The post IN-PERSON | Hundred-Year Retroactive Book Award of 1922 appeared first on Literary Massachusetts.

Whether you’re writing a novel, blog, research paper, college admissions essay, resume, melody, poem, or just plain homework, you are invited to write it with us. No one will see what you’ve written or give you unsolicited advice.

We’ve discovered that it’s strikingly helpful to write alongside other writers—even if it’s virtually—so join us for an hour of uninterrupted writing on Zoom. Instead of just thinking about doing it, come and get some real writing done with other like-minded young adults.

The post Shut Up and Write!™ + NaNoWriMo: BPL Young Adults appeared first on Literary Massachusetts.

Acting Boston Mayor Kim Janey will preside over a ribbon-cutting ceremony and make some brief remarks about the role of the library in the Roxbury community.

The post Boston Book Festival: BPL Roxbury Branch Reopening: Ribbon-Cutting appeared first on Literary Massachusetts.

We’re pleased to present a handful of interactive, family-friendly activities in partnership with the Boston Public Library as part of their celebration of the newly remodeled and reopened Roxbury Branch, which recently won an ALA/AIA Library Building Award. These activities are made possible with the support of the Wagner Foundation.

Beginning at 11 am, join visual artist and art educator Zahirah Nur Truth for a participatory chalk art activity for the whole family. Help make the new Roxbury Branch even more beautiful!

The post Boston Book Festival: BPL Roxbury Branch Reopening: Chalk Art appeared first on Literary Massachusetts.

We’re pleased to present a handful of interactive, family-friendly activities in partnership with the Boston Public Library as part of their celebration of the newly remodeled and reopened Roxbury Branch, which recently won an ALA/AIA Library Building Award. These activities are made possible with the support of the Wagner Foundation.

At 1 pm, celebrate the new Nubian Square HQ for Boston’s METCO program by taking a Boston Education Activism Tour (BEAT) of Nubian Square. High school students in METCO—the historic voluntary school desegregation program between Boston and the mostly white suburbs—travel between worlds every day when they ride their buses to school and back. Now they want to take everyone on a journey into Boston’s past to uncover the dynamic history of the Black community in Roxbury. These young people will use Nubian Square’s landmarks, from the Dillaway-Thomas House to Hibernian Hall, to uncover the stories of decades of artistry, activism, and achievement. They will introduce you to the brave organizers who envisioned a better world, like Ruth Batson, Ellen Jackson, Melnea Cass, Mel King, and more. The tour will culminate at the brand new Nubian Square headquarters of METCO itself, whose founding story has many lessons for today.

About METCO

The Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity, Inc. (METCO) provides students with a strong academic foundation rich in cultural, educational, ethnic, socioeconomic, and racial diversity, fostering the opportunity for children from Boston and from neighboring suburbs to develop a deeper understanding of each other in an integrated public school setting.

The post Boston Book Festival: BPL Roxbury Branch Reopening: BBF Unbound BEAT Tour appeared first on Literary Massachusetts.

“This book reveals uncomfortable truths about the dehumanizing legacies of both capitalism and colonialism while forging a path of reconciliation between the Black and Native communities. Mays offers a solid entry point for further study. An enlightening reexamination of American history.”
—Kirkus Reviews

About the book:

Beginning with pre-Revolutionary America and moving into the movement for Black lives and contemporary Indigenous activism, Afro-Indigenous historian Kyle T. Mays argues that the foundations of the US are rooted in antiblackness and settler colonialism, and that these parallel oppressions continue into the present. He explores how Black and Indigenous peoples have always resisted and struggled for freedom, sometimes together, and sometimes apart. Whether to end African enslavement and Indigenous removal or eradicate capitalism and colonialism, Mays show how the fervor of Black and Indigenous peoples calls for justice have consistently sought to uproot white supremacy.

Mays uses a wide-array of historical activists and pop culture icons, “sacred” texts, and foundational texts like the Declaration of Independence and Democracy in America. He covers the civil rights movement and freedom struggles of the 1960s and 1970s, and explores current debates around the use of Native American imagery and the cultural appropriation of Black culture. Mays compels us to rethink both our history as well as contemporary debates and to imagine the powerful possibilities of Afro-Indigenous solidarity.

“This is a bold and original narrative that is required reading to comprehend the deep historical relationship between the Indigenous peoples who were transported from Africa into chattel slavery and the Indigenous peoples who were displaced by European settler colonialism to profit from the land and resources, two parallel realities in search of self-determination and justice.”
—Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States

To order this book from one of our local independent community bookstore partners, please revisit this calendar entry at a later date.

About the author:

Kyle T. Mays is an Afro-Indigenous (Saginaw Chippewa) writer and scholar of US history, urban studies, race relations, and contemporary popular culture. He is an Assistant Professor of African American Studies, American Indian Studies, and History at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of Hip Hop Beats, Indigenous Rhymes: Modernity and Hip Hop in Indigenous North America.

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