Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Kim Green

Same War, Same General

Connor Towne O’Neill grapples with America’s legacy of white supremacy

In Down Along with That Devil’s Bones, Connor Towne O’Neill explores the battles over Nathan Bedford Forrest monuments in Nashville, Murfreesboro, Memphis, and Selma, Alabama, in a quest to understand how white supremacy continues to shape American society. O’Neill will appear at a virtual event hosted by Novel in Memphis on September 29 and at the 2020 Southern Festival of Books, held online October 1-11.

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Here Be Dragons

Wayétu Moore flees from Liberia’s civil war and fights to be seen in race-obsessed America

In Wayétu Moore’s memoir, The Dragons, the Giant, the Women, Moore details her flight from Liberia’s civil war, her disorientation in an America obsessed with skin color, and her search for the warrior-woman who helped her family escape.

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Conspiracies of Silence

Say Nothing weaves the unsolved case of a disappeared Belfast mother into a history of the Troubles

In Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, Patrick Radden Keefe masterfully combines the unsolved mystery of a kidnapped Belfast woman, the story of a secret oral history archive in Boston, and a richly reported history of the Troubles. A free online public masterclass on the book will be led by University of Tennessee, Knoxville professor Monica Black on June 10 at 7 p.m. EDT.

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Paths of Resistance

Multimedia artist Jessica Ingram explores the South’s racist history in Road Through Midnight

Multimedia artist Jessica Ingram, who grew up in Nashville, commemorates acts of resistance to segregation and white supremacist terror in Road Through Midnight. The book includes her photographs of sites scarred by racial violence, as well as interviews with victims’ families and journalists who covered the crimes.

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The Not-So-Open Road

Candacy Taylor documents the revolutionary guide that helped black travelers navigate a segregated America

In Overground Railroad, Candacy Taylor conjures the menacing byways and backwaters black Americans traveled in the era of Jim Crow — and the revolutionary guide that lit their way. Taylor will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 17 and at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis on February 27.

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Full of Grace

Sonja Livingston recounts her search for a missing Virgin Mary statue and her own mislaid faith

In The Virgin of Prince Street: Expeditions into Devotion, Sonja Livingston frames a spiritual quest to rediscover the Catholic faith of her childhood with a literal search for a lost Virgin Mary statue. Livingston will discuss the book at Novel in Memphis on November 24.

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