Due to growing concerns over COVID-19, and in an effort to comply with Long Beach City College’s efforts to reduce the number of events where a large mass of people are gathered to help slow the COVID-19 outbreak, we are postponing the Long Beach Reads One Book event scheduled for Thursday, March 19, 2020.

Over the coming weeks, we will be working with George, who has generously offered to reschedule, and LBCC to schedule a new date in Fall 2020. When the new date is scheduled, we will post it here and send a follow-up email to everyone who has RSVP’d to the event.

The Long Beach City College Foundation will be sending all registrants an email from events@lbcc.edu with the following information:

For registrants who have made a suggested community contribution: We appreciate your patience as we work with George and LBCC to reschedule Long Beach Reads One Book for Fall 2020. If you can attend the rescheduled event, we will hold your seat – no additional RSVP is required. We recommend adding the date to your calendar once we finalize it, and we will send a reminder email one month prior to the new date. If you can’t make the rescheduled date, you can choose to let your tickets be a tax-deductible contribution to The Long Beach City College Foundation’s Library & Learning Resource Associates, which provides learning materials and resources for students in the libraries at both LBCC campuses. If you would like a refund, please send an email with “LB Reads One Book Refund” in the subject line and the name on your credit card in the body of the email to events@lbcc.edu and we will process your request. We ask that you be patient as refunds will be processed in the order we receive them, and may take up to 2-3 business days to reflect in your account.

For people who registered for free: We appreciate your patience as we work with George and LBCC to reschedule Long Beach Reads One Book for Fall 2020. If you can attend the rescheduled event, we will hold your seat – no additional RSVP is required. We recommend adding the date to your calendar once we finalize it, and we will send a reminder email one month prior to the new date. If you can’t make the rescheduled date, please send an email with “LB Reads One Book RSVP Change” in the subject line and your name(s) in the body of the email to events@lbcc.edu so that we can adjust our seating capacity.

The popular Long Beach Reads One Book program has been revitalized by the Long Beach City College Foundation and Long Beach City College (LBCC) after a six-year hiatus. The New York Times Bestselling graphic novel “They Called Us Enemy” by actor, author, and social justice activist George Takei was selected to kick-off the reactivation of Long Beach Reads One Book. The months-long program will conclude with a huge community event with Takei at LBCC.

“They Called Us Enemy” is a graphic memoir recounting Takei’s childhood imprisoned within American concentration camps during World War II and his firsthand account of those years behind barbed wire, the joys of childhood and the terrors of growing up under legalized racism, his mother’s hard choices, his father’s faith in democracy, and the way those experiences planted the seeds for his astonishing future.

“They Called Us Enemy” is available for purchase at Gatsby Books in Long Beach, major retail and online bookstores, and at both LBCC Viking Bookstores at the Liberal Arts Campus and Pacific Coast Campus. LBCC students can also borrow the book from the LBCC Libraries at both campuses where a limited number of books will also be available.

Parking will be free in Lot M (Veterans Stadium) for the event. We recommend accessing the lot from Conant Avenue, as there will be pedestrian traffic on Lew Davis Street. ADA parking will be accessible in Lot L, and we recommend entering from Conant Avenue and utilizing Faculty Avenue to avoid pedestrian traffic on Lew Davis Street.