Urban Life Experience Book Discussion Series

The Urban Life Experience Book Discussion Series met Saturday Aug. 25 with nine participants. We discussed Ta-Nehisi Coates’ book We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy.   It was a very timely discussion, since the book consists of eight articles Coates wrote for The Atlantic magazine, and has just announced his departure from the magazine to pursue other writing options.   The eight articles were written throughout the presidency of Barack Obama, one article for each year President Obama was in office. Although the “eight years of good Negro government” in this book refers to the presidency of Barack Obama, it also refers to the “good Negro government “ that took place during Reconstruction, a period in which the history books tell us that was riddled with corruption. More former slaves learned to read during this period, although it had been illegal for them to be taught to read just a few years before. More former slaves voted during this period, and more f...

Notes from We Were Eight Years in Power Introduction p. xiii Regarding Good Negro Government   p.xiii In 1895 South Carolina congressman Thomas Miller appealed to the state’s constitutional convention: “We were eight years in power. We had built schoolhouses, established charitable institutions, built and maintained the penitentiary system.” p.xiv Assessing Miller’s rebuttal and the 1895 convention, W.E.B. Du Bois made a sobering observation…This was simply cover for the convention’s true aim – the restoration of a despotic white supremacy. “If there was one thing that South Carolina feared more than bad Negro government,” wrote Du Bois, “it was good Negro government.” p.xv The central thread of this book is eight articles written during the eight years of the first black presidency – a period of Good Negro Government. p. xvii Before each of these essays there is a kind of extended blog post, all eight of them (the articles ) were originally published ...

Description of A Mercy (published 2008) Chapters are not named nor numbered. The story takes place around 1682. The story is not linear, but is made up from memories and images, much like a long poem where the hints are given along the way. The sexism, classism, and religious intolerance is just as present as the racism. At this time, white indentured servants are pretty much slaves as well as the Africans. The events have all happened in the past and are described mostly   by Florens, a sixteen-year-old black slave girl. Florens belongs to Jacob Vaark (who she calls Sir) and his wife Rebecca. Included in the household are Lina, a Native American woman whose village was wiped out, and Sorrow, a mixed race woman who had been reared by her father on a ship. There are also two white male indentured servants from a nearby farm who are “hired-out” to work for Jacob Vaark. Their New England farm is remote and the group is quite isolated. The one person who seems to co...