Description:
A PBS NewsHour Best Book of the Year
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year in Nonfiction
Winner of the 2022 Phi Beta Kappa Christian Gauss Award
A brilliant scholar imparts the lessons bequeathed by the Black community and its remarkable artists and thinkers.
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: Farah Jasmine Griffin is one of the few great intellectuals in our time! This wise and powerful memoir is a masterpiece. Griffin beautifully weaves her profound devotion to the life of the mind with her deep and abiding love of Black people and culture. Her magical words enchant and empower us like those of her towering heroes--Toni Morrison, Billie Holiday, James Baldwin, and Wilhelmena Griffin!--Cornel West