Opinions is a collection of Roxane Gay’s best nonfiction pieces from the last decade, in which she blends the personal and the political in her unflinching prose, offering us her unique take on a wide array of topics. Gay will be a keynote speaker at Bookstock, held at the Benjamin L. Hooks Library in Memphis on May 3.
Keith B. Wood, a leading scholar of sports in Memphis, reconstructs the history of the Memphis Red Sox, a longstanding team in the Negro Leagues and a pillar of the city’s Black community. Wood will discuss The Memphis Red Sox: A Negro Leagues History at the Tennessee State Museum in Nashville on April 12.
In Charlie Peacock’s memoir Roots and Rhythm: A Life in Music, his take on the music business moves in tandem with his autobiography, which documents a spiritual quest that continues to this day. Peacock will discuss Roots and Rhythm with Jason Moon Wilkins at the Tennessee State Museum in Nashville on June 14.
The opening essay of Imani Perry’s Black in Blues sets up the book’s premise: that woven throughout the story of Black life, history, and culture, you’ll find blue — the color itself, the “blues” as an expression for melancholy, and its namesake sound, the Black-born music of heartache and hope.
The Wounds Are the Witness by Yolanda Pierce, dean of Vanderbilt Divinity School, serves as devotional reading, a summons to self-care, and encouragement for everyday action and outspokenness.
In On Freedom, Yale historian Timothy Snyder explores the possibility of a true freedom that is more than the absence of repression. Snyder will speak at Rhodes College in Memphis on March 30.
