Dispatches from the Race War, a new essay collection by antiracist educator Tim Wise, implores white Americans to reckon with the nation’s ongoing racial traumas and commit to the struggle for justice and equity. Wise will appear at a virtual event hosted by Parnassus Books in Nashville on December 10.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
