Acclaimed writers Tina McElroy Ansa and Wanda S. Lloyd have announced the release of MEETING AT THE TABLE: African- American Women Write On Race, Culture and Community, published by DownSouth Press. The publication date for the collection is Nov. 30, 2020. Ansa and Lloyd are the editors and curators of this urgently felt anthology of essays by scholars, public figures and private thinkers.
With their commitment to magnifying the art, experiences and contributions of African- Americans, Ansa and Lloyd serve up a feast of wisdom through the essays of MEETING AT THE TABLE. The editors, each with more than 50 years of experience in journalism, literary writing and teaching, met in 1967 at Spelman College, where they were paired as freshman-year roommates. They are both recipients of honorary degrees from their alma mater.
“MEETING AT THE TABLE is the collection of essays for our times,” said Ansa, the novelist and publisher at DownSouth Press. “When I founded DownSouth Press in 2007, I envisioned it as a company that would welcome and honor the stories and spirit of African-American writers. Few other works coming out of the tumultuous year 2020
encapsulate this spirit of a people any better. The brilliant essays — some slyly written, some right in your face — will be an indispensable resource and guide for understanding the past and finding a way forward in the current cultural moment.”
In the wake of the deaths of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd and countless others, Americans who may never have considered their place in the nation’s racial landscape or who feel too young or distanced from the reality are eager to understand the origins and impacts of systemic racism, white privilege and implicit bias. MEETING AT THE TABLE is black women’s responses to that. This collection includes an introduction by Ansa and essential and timely essays by 15 African-American thinkers, including Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, Princeton University scholar Imani Perry, actor Anika Noni Rose, AME Church Bishop Vashti M. McKenzie, activist Peachie Wimbush-Polk (mother of rapper Wiz Khalifa) and co-editor Lloyd. The cover art is contributed by Synthia SAINT JAMES.
The broad range of African-American women’s voices, carefully gathered by Ansa and Lloyd, share honest and poignant personal experiences of and perspectives from the intersectionality of race, culture, gender and community in America. Conceived and birthed in a year that brought racism and the anti-racism movement right up against a global pandemic and an internal national threat, this new volume is a hopeful offering, an invitation to deepen community ties and broaden understanding through the power of essays addressed straight at the reader.
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