LECTURES

 What’s happening to the melting pot? Do we live in a post-racial world, as some now claim? And what does the phrase even mean? The North Shore’s community arts project, The Tannery Series, takes on all this and more with RACE IN YOUR FACE, an evening event featuring eight award-winning authors who will explore the state of the nation, 50 years after integration.

Each author will read from their works in rapid fire succession and participate in a conversation with the audience. Highlights will include:

Poet Thomas Sayers Ellis (Skin, Inc.) and Saxophonist James Brandon Lewis converse in a jazz duet.

David Mura, (Famous Suicides of the Japanese Empire), a third-generation Japanese-American, explores the connections between race, sexuality and history in an increasingly diverse America.

Novelist, poet, and columnist for the BBC, Mukoma Wa Ngugi (Nairobi Heat) describes the differences America makes between being African, Black, and African-American.

Stephanie Powell Watts (We are Taking Only What We Need) depicts in her short stories the rural and urban worlds of the American South forging a new social contract.

Jerald Walker (Street Shadows: A Memoir of Race, Rebellion, and Redemption) addresses the American dream.

Rishi Reddi (Karma and Other Stories) takes on being Indian-American, female and the forging of a political identity.