Urban Life Experience Book Discussion Series

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones has been getting great reviews all year long. There’s even a rumor that it’s going to be made into a movie! The author indicated that she wanted to write a book underscoring the problems of an unfair justice system and mass incarceration, but she wanted to do it from the point of view of a story. The story she created describes what happens in the marriage of Celestial and Roy, when Roy is unjustly convicted of a crime and sentenced to prison.   Celestial and Roy are well-educated and modernly upwardly mobile.   Although the couple’s home is in Atlanta, they have traveled to a small town in Louisiana to visit Roy’s parents. It’s here, at the one-star hotel (the only hotel in town,) where their troubles begin.   It just so happens that a prison in Louisiana is featured last book we discussed, Sing Unburied Sing by Jesmyn Ward. In Sing Unburied Sing the prison is the infamous Parchman Prison Farm. The characters are rural a...

Eight of us attended the book discussion of Sing Unburied Sing on Saturday Oct. 13, 2018. The book was so haunting but extremely well written. We all agreed that this book is very much like a Toni Morrison book, which in my opinion is the highest praise a writer could receive. Connie went as far to say that Sing Unburied Sing reminded her of Sula and Song of Solomon . Three of the women who attended on Saturday were first-timers. One was Sarah, who started the discussion with how much she hated it when the children walked out of the door to take the road trip with their mother.   Another first-time attendee is Laura, who said that this book was so unsettling that she couldn’t read it before bed. Asadie said she had “questions” about what was happening in the book. I think she meant that she found it curious that people who had already died could be seen and heard and play an active role in the story. Carla said she loved the writing and baby’s sickness really pul...

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...

The following is Claudia Rankine reading from the poem "Making Room" from Citizen: An American Lyric. See pages 131-133.  "...where he goes the space follows him..." Below, Jason Reynolds reads from the beginning of Long Way Down  "if the blood inside you is on the inside of someone else you never want to see it on the outside of them..."