Black Writers of Today and Yesterday
Each February Sag Harbor's John Jermaine Library and
Canio's Books invite neighbors to read from their favorite Afro-American
writers.
We hear the work of Lucille Clifton, Claudia
Rankin, Bryan Stevenson, Wallace Thurman, Frederick Douglas and Maya Angelou,
all recorded at Canios Books this month.
Listen hereNancy Meyers of the John Jermaine Library began the reading with an untitled poem by Lucille Clifton:
Ms. Clifton, who died in 2010 in Baltimore, was an American poet, writer, and educator. Clifton was nominated twice for the Pulitzer Prize for poetry.
Next, Bill Burford read from Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric, and a poem Memory
is a tough place.
Claudia Rankin is the author of five volumes of poetry,
two plays and various essays. She was
born in 1963.
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Next, Margi Pulkingham reads from Bryan Stevenson’s "Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and
Redemption”
The book looks at the criminal justice system through the
eyes of a young lawyer who fought to overturn the conviction of an
Alabama man sentenced to die for a murder he didn’t commit.
Stevenson founded
the Equal Justice Initiative to help criminals on death row.
Next, Kathryn Szoka reads The Blacker the Berry by the Harlem Renaissance writer Wallace Thurman,
The 1929 book explores
discrimination within the black community based on skin color.
Bill Chaleff reads a text by Fredrick Douglas
written about 1835.
Nancy Meyers of the John Jermaine Library in Sag
Harbor reading Maya Angelou’s work, And Still I Rise