Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Perils and Prospects

From Rights to Lives surveys the evolution of racial justice movements

From Rights to Lives: The Evolution of the Black Freedom Struggle, a new anthology edited by historians Françoise N. Hamlin and Charles W. McKinney Jr., gives academics and lay people alike fresh ways to consider the Civil Rights Movement and Black Lives Matter.

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A Southern Story

Andrew Ross reconstructs the history of one Shelby County plantation from multiple perspectives

In The Realms of Oblivion, Andrew Ross tells the history of the 19th-century South through the experience of the Davies family and the Black people who worked their land in both slavery and freedom.

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“Haunting My Own Name”

Julian Randall’s lyrical memoir uncovers the past to light a brighter future

Comprised of braided essays which use key pop-culture moments to weave together stories of triumph and personal exploration, Julian Randall’s The Dead Don’t Need Reminding unearths grief and deeply rooted family histories.

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The Best-Laid Plans

Jeff Zentner’s new novel signals a change in literary direction

With Colton Gentry’s Third Act, award-winning YA author Jeff Zentner tries his hand at adult contemporary romance with a Southern flair. Zentner will appear in conversation with Silas House and David Arnold at Parnassus Books in Nashville on April 30.

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Making Country, Country

Alice Randall’s My Black Country embraces and explores Black eccentricity in country music

In My Black Country, Alice Randall outlines the inclination of Music Row institutions to discount Black writers and their insistence on erasure of Black artists, particularly women, in the genre. Randall will appear in Nashville at Parnassus Books on April 12 and at City Winery, as part of “An Evening with Black Opry,” on April 25. 

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Calling for a Hearing

Darnell Arnoult’s latest poetry collection tackles the cosmos

The poems in Darnell Arnoult’s Incantations investigate the complexities of human and ethereal existence, mapping the paradoxes of life.

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