Join us for an e ngaging discussion with Tess Chakkalakal\, author of A Matter of Complexion: The Life and Fictions of Charles W. Chesnutt\, \;as she speaks with moderator Dr. Vay. \;Whether you're interested in doing some learning over your lunch hour or a student looking to explore l iterary history\, this is a great opportunity to hear about Chakkalakal&rs quo\;s work and insights.
\nPresented in partnership with the Universit y of Waterloo English Language and Literature Department.
\nTess Chakkalakal teaches African-American and Ameri can Literature at Bowdoin College. Her writing has appeared in The New England Quarterly\, J19\, American Literary History\, and many other s. She is the author of Novel Bondage: Slavery\, Marriage\, and Freedo m in Nineteenth-Century American (Illinois UP\, 2011) and co-editor o f Jim Crow\, Literature\, and the Legacy of Sutton E. Griggs (Uni versity of Georgia Press\, 2013) and Imperium in Imperio: A Critical E dition (West Virginia UP\, 2022) She lives in Brunswick\, Maine.
\ nIn A Matter of Complexion\, Tess Cha kkalakal gives readers the first comprehensive biography of Charles W. Che snutt. A complex and talented man\, Chesnutt was born in 1858 in Cleveland to parents who were considered &ldquo\;mixed race.&rdquo\; He spent his e arly life in North Carolina after the Civil War. Though light-skinned\, Ch esnutt remained a member of the Black community throughout his life. He st udied among students at the State Colored Normal School who were formerly enslaved. He became a teacher in rural North Carolina during Reconstructio n. His life in the South of those years\, the issue of race\, and how he h imself identified as Black informed much of his later writing. He went on to become the first Black writer whose stories appeared in The Atlantic Mo nthly and whose books were published by Houghton Mifflin.
\nThrough his literary work\, as a writer\, critic\, and speaker\, Chesnutt transfor med the publishing world by crossing racial barriers that divided Black wr iters from white and seamlessly including both Black and white characters in his writing. In A Matter of Complexion Chakkalakal pens the biography o f a poor teacher raised in rural North Carolina during Reconstruction who became the first professional African American writer to break into the al l-white literary establishment and win admirers as diverse as William Dean Howells\, Booker T. Washington\, Ida B. Wells\, and Lorraine Hansberry.\n
DR. VAY\, moderating the event\, is a professor in the departments of Communication Arts and English Language a nd Literature at the University of Waterloo\, where he is also the inaugur al director of Black Studies. \; He research focuses on the intersecti ons of race and masculinity in US and Canadian literature\, rhetoric\, per formance\, and sociolinguistics. He is currently completing a book of essa ys on teaching Black language and literature in what he terms Ameri-Canada .
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\nProgrammer: Charlie
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