A Publication of Humanities Tennessee

American Dreams

Aaron Robertson’s exacting, poetic The Black Utopians tracks the rise of Black nationalism, skeptical to its core, through a cadre of Detroit activists, knitting their creative and often militant ideas with memoir and his formerly incarcerated father’s letters, centering the question: “What does utopia look like in black?”

A Revolving Door of Death

Between 2018 and 2020, Tennessee state officials killed seven men by electrocution or lethal injection, more than any other state in the country except Texas. In Death Row Welcomes You, journalist Steven Hale tells the stories of the condemned and the people who have come to know and love them. He also exposes the arbitrary nature of the death penalty and the hypocrisy of Tennessee governors. Hale will appear at the 2024 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, October 26-27.

The Romance of the Game

Hanif Abdurraqib’s latest book, There’s Always This Year, is part memoir and part essay, but it’s all about basketball in Ohio during the author’s 1990s childhood. Abdurraqib will discuss There’s Always This Year at the Riverview Park Amphitheater in Chattanooga on October 30. 

Trepidation Is Big Business

In What We’ve Become, Vanderbilt professor Jonathan Metzl demonstrates why gun reform has failed and offers new strategies for changing the debate. Metzl will appear at the 2024 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, October 26-27.

The Way Back: A Geechee Homecoming

In their debut memoir-in-essays, Come by Here, Neesha Powell-Ingabire returns home to Georgia’s Geechee coast, unearthing regional histories while igniting a path to personal healing. Powell-Ingabire will appear at the 2024 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, October 26-27.

Tragicomic Collaboration

In Cocaine and Rhinestones: A History of George Jones and Tammy Wynette, Tyler Mahan Coe explains how the two greatest singers in country music history balanced conservatism and innovation in a blatantly commercial genre. Coe will appear at the 2024 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, October 26-27.

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