Authors Eddie Glaude, Imani Perry to discuss James Baldwin, and their own works on race in America.
Over the past nine months, Evanston Public Library has hosted a series of discussions for community members to talk about James Baldwin's novels and what they can learn from them.
To round off those discussions, from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Wednesday, August 12, Evanston Public Library and Bookends & Beginnings will host Princeton professor Eddie Glaude, author of “Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own” for a virtual conversation with Imani Perry, author of “Breathe: A Letter to My Sons.”
About Eddie S. Glaude Jr.
Eddie S. Glaude Jr. is the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor and chair of the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University. He is the former president of the American Academy of Religion, the largest professional organization of scholars of religion in the world. Glaude is the author of a number of books, including Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul. He hails from Moss Point, Mississippi, a small town on the gulf coast, and is a graduate of Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. Listen to a recent NPR interview with Dr. Glaude here.
About Imani Perry
Imani Perry is the Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies and faculty associate in the Program in Law and Public Affairs and Gender and Sexuality Studies at Princeton University. Perry has written and taught on a number of topics regarding race and African American culture. Besides her newest title Breathe, her books include Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop; May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem; and Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant Life of Lorraine Hansberry.
About the book “Begin Again”
In Begin Again, Glaude looks at James Baldwin’s world and sees our own moment reflected back, in the murder of Black Americans by white cops, a steady assault on voting rights, and the election of Donald Trump. A searing exploration that lays bare the tangled web of race, trauma, and memory, the book is a powerful interrogation of who we take ourselves to be and what we must ask and do in order to call forth a new America. Perry has called Glaude’s book “an unparalleled masterpiece of social criticism.”
During this virtual event, join in on a thought-provoking conversation between Eddie Glaude and Imani Perry, a mother, feminist, writer, and intellectual whose most recent book, Breathe, exhorts her children and their peers to find the courage to chart their own paths and find steady footing and inspiration in Black tradition.
Copies of Begin Again and Breathe that are ordered before and during the event from Bookends & Beginnings will include bookplates signed by their authors and can be shipped to your home or picked up at the store in downtown Evanston.
Register for the event here.
