Farah Jasmine Griffin in conversation with Robin D.G. Kelley, discussing her new book "Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature," published by W.W. Norton & Co. This event was originally broadcast via Zoom and hosted by Josiah Luis Alderete.

You can purchase copies of "Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature" directly from City Lights here: https://citylights.com/new-nonfiction-in-hardcover/read-until-you-understand/

Farah Jasmine Griffin is a professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of "Who Set You Flowin'?": The African-American Migration Narrative, and the coeditor of "A Stranger in the Village: Two Centuries of African-American Travel Writing." She has been the recipient of fellowships from the Ford Foundation and the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College. She lives in Philadelphia.

Robin D.G. Kelley is a scholar history of social movements in the U.S., the African Diaspora, and Africa; black intellectuals; music and visual culture; Surrealism, Marxism, among other things. His essays have appeared in a wide variety of professional journals as well as general publications, including the Journal of American History, American Historical Review, The Nation, Monthly Review, New York Times, Color Lines, Counterpunch, Souls, Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noir, Social Text ,The Black Scholar, Journal of Palestine Studies, and Boston Review, for which he serves as Contributing Editor. He is the author of "Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times" (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012); "Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original" (The Free Press, 2009); "Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination" (Beacon Press, 2002); with Howard Zinn and Dana Frank, "Three Strikes: The Fighting Spirit of Labor's Last Century" (Beacon Press, 2001); "Yo’ Mama’s Disfunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America"(Boston: Beacon Press, 1997); "Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class" (New York: The Free Press, 1994); "Into the Fire: African Americans Since 1970" (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996) [Vol. 10 of the Young Oxford History of African Americans series]; "Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression" (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1990).

This event was made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation: citylights.com/foundation