THE MATTER OF BLACK LIVES with The New Yorker’s Jelani Cobb, Doreen St. Félix and Vinson Cunningham

Amistad Center for Art & Culture, the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center and The Mark Twain House & Museum present an important conversation on THE MATTER OF BLACK LIVES, a collection of The New Yorker‘s groundbreaking writing on race in America. Moderated by Amistad Center Executive Director Kimberly Kersey, the discussion will include editor Jelani Cobb and contributors Doreen St. Félix and Vinson Cunningham.

This anthology from the pages of the New Yorker provides a bold and complex portrait of Black life in America, told through stories of private triumphs and national tragedies, political vision and artistic inspiration. It reaches back across a century, with Rebecca West’s classic account of a 1947 lynching trial and James Baldwin’s “Letter from a Region in My Mind” (which later formed the basis of The Fire Next Time), and yet it also explores our current moment, from the classroom to the prison cell and the upheavals of what Jelani Cobb calls “the American Spring.” Bringing together reporting, profiles, memoir, and criticism from writers such as James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Zadie Smith, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Elizabeth Alexander, Hilton Als, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Malcolm Gladwell, Jamaica Kincaid, Kelefa Sanneh, and others, the collection offers startling insights about this country’s relationship with race. The Matter of Black Lives reveals the weight of a singular history, and challenges us to envision the future anew.

FREE virtual event with donations split evenly between the Amistad Center, Stowe Center and The MTH&M.