NYC First Lady Chirlane McCray Launches Gracie Mansion Book Club

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- New York City's First Lady Chirlane McCray is taking a page out of Oprah Winfrey's book and is launching a book club.

The Gracie Book Club will be a collaborative effort with local authors to select six books over the course of the year and moderate discussions about them, WCBS 880 reported.

This year's theme, "Envisioning Distant Neighbors," aims to "open dialogue on New York's diversity and rich immigrant community," according to a press release.

"The many immigrant groups that have sought refuge here, and the beautiful languages and traditions they brought with them, help define New York City," McCray said in a statement.

The first selection is "Bright Lines," which is about three young women and a Bangladeshi immigrant family struggling to reconcile the competing identities of Brooklyn and Dhaka, according to the press release.

"It's not just about Brooklyn or New York, it also is about the history of Bangladesh and the way that these young people in the story navigate their life in the city," author Tanwi Nandini Islam told WCBS 880.

Nandini Islam said she hopes the book club helps New Yorkers relate to each other more.

"We're living in a city where we're riding the train, we live in apartments, we're all kind of really close in proximity to each other but we don't know each other, we don't talk to each other," she said. "Reading fiction allows us to enter the lives of places and communities and relationships that we may not experience in our actual real life."

To sign up for the book club, visit nyc.gov/graciebookclub.

A discussion on the book will be held at Gracie Mansion at 6 p.m. on May 17.

Ticket information will be released in the coming weeks.

The New York Public Library, Brooklyn Public Library and Queens Library systems will have extra copies of "Bright Lines" available at its branches, and plan to host their own discussions on the book.