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Longlisted • National Book Award (Nonfiction)

Why does race seem to color almost every feature of our moral and political universe? Why does a perpetual cycle of slavery—in all its political, intellectual, and cultural forms—continue to define the Black experience? And why is anti-Black violence such a predominant feature not only in the United States but around the world? These are just some of the compelling questions that animate Afropessimism, Frank B. Wilderson III’s seminal work on the philosophy of Blackness.

Combining precise philosophy with a torrent of memories, Wilderson presents the tenets of an increasingly prominent intellectual movement that sees Blackness through the lens of perpetual slavery. Drawing on works of philosophy, literature, film, and critical theory, he shows that the social construct of slavery, as seen through pervasive anti-Black subjugation and violence, is hardly a relic of the past but the very engine that powers our civilization, and that without this master-slave dynamic, the calculus bolstering world civilization would collapse. Unlike any other disenfranchised group, Wilderson argues, Blacks alone will remain essentially slaves in the larger Human world, where they can never be truly regarded as Human beings, where, “at every scale of abstraction, violence saturates Black life.”

And while Afropessimism delivers a formidable philosophical account of being Black, it is also interwoven with dramatic set pieces, autobiographical stories that juxtapose Wilderson’s seemingly idyllic upbringing in mid-century Minneapolis with the abject racism he later encounters—whether in late 1960s Berkeley or in apartheid South Africa, where he joins forces with the African National Congress. Afropessimism provides no restorative solution to the hatred that abounds; rather, Wilderson believes that acknowledging these historical and social conditions will result in personal enlightenment about the reality of our inherently racialized existence.

Radical in conception, remarkably poignant, and with soaring flights of lyrical prose, Afropessimism reverberates with wisdom and painful clarity in the fractured world we inhabit. It positions Wilderson as a paradigmatic thinker and as a twenty-first-century inheritor of many of the African American literary traditions established in centuries past.

Writings on black men’s cultural production and black masculinity by one of today’s leading historians of modern and contemporary art.
 
Collecting twenty years of incisive essays, articles, and interviews—including four published here for the first time—by art historian Huey Copeland, this book affirms the extraordinary depth of black men’s cultural production and the diversity of artistic practices that explore visual black masculinity in the United States. Part history, part memoir, part critical manifesto, Touched by the Mother offers a multi-faceted look at American art and discourse of the past fifty years, a personal meditation on navigating the world as a black gay man, and a feminist perspective on the ways transatlantic slavery continues to mark African and African diasporic men. Focusing on how the black maternal shapes black masculinity, Copeland confronts the dynamics that position African-American men—after their mothers—as sites of violence, creativity, and contestation in the cultural imagination.
 
Richly illustrated throughout, Touched by the Mother considers an exciting range of assemblage, painting, performance, photography, sculpture, and video works by more than twenty renowned practitioners, along with interviews featuring Hilton Als, Thelma Golden, Frank B. Wilderson, III, and other influential figures in contemporary art, culture, and criticism. Works by artists including Mark Bradford, Theaster Gates, David Hammons, Barkley L. Hendricks, Arthur Jafa, Glenn Ligon, Kerry James Marshall, Howardena Pindell, Sun Ra, and Lorna Simpson represent modes of making and thinking that are uniquely “touched by the mother,” Copeland argues, moving us toward the promise of black feminist futures.

*ZOOM LINK*

Join us for our monthly adult book club.  Our July pick is Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson. 

Book club will happen on Thursday, July 28 at 7:00 pm in our reading garden.  RSVP required.  See ya'll there!

About the Book:

In present-day California, Eleanor Bennett's death leaves behind a puzzling inheritance for her two children, Byron and Benny: a traditional Caribbean black cake, made from a family recipe with a long history, and a voice recording. In her message, Eleanor shares a tumultuous story about a headstrong young swimmer who escapes her island home under suspicion of murder. The heartbreaking journey Eleanor unfolds, the secrets she still holds back, and the mystery of a long-lost child, challenge everything the siblings thought they knew about their family, and themselves.
 
Can Byron and Benny reclaim their once-close relationship, piece together Eleanor's true history, and fulfill her final request to “share the black cake when the time is right?” Will their mother's revelations bring them back together or leave them feeling more lost than ever? 

Charmaine Wilkerson's debut novel is a story of how the inheritance of betrayals, secrets, memories, and even names, can shape relationships and history. Deeply evocative and beautifully written, Black Cake is an extraordinary journey through the life of a family changed forever by the choices of its matriarch.