Thinking from Black: A Book Launch

Please join us for a special launch event for Thinking from Black, an expansive new lexicon of words, terms, concepts, and ideas that takes the multiplicity of Black life as its point of departure. Contributors to Thinking from Black are visual artists, poets, dancers, historians, writers, architects, painters, theorists, activists, anthropologists, filmmakers, educators, and musicians. Each has engaged with the idea of a lexicon of Black living and taken up the invitation to think from Black in relation to their own medium. Some terms are enunciated in a poetic register. Some work in a theoretical idiom. Others are composed of both text and image, and summon the body in motion. Read in relation to each other, the terms create a rich, startling lexicon that is eclectic, elliptical, cross-genre, historical, speculative, and literary—a set of words, phrases, concepts, and ideas that are part of the many languages constituting and animating Black life.

This book launch will feature opening framing remarks from Kaiama Glover, as well as readings from the volume by contributors Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Zakiyyah Iman Jackson, Canisia Lubrin, K'eguro Macharia, Tavia Nyong'o, Cameron Rowland, Maboula Soumahoro, and Mabel O. Wilson. In addition, Jonathan González will share a performance offering alongside collaborators India Lena González, Ananda Naima González, AJ Wilmore, and Marguerite Hemmings.