Join us for a virtual discussion with author Tara Bynum to celebrate the release of Reading Pleasures: Everyday Black Living in Early America.
In the early United States, a Black person committed an act of resistance simply by reading and writing. Yet we overlook that these activities also brought pleasure.
In Reading Pleasures, Tara A. Bynum tells the compelling stories of four early American writers who expressed feeling good despite living while enslaved or only nominally free. The poet Phillis Wheatley delights in writing letters to a friend. Ministers John Marrant and James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw memorialize their love for God. David Walker’s pamphlets ask Black Americans to claim their victory over slavery. Together, their writings reflect the joyous, if messy, humanity inside each of them. This proof of a thriving interior self in pursuit of good feeling forces us to reckon with the fact that Black lives do matter.
A daring assertion of Black people’s humanity, Reading Pleasures reveals how four Black writers experienced positive feelings and analyzes the ways these emotions served creative, political, and racialized ends.
The event is free to all, but registration is required via this link: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_WabNOgfIQSGHiY9i4q9uug
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.
For more information, please email info@14beacon.org.
SPEAKER BIO
Dr. Tara Bynum is an Assistant Professor of English & African American Studies and a scholar of early African American literary histories before 1800 at the University of Iowa. She received her PhD in English from Johns Hopkins University and a BA in Political Science from Barnard College.
For more information, please contact Kyle Roberts, Executive Director, Congregational Library & Archives