BLACK WOMEN IN WHITE SPACES | A Busboys and Poets Books Presentation
Date and Time
Jan 22, 2023 6:00 pm
Location
14th & V
2021 14th St NW, Washington, District of Columbia, 20009
Jan 22, 2023 6:00 pm
14th & V
BLACK WOMEN IN WHITE SPACES | A Busboys and Poets Books Presentation
Join us to explore a story of hope, triumph, and resilience.
Author Marita Golden's first novel A WOMAN’S PLACE was reprinted in 2022. Her story takes its reader back to 1968 and everything about being a Black woman in America is changing. A society once walled off has begun opening doors. Against this backdrop, three young women meet at a New England college and form a friendship that endures, heals, and dramatically shapes their lives. With backgrounds and temperaments symbolic of the many questions around attaining selfhood in the aftermath of freedom movements, Faith, Crystal and Serena struggle to exercise personal agency in an era when family history, along with race and gender identities, threaten to dictate their paths. As a poet-creative Crystal reaches for expression in language and in choosing who and how she loves. As a budding activist, Serena eschews conventions of marriage, and belonging, to become a global being, leaving the soil of America for Africa, where NGO work evolves into leading women toward an independence she herself maintains by remaining the mistress, never the bride, of a powerful man. Surprisingly, it is Faith, the most introverted, drawn into the self by a series of traumas, whose seemingly self-limiting choices will more directly affect a generation of women to come. The Philadelphia Tribune declared it, “a story of hope, a story of triumph and, above all, a testimony to resilience.”
Originally published in 1986 after the award-winning autobiography Migrations of the Heart, A Woman’s Place is Marita Golden’s first novel. More than fourteen books in fiction and nonfiction, including Gumbo: An Anthology of African-American Writing co-edited with E. Lynn Harris, followed. Golden went on to create and helm the Hurston/Wright Foundation, which has become a literary rite of passage for such talents as Nicole Dennis-Benn, Brit Bennett and Tayari Jones.
A Woman’s Place is reprinted here as an esteemed addition to McSweeney’s Of the Diaspora series, edited by Erica Vital-Lazare, and opens with a new introduction by the author, with foreword by Women’s March co-founder Tabitha St. Bernard-Jacobs.
Marita Golden is joining the Busboys stage for a book discussion. She will be joined in conversation by Sarah Trembath. This event is free and open to all. Our program begins at 6:00 pm, and will be followed by an audience Q&A. Copies of A WOMAN’S PLACE will be available for purchase before and during the event. Please note that this event will not be livestreamed.
We ask that guests RSVP in order to receive direct updates about the event from Busboys and Poets Books.
Marita Golden attended public schools in Washington, D.C. and graduated from American University and the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. She has been a faculty member in the MFA Creative Writing Programs at George Mason University, Virginia Commonwealth University, and the MA Program in Creative Writing at Johns Hopkins University and a Writer-in-Residence at the University of the District of Columbia and Prince George’s Community College.
She has lectured and taught internationally, at universities in Israel, Turkey, and Spain. Her many awards include the Barnes and Noble Writers for Writers Award presented by Poets and Writers, Distinguished Service Award from the Authors Guild, Maryland Author Award from the Association of Maryland Librarians, Award for Fiction from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and induction into the International Literary Hall of Fame of Writers of African Descent at the Gwendolyn Brooks Center at Chicago State University.
Her articles and essays have been published in a variety of publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post and Essence, and The Root.
Marita Golden has spoken or lectured at over 80 colleges and universities, including the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Columbia College, Medgar Evers College, Brandeis University, Bethune-Cookman University, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and Vanderbilt University.
As a literary activist, with Clyde McElvene, she co-founded the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation that has been supporting the international community of Black writers for three decades.
Sarah Trembath is an educator, editor, and writer. Her written work has appeared in Radical Teacher, the Santa Fe Writer’s Project Quarterly, Rumpus, Everyday Feminism, Sally Hemings Dream zine, Azure literary journal, DCist, the Washington Independent Review of Books, 1455 Magazine, VoiceMale, and the Grace in Darkness anthology of DC women writers. She has written two books: It Was the Scarlet that Did It (poems, Moonstone Press, 2019) and This Past Was Waiting for Me (poetry and creative nonfiction, Lazuli Literary Group, in press). She was the 2019 recipient of the American Studies Association’s Gloria Anzaldúa Award for independent scholars for her social justice writing and teaching.
She is currently on faculty in American University's Writing Studies Program and is a doctoral candidate in AU's School of Education.
