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Lift Every Voice: Atlanta's Contribution to the Black Poetic Tradition

Event date: 
Thursday, October 22, 2020 - 7:00pm to 8:30pm

Community Panel Discussion

7:00 p.m. Thursday, October 22

The Auburn Avenue Research Library, in partnership with the Library of America, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the Center for Studies on Africa and its Diaspora (CSAD) and Department of African American Studies (AAS) at Georgia State University, Lift Every Voice: Atlanta's Contribution to the Black Poetic Tradition, is part of a nationwide celebration of 250 years of African American Poetry.

Anchored by African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song, a definitive new anthology edited by poet and Schomburg Center Director Kevin Young, this conversation will examine the African American poetic tradition and its imaginative range and richness that is rooted in the lived experience of being Black in the American South, with a particular focus on the region’s mecca, the city of Atlanta.

This event’s principal objective is to explore the emergence and ongoing complex evolution of the Black poetic tradition of the American South in all its various forms, the perspectives it offers on American history within the struggle for racial justice, and its role as the communal reservoir for a peoples' collective memory.

Register at https://bit.ly/3hmJ9TW

Panelists include Kevin Young, Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, poet, and poetry editor of the New Yorker, where he also hosts the poetry podcast; Pearl Cleage, renowned playwright, essayist, novelist, poet and political activist; Dr. Maurice Hobson, Associate Professor of African American Studies at Georgia State University and Dr. Lakeyta Bonnette-Bailey, Associate Professor of African American Studies and Political Science at Georgia State University. The panel will be moderated by Dr. Elizabeth West, Professor of Africana Literatures and Studies at Georgia State University.

Event address: 
Online
African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song (LOA #333): A Library of America Anthology By Kevin Young (Editor) Cover Image
By Kevin Young (Editor)
$45.00
ISBN: 9781598536669
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: Library of America - October 20th, 2020

A literary landmark: the biggest, most ambitious anthology of Black poetry ever published, gathering 250 poets from the colonial period to the present


African Spirituality in Black Women's Fiction: Threaded Visions of Memory, Community, Nature and Being By Elizabeth J. West Cover Image
$64.79
ISBN: 9780739179376
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: Lexington Books - December 7th, 2012

African Spirituality in Black Women's Fiction traces the beginnings and transformations of African spirituality in African American women's literature, and culminates with an examination of its return to center stage in the fiction of black Renaissance writers, Nella Larsen and Zora Neale Hurston.


Literary Expressions of African Spirituality By Carol P. Marsh-Lockett (Editor), Elizabeth J. West (Editor), Beauty Bragg (Contribution by) Cover Image
By Carol P. Marsh-Lockett (Editor), Elizabeth J. West (Editor), Beauty Bragg (Contribution by)
$65.99
ISBN: 9781498515498
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: Lexington Books - March 26th, 2015

With its range of subject texts, this book builds a critical framework for exploring the presence and import of African spirituality in black Ameri-Atlantic artistic musings. These essays illustrate the intricate network of African spiritual transportations and transformations among New World and continental African literatures.


The Legend of the Black Mecca: Politics and Class in the Making of Modern Atlanta By Maurice J. Hobson Cover Image
$38.45
ISBN: 9781469654751
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: University of North Carolina Press - August 1st, 2019

For more than a century, the city of Atlanta has been associated with black achievement in education, business, politics, media, and music, earning it the nickname "the black Mecca." Atlanta's long tradition of black education dates back to Reconstruction, and produced an elite that flourished in spite of Jim Crow, rose to leadership during the civil rights movement, and then took power in the 197


Baby Brother's Blues: A Novel By Pearl Cleage Cover Image
$17.00
Email or call for price.
ISBN: 9780345481115
Published: One World - February 27th, 2007

When Regina Burns married Blue Hamilton, she knew he was no ordinary man. A charismatic R&B singer who gave up his career to assume responsibility for the safety of Atlanta’s West End community, Blue had created an African American urban oasis where crime and violence were virtually nonexistent.


Things I Should Have Told My Daughter: Lies, Lessons & Love Affairs By Pearl Cleage Cover Image
$19.99
ISBN: 9781451664706
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: Atria Books - February 20th, 2018

In this inspiring memoir—that Jane Fonda raves “will make you braver...want to live your life better and make a difference”—the award-winning playwright and bestselling author of What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day reminisces on the art of juggling marriage, motherhood, and politics while working to hone her craft as a writer.

Before she become one


Babylon Sisters: A Novel By Pearl Cleage Cover Image
$16.00
Email or call for price.
ISBN: 9780345456106
Published: One World - February 28th, 2006

Catherine Sanderson seems to have it all: a fulfilling career helping immigrant women find jobs, a lovely home, and a beautiful, intelligent daughter on her way to Smith College. What Catherine doesn’t have: a father for her child– and she’s spent many years dodging her daughter’s questions about it. Now Phoebe is old enough to start poking around on her own.


The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness By Kevin Young Cover Image
$25.00
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ISBN: 9781555976071
Published: Graywolf Press - March 13th, 2012

*Finalist for the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism*

*A Publishers Weekly Top 10 Literary Criticism and Essays Pick for Spring 2012*

The Grey Album, the first work of prose by the brilliant poet Kevin Young, winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize


Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News By Kevin Young Cover Image
$18.00
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ISBN: 9781555978167
Published: Graywolf Press - September 4th, 2018

Longlisted for the National Book Award for Nonfiction

“There Kevin Young goes again, giving us books we greatly need, cleverly disguised as books we merely want. Unexpectedly essential.” —Marlon James

Has the hoax now moved from the sideshow to take the center stage of American culture?


Brown: Poems By Kevin Young Cover Image
$18.00
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ISBN: 9781524711146
Published: Knopf - March 3rd, 2020

James Brown. John Brown's raid. Brown v. the Topeka Board of Ed. The prizewinning author of Blue Laws meditates on all things "brown" in this powerful new collection.

“Vital and sophisticated ... sinks hooks into you that cannot be easily removed.” —The New York Times


Event Summary: 
Anchored by African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song, a definitive new anthology edited by poet and Schomburg Center Director Kevin Young, this conversation will examine the African American poetic tradition and its imaginative range.