Description:
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2023 by The Millions
Lively, insightful writings on Black music, feminism, literature, and events from a "masterful critic and master teacher" (Walton Muyumba, Boston Globe).
Brief description: Farah Jasmine Griffin (Ph.D. Yale), is the William B. Ransford Professor of English and Comparative Literature and African American Studies at Columbia University. She is the author of Who Set You Flowin'?: The African American Migration Narrative; If You Can't Be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday; Harlem Nocturne: Women Artists and Progressive Politics During World War II; and Read Until You Understand: New and Selected Essays, among other works.
Review Quotes: Writer, teacher, activist, visionary, Farah Jasmine Griffin, our greatest Black feminist listener, weaves together a symphony of trenchant and pathbreaking meditations on the exquisite and transformative power of Black music, literature, visual art, film, politics and cultural theory in this singular collection of essays. In Search of a Beautiful Freedom is stirring and lyrical pedagogy in motion. Griffin's art of the essay is both a combination of dazzling prose and galvanizing, ethical wisdom. Rapturous, formidable, an instant classic.--Daphne Brooks, author of Liner Notes for the Revolution