Modern man of letters

NEA chairman Dana Gioia took a bequest of books seriously enough to shape forever his life and art | Russ Pulliam

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With a working-class background in California, Dana Gioia didn't look destined to lead a national literacy movement. Of Sicilian descent, his father seldom read books. Nor did his mother, of Mexican heritage, though she did read periodicals and recited poetry to him while he was young. Gioia grew up speaking Italian in a Mexican neighborhood in Hawthorne, Calif.

An uncle's premature death left Gioia's family with books filling the shelves of their apartment. Gioia now credits those books for his intellectual development, two master's degrees and a career as a writer of prose and poetry. In 2003 he became chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts.

From there he's led a crusade for books, promoting influential NEA studies warning about a decline in reading. The agency's Big Read program recommends books and supplies teaching materials for community-wide programs, usually through public libraries. The goal is to restore book reading as a primary cultural influence.