Print copies of the book are available for checkout at the Eola Road Branch Adult Reference Desk on the 2nd floor. E mail group facilitator Becky Clark at \;rclark@aurorapubliclibrary.org \;for more inform ation.
\nJoin us virtually on Zoom here.
\nBook des cription:
\nThe Black Box: Writing the Race by Henry Louis Gates\, Jr.
\nDistilled over many years from Henry Louis Gates\, Jr. &rsquo\;s legendary Harvard introductory course in African American Studie s\, \;The Black Box: Writing the Race\, is the story of Black self-definition in America through the prism of the writers who have led the way. From Phillis Wheatley and Frederick Douglass\, W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington\, to Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright\, James B aldwin and Toni Morrison&mdash\;these writers used words to create a livab le world&mdash\;a "home" &mdash\;for Black people destined to live out the ir lives in a bitterly racist society. It is a book grounded in the beauti ful irony that a community formed legally and conceptually by its oppresso rs to justify brutal sub-human bondage\, transformed itself \;through the word \;into a community whose foundational definition was based on overcoming one of history&rsquo\;s most pernicious lies. This collective act of resistance and transcendence is at the heart of its self-definition as a "community." Out of that contested ground has flowered a resilient\, creative\, powerful\, diverse culture formed by people who have often dis agreed markedly about what it means to be "Black\," and about how best to shape a usable past out of the materials at hand to call into being a more just and equitable future. \;This is the epic story of how\, through essays and speeches\, novels\, plays\, and poems\, a long line of creative thinkers has unveiled the contours of&mdash\;and resisted confinement in& mdash\;the "black box" inside which this "nation within a nation" has been assigned\, willy nilly\, from the nation&rsquo\;s founding through to tod ay. This is a book that records the compelling saga of the creation of a p eople. (publisher description)
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