Events

Past Event

In Search of a Beautiful Freedom: New and Selected Essays

April 6, 2023
7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
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BOOK CULTURE BOOKSTORE, 536 WEST 112TH ST NEW YORK, NY

IRAAS BookTalk

Thursday , April  6, 2023 - 7:00pm

"In Search of a Beautiful Freedom: New and Selected Essays."
with Author, Farah Jasmine Griffin

Discussant: Margaret Banks , English & Comparative Literature - Columbia University

Location :
BOOK CULTURE BOOKSTORE
536 WEST 112TH ST NEW YORK, NY

Limited Space- Masking is Required

Registration Required
http://bit.ly/3yhCjtC

Co-Sponsored by Book Culture BookStore

Lively, insightful writings on Black music, feminism, literature, and events from a “masterful critic and master teacher” (Walton Muyumba, Boston Globe)"

In Search of a Beautiful Freedom brings together the best work from Farah Jasmine Griffin’s rich forays on music, Black feminism, literature, the crises of Hurricane Katrina and COVID-19, and the Black artists she esteems. She moves from evoking the haunting strength of Odetta and the rise of soprano popular singers in the 1970s to the forging of a Black women’s literary renaissance and the politics of Malcolm X through the lens of Black feminism. She reflects on pivotal moments in recent American history—including the banning of Toni Morrison’s Beloved—and celebrates the intellectuals, artists, and personal relationships that have shaped her identity and her work.
Featuring new and unpublished essays along with ones first appearing in outlets such as the New York Times and NPR, In Search of a Beautiful Freedom is a captivating collection that celebrates the work of “one of the few great intellectuals in our time” (Cornel West).

Farah Jasmine Griffin is William B. Ransford Professor of English and Comparative Literature and African American Studies at Columbia University. She is the author of "Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature" (2021) amongst other works.
Professor Griffin received her B.A. in History & Literature from Harvard and her Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale. She is the author or editor of eight books including Who Set You Flowin?: The African American Migration Narrative (Oxford, 1995), If You Can’t Be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday (Free Press, 2001), and Harlem Nocturne: Women Artists and Progressive Politics During World War II (Basic Books, 2013).

Griffin collaborated with composer, pianist, Geri Allen and director, actor S. Epatha Merkerson on two theatrical projects, for which she wrote the book: The first, “Geri Allen and Friends Celebrate the Great Jazz Women of the Apollo,” with Lizz Wright, Dianne Reeves, Teri Lyne Carrington and others, premiered on the main stage of the Apollo Theater in May of 2013. The second, “A  Conversation with Mary Lou” featuring vocalist Carmen Lundy, premiered at Harlem Stage in March 2014 and was performed at The John F. Kennedy Center in May of 2016. She is the recipient of a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship.

Margaret Banks is a PhD candidate in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. She studies black girl coming-of-age narratives to explore their modes of being in an anti-Black world. Prior to doctoral study, she taught middle school humanities. As a teacher, she seeks to connect the world-making strategies she encounters in her literary research to the ones black girls already generate and use in their everyday lives.