One Book One Bronx - New Year to Begin Again with James Baldwin

 

ONE BOOK, THREE LOCATIONS Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own by Eddie S. Glaude Jr., 232 pgs Each week, One Book One Bronx hosts restorative conversations related to gentrification, social justice, women's empowerment, criminal justice, and racial inequality. Discussions reflect the borough's racial, economic, and gender demographics and build bridges to engagement while (re)sparking a love of literature. Begin Again is one of the great books on James Baldwin and a powerful reckoning with America's ongoing failure to confront the lies it tells itself about race. Just as in Baldwin's "after times," argues Eddie S. Glaude Jr., when white Americans met the civil rights movement's call for truth and justice with blind rage and the murders of movement leaders, so in our moment were the Obama presidency and the birth of Black Lives Matter answered with the ascendance of Trump and the violent resurgence of white nationalism. REGISTER AT ANY LOCATION • Zambo Aroma, 3848 White Plains Rd at 221 St Thursdays, 7-8:30pm: 1/5*, 1/12, 1/19, 1/26, & 2/2 • The Bronx Museum, 1040 Grand Concourse at 165th St. Saturday, 12-1:30pm: 1/7*, 1/14, 1/21, 1/28, & 2/4 • On Zoom Tuesdays, 7-8:30pm 1/10, 1/17, 1/24, & 1/31 Choose the place that fits your schedule. *Free books are available to participants at Zambo Aroma and The Bronx Museum.

CLICK HERE FOR DETAILS THIS FEBRUARY THE BLUEST EYE BY TONI MORRISON In Morrison’s acclaimed first novel, Pecola Breedlove—an 11-year-old Black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others—prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment. Here, Morrison’s writing is “so precise, so faithful to speech and so charged with pain and wonder that the novel becomes poetry” (The New York Times). From the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner—a powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity that asks questions about race, class, and gender with characteristic subtly and grace. 2 Locations • Zambo Aroma: Thursdays 2/9, 2/16, 2/23, & 3/2 (in-person, free books for participants) • On Zoom: Tuesdays 2/14, 2/21, & 2/28 Zambo Aroma specializes in crafting herbal-infused all-natural body care products, including soaps, body butters, body scrubs, candles, and more. CLICK HERE FOR DETAILS Literary Freedom Project 557 Grand Concourse, PMB 143 Bronx, NY 10451 info@literaryfreedom.org www.literaryfreedom.org