Diamond Sharp’s Super Sad Black Girl is a love letter to her hometown of Chicago, where the speaker finds solace and community with her literary idols in hopes of answering the question: What does it look like when Black women are free?Lorraine Hansberry and Gwendolyn Brooks appear throughout these poems, counseling the speaker as she navigates her own depression and exploratory questions about the “Other Side,” as do Sandra Bland, Rekia Boyd, and other Black women who have been murdered by police. Sharp’s poetry is self-assured, playful, and imaginative, reminiscent of Langston Hughes with its precision and brevity. The book explores purgatorial, in-between spaces that the speaker occupies as she struggles to find a place and time where she can live safely and freely. With her skillful use of repetition, particularly in her series of concrete poems, lines and voices echo across the book so the reader, too, feels suspended within Sharp’s lyric moments. Super Sad Black Girl is a compassionate and ethereal depiction of mental illness from a promising and powerful poet.Join us for this livestream of the in-person book launch event for Super Sad Black Girl with Diamond Sharp, Eve Ewing, Raych Jackson and Jamila Woods.
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Speakers:
Diamond Sharp is a poet and essayist from Chicago. Super Sad Black Girl is her debut collection of poems.
Dr. Eve L. Ewing is a sociologist of education and a writer from Chicago. She is the award-winning author of four books: the poetry collections Electric Arches and 1919, the nonfiction work Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago's South Side, and most recently a novel for young readers, Maya and the Robot. She is the co-author (with Nate Marshall) of the play No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks.
Rachel “Raych” Jackson is a writer, educator and performer. Her poems have gained over 2 million views on YouTube. She is the 2017 NUPIC Champion and a 2017 Pink Door fellow. Jackson recently voiced 'DJ Raych' in the Jackbox game, Mad Verse City. She voices Tiffany in Battu, an upcoming animation recently picked up by Cartoon Network. Her latest play, “Emotions & Bots”, premiered at the Woerdz Festival in Lucerne, Switzerland.
Jamila Woods is a Chicago-bred singer/songwriter and award-winning poet whose inspirations include Gwendolyn Brooks and Toni Morrison. Following the 2016 release of her debut album HEAVN, Woods received critical acclaim for her singular sound that is both rooted in soul and wholly modern. Her 2019 sophomore release LEGACY! LEGACY! featured 12 tracks named after writers, thinkers, and visual artists who have influenced her life and work. She is a Pushcart Prize-winning poet and co-editor of BreakBeat Poets: Black Girl Magic (2018).
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/W_yl0SZR050
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More Episodes
Jun 2, 2021
Free, Free, Palestine! Biden, Israel and the Fight for Palestinian Liberation
Join Tithi Bhattacharya, Sumaya Awad, Khury Petersen-Smith, and Nerdeen Kiswani for a discussion of Israel, US Empire, and the struggle for Palestinian liberation.
Despite Israel’s brutal occupation of Palestine, the Biden administration continues to support it to the hilt, whatever qualms it has with Netanyahu’s far right regime. This webinar will explain the reasons for Washington’s alliance with Israel, what it means for the for Palestinian liberation struggle, and the tasks of the international Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement.
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Speakers:
Tithi Bhattacharya, Editor, Spectre Journal
Sumaya Awad, Co-Editor, Palestine: A Socialist Introduction
Nerdeen Kiswani, President, Students for Justice in Palestine at CUNY School of Law
Khury Petersen-Smith, Middle East Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies
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This event is sponsored by Spectre Journal and Haymarket Books.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/yK1o1WV5EuQ
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Jun 3, 2021
PIC Abolition, the War on Terror, and the Deportation Machine
Join Amna Akbar, Aziz Rana, Darakshan Raja, and Silky Shah for a discussion of how the War on Terror fuels our deportation machine and how to dismantle both.
Immigrant and racial justice organizers are calling for the abolition of the war on terror and the deportation machine. This panel will discuss how recent campaigns change the terrain of debates within policy spheres and create new openings for organizing. The panel will analyze developments within contemporary abolitionist organizing and put it in conversation with the internationalism of 20th century left social movements.
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Speakers:
Silky Shah is the Executive Director of Detention Watch Network, a national coalition building power to abolish immigration detention in the United States. She has worked as an organizer on issues related to immigration detention, the prison industrial complex, and racial and migrant justice for nearly 20 years.
Darakshan Raja is the co-director of the Justice For Muslims Collective, a community-based organization that works to dismantle structural Islamophobia through community organizing and empowerment, raising political consciousness and narrative shifting, and building strategic alliances across movements.
Aziz Rana is a professor of law at Cornell University, and his research focuses on how shifting notions of race, citizenship, and empire have shaped American legal and political identity. He is the author of The Two Faces of American Freedom (Harvard University Press, 2014).
Amna Akbar is a professor of law at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. She writes about policing and social movements, with a focus on grassroots demands for social change.
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Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/o2IER14CyMA
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
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Jun 4, 2021
Lawyering for Liberation w/ Derecka Purnell and Amna Akbar
Join Law for Black Lives, Amna Akbar and Derecka Purnell for a discussion about what it means for lawyers to build the power of the law.
Law for Black Lives is a national community of radical lawyers and legal workers committed to transforming the law and building the power of organizing to defend, protect and advance Black Liberation across the globe.
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Speakers:
Amna Akbar is a professor of law at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. She writes about policing and social movements, with a focus on grassroots demands for social change.
Derecka Purnell is is a human rights lawyer, writer, and organizer. Since graduating from Harvard Law School, she has worked to end police and prison violence nationwide by providing legal assistance, research, and trainings to community based organizations through an abolitionist framework. Derecka is currently a columnist at The Guardian and Deputy Director of Spirit of Justice Center. She is the author for the forthcoming book Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom.
Marbre Stahly-Butts, Executive Director of Law for Black Lives works closely with organizers and communities across the country to advance and actualize radical policy. Marbre is currently a member of the Advisory Committee for National Bail Out Collective, the group behind Black Mama's Day Bail Out. She currently serves on the Leadership Team of the Movement For Black Lives Policy Table and helped develop the Vision for Black Lives Policy Platform. Since graduating from Yale Law School in 2013, Marbre has supported local and national organizations from across the country in their policy development and advocacy. She joined the Center for Popular Democracy as a Soros Justice Fellow in Fall 2013. Her Soros Justice work focused on organizing and working with families affected by aggressive policing and criminal justice policies in New York City in order to develop meaningful bottom up policy reforms. While in law school, Marbre focused on the intersection of criminal justice and civil rights and gained legal experience with the Bronx Defenders, the Equal Justice Initiative and the Prison Policy Initiative. Before law school Marbre received her Masters in African Studies from Oxford University and worked in Zimbabwe organizing communities impacted by violence and then in South Africa teaching at Nelson Mandela’s alma mater. Marbre graduated from Columbia University, with a BA in African-American History and Human Rights.
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This event is co-sponsored by Haymarket Books and Law for Black Lives.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/Jxvem9THmsc
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
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Jun 7, 2021
The Power of Community-Generated Research in our Work for Justice
Join Haymarket Books, and a coalition of partners for a discussion of the power of community-led research, education, & knowledge creation.
This is a panel discussion with speakers and groups whose deep commitment to work grounded in community, in liberatory processes, and in challenging injustice at its core, are deeply inspiring and so relevant for this moment. Speakers will share their wisdom, experience, and analysis as we think together about the ways that our work for justice is strengthened and deepened by truly embodying a commitment to community-rooted and community-generated processes --and what that looks like in practice.
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About the groups:
Makan is a Palestinian-led educational organization based in the UK. Through its knowledge and capacity-building programs, Makan strengthens voices calling for Palestinian rights across the grassroots and advocacy sphere.
https://www.makan.org.uk/
Justice For Muslims Collective is a grassroots organization that works to dismantle structural and institutionalized forms of Islamophobia in the greater Washington region through political consciousness and narrative shifting, community organizing and healing justice, and building alliances.
https://www.justiceformuslims.org/
Confronting white supremacy, hegemonic masculinity, heteronormativity, & colonial heritages, the Democratizing Knowledge Project focuses on producing transformative knowledges & collectivities that result in inclusive publics in higher education. Feminist Freedom Warriors (FFW) is a first of its kind digital video archive that uses oral history to document the lives & work of feminist scholar-activists of the later 20th century to today.
https://democratizingknowledge.syr.edu/
http://feministfreedomwarriors.org/
PARCEO is a resource and education center, rooted in principles of Participatory Action Research, that partners with community groups & institutions seeking to deepen their work for justice.
https://parceo.org/
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Speakers:
Tamara Ben-Halim, co-founder and co-director, Makan
Darakshan Raja, co-director, Justice for Muslims Collective
Chandra Talpade Mohanty and Linda Carty, co-founders Democratizing Knowledge & Feminist Freedom Warriors
Nina Mehta, co-director, PARCEO (Moderator)
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Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/gdOOsPz5048
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Jun 11, 2021
Celebrating Black Women's Leadership w/ Angela Davis, Barbara Ransby, & more
Join Barbara Ransby, Angela Davis, Andrea James, LaTosha Brown, and M Adams for “Celebrating Black Women’s Leadership, Then & Now” part of the 11th annual Beyond the Bars Conference.
Beyond the Bars - Towards Freedom: Violence, Safety and Abolition in 2021 This year marks the 11th annual Beyond the Bars Conference, coming one year after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in which multiple crises have unfolded, and the growth of social movements struggling for a more just and safe world have increased significantly. Given this, we hope to create deep and thoughtful conversations about the many forms of violence that our society has experienced; to surface and examine the ways in which movements are pushing for community and public safety in ways that do not reenforce the carceral state; and to explore why abolition has become so prevalent in the conversations, strategies and demands in the work of transforming approaches to justice and safety. In addition, we will take time to honor and celebrate the leadership of women impacted by incarceration, and the leadership of Black women, and all that we have and can learn from their work. And we will spend time building and amplifying the work of grassroots organizing.
Conference Sponsors The Ford Foundation, Trinity Church Wall Street, the New York Women's Foundation, Columbia School of Social Work Student Services, Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty Diversity and Inclusion, the Eric H. Holder Jr. Inititiave for Civil and Political Rights, the Division of Social Science, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Columbia University.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/pX4C0fucXjk
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Jun 12, 2021
Celebrating Black Women's Leadership, Then & Now (Part II)
Join Roberta Meyers Douglas, Fallon McClure, Fenika Miller, and Tiffany Roberts for Part 2 of “Celebrating Black Women’s Leadership, Then and Now” part of the 11th annual Beyond the Bars Conference.
Beyond the Bars - Towards Freedom: Violence, Safety and Abolition in 2021 This year marks the 11th annual Beyond the Bars Conference, coming one year after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in which multiple crises have unfolded, and the growth of social movements struggling for a more just and safe world have increased significantly. Given this, we hope to create deep and thoughtful conversations about the many forms of violence that our society has experienced; to surface and examine the ways in which movements are pushing for community and public safety in ways that do not reenforce the carceral state; and to explore why abolition has become so prevalent in the conversations, strategies and demands in the work of transforming approaches to justice and safety. In addition, we will take time to honor and celebrate the leadership of women impacted by incarceration, and the leadership of Black women, and all that we have and can learn from their work. And we will spend time building and amplifying the work of grassroots organizing.
Conference Sponsors The Ford Foundation, Trinity Church Wall Street, the New York Women's Foundation, Columbia School of Social Work Student Services, Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty Diversity and Inclusion, the Eric H. Holder Jr. Inititiave for Civil and Political Rights, the Division of Social Science, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Columbia University.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/pX4C0fucXjk
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
