College librarians collaborated last Wednesday to organize a group discussion about Greg Mortenson’s hit non-fiction book “Three Cups of Tea.”

The library sponsors the Campus Reads program, and “Three Cups of Tea,” about Mortenson’s work building schools in Central Asia, is their first book in the project, and was chosen to coincide with the Season of Non-Violence.
Wednesday’s meeting was the first discussion group for the Campus Reads program. Librarian Cat Finney, organizer of Campus Reads, was fortunate enough to be in contact with Irv Nygren, a teacher and resident of Central Asia for 35 years, who attended the meeting.

“I became the pastor of a protestant church there (Central Asia) in the ‘80s,” Nygren said. In 1985, he founded a school for missionaries’ children, which he directed for the next 12 years. Nygren is very familiar with the areas Mortenson experienced and recorded in his book, and testified to the accuracy of the tome during the meeting.

Mortenson spends time in his book discussing culture shock and becoming a part of an unfamiliar culture. Nygren said that he fully understood and sympathized with Mortenson’s experiences.

“Just sit and be quiet for a while,” Nygren said. “When you come back, you have to get back into your own culture.”

Also attending the meeting was Maren Craig, who lived in Central Asia for four years in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, attending Woodstock School.

“When he talked about the tea and the rancid yak butter, I could smell and taste them.” Craig said.

She praised Mortenson’s writing abilities, as well as his total immersion into the societies where he built schools.

Craig was impressed with how Mortenson captured “all the smells, all the sights, sounds, and how they (the residents) interact in the family and the village,”

Margie Carlson, a student at COCC, had more to add about Mortenson’s ability to immerse.
“There’s a deeper level of listening. It crosses cultures,” Carlson said.

Mortenson successfully reached that level of listening in the communities he lived and worked in, and wrote with such realism and honesty that everyone who attended the Campus reads meeting said they thoroughly enjoyed “Three Cups of Tea.”