{"id":47023,"date":"2020-07-08T11:12:58","date_gmt":"2020-07-08T15:12:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/?p=47023"},"modified":"2020-07-01T00:22:38","modified_gmt":"2020-07-01T04:22:38","slug":"the-toni-morrison-book-club-by-juda-bennett-winnifred-brown-glaude-cassandra-jackson-piper-kendrix-williams-in-booklist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/the-toni-morrison-book-club-by-juda-bennett-winnifred-brown-glaude-cassandra-jackson-piper-kendrix-williams-in-booklist\/","title":{"rendered":"The Toni Morrison Book Club by Juda Bennett, Winnifred Brown-Glaude, Cassandra Jackson, Piper Kendrix Williams [in Booklist]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"*STARRED REVIEW<\/strong>
\nIn their joint introduction, four The College of New Jersey colleagues \u2013 three African American women, one gay white man, all PhD-ed \u2013 declare, \u201cToni Morrison is our greatest living historian about love, race, nation, and just about everything else of consequence.\u201d The Nobel Laureate passed in 2019, but her legacy only grows as societal necessity. For two years, the authorial quartet met to discuss Morrison\u2019s texts, an intellectual exploration that inspired deeply personal examination: \u201cMorrison was quite simply the most logical way we found to say what we wanted to say about the current state of America.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here, their raw, resonating revelations get enhanced by a roster of empathic aural ciphers. Cassandra Jackson, voiced by a steely Bahni Turpin, internalizes the validity of Beloved<\/em>\u2019s filicide as she parents her own Black son amidst the constant threat of police violence. Daniel Henning, who also reverently reads the introduction, crisply becomes Juda Bennett, who recognizes \u201cwhite privilege right next to its kissing cousin, white cluelessness,\u201d and who attempts to teach Beloved<\/em> to a group of women\u2019s maximum-security prison inmates, but self-admittedly fails.<\/p>\n

Jamaican American Winnifred Brown-Glaude, voiced by chameleonic Adenrele Ojo, draws on Song of Solomon<\/em>\u00a0to accentuate relentless racial injustice and\u00a0A Mercy\u00a0<\/em>to highlight surging xenophobia. Embodied with unadorned clarity by Robin Eller, Piper Kendrix Williams confronts denigrating exotification through A Mercy<\/em>\u00a0and explores her personal \u201cepiphanal blackness\u201d via\u00a0The Bluest Eye<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Now more than ever, books are life-saving antidotes. Professors Bennett, Brown-Glaude, Jackson, and Williams are here, ready \u201cto move past fear … [and] offer this book as a commitment to staving off dismay and inaction.\u201d<\/p>\n

Review<\/strong>: “Media,” Booklist Online<\/em>, June 19, 2020<\/a><\/p>\n

Readers<\/strong>: Adult<\/p>\n

Published<\/strong>: 2020<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

*STARRED REVIEW In their joint introduction, four The College of New Jersey colleagues \u2013 three African American women, one gay white man, all PhD-ed \u2013 declare, \u201cToni Morrison is our greatest living historian about love, race, nation, and just about everything else of consequence.\u201d The…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47031,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,81,142,107,20,6535],"tags":[141,563,6608,6668,7631,9147,9144,10,11,68,24,51,9140,50,39,9143,29,9145,364,1586,9146,9141],"class_list":["post-47023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adult-readers","category-audio","category-black-african-american","category-memoir","category-nonfiction","category-repost","tag-adenrele-ojo","tag-bahni-turpin","tag-bookdragon","tag-booklist","tag-booklist-online","tag-cassandra-jackson","tag-daniel-henning","tag-family","tag-friendship","tag-haves-vs-have-nots","tag-historical","tag-identity","tag-juda-bennett","tag-lgbtqia","tag-parent-child-relationship","tag-piper-kendrix-williams","tag-race-racism","tag-robin-eller","tag-sociology","tag-toni-morrison","tag-toni-morrison-book-club","tag-winnifred-brown-glaude"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Toni Morrison Book Club by Juda Bennett, Winnifred Brown-Glaude, Cassandra Jackson, Piper Kendrix Williams [in Booklist] - 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