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We are thrilled to host the launch of America, Goddam: Violence, Black Women and the Struggle for Justice which explores the combined force of anti-Blackness, misogyny, patriarchy and capitalism in the lives of Black Women and girls in the United States. Please join us as author of America, Goddam, Treva B. Lindsey talks to Melissa Harris-Perry, media host, and author of Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes and Black Women in America. This is an in-person event. 

Registration: 

We will offer seating for up to 35 in-person guests, with priority access given to those who purchase the book. To register for the in person in store event, click on "Save My Spot" and purchase your hardcover and ticket. This will ensure that your seat is reserved on the day of the event.   

About Treva B. Lindsey:

Dr. Treva Lindsey is an Associate Professor and the Chair of Undergraduate Studies of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at The Ohio State University. Her research and teaching interests include African American women’s history, black popular and expressive culture, black feminism(s), hip hop studies, critical race and gender theory, and sexual politics.  Her first book is Colored No More: Reinventing Black Womanhood in Washington D.C is a Choice 2017 “Outstanding Academic Title.” She has published in The Journal of Pan-African Studies, Souls, African and Black Diaspora, the Journal of African American Studies, African American Review, The Journal of African American History, Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism, Urban Education, The Black Scholar, Feminist Studies, and Signs. She was the inaugural Equity for Women and Girls of Color Fellow at Harvard University (2016-2017). She was also a 2017-2018 Du Bois Non-Residential Fellow at Harvard University. She was the recipient of the 2018-2019 Ohio State University College of Arts and Sciences Diversity Enhancement Faculty Award.

She is the recipient of several awards and fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Emory University, the National Women’s Studies Association, the Coca Cola Critical Difference for Women Grant, the Center for Arts and Humanities at the University of Missouri and the College of Arts and Sciences at The Ohio State University. She is the co-editor of a forthcoming collection on the future of Black Popular Culture Studies (NYU Press). She writes for and contributes to outlets such as Al Jazeera, BET, Complex, Vox, The Root, Huffington Post, Popsugar, Teen Vogue, Grazia UK, The Grio and Cosmopolitan.

 

About Melissa Hariss-Perry:

Melissa Harris-Perry is the Maya Angelou Presidential Chair at Wake Forest University in the Department of Politics and International Affairs, the Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and the Program in Environment and Sustainability. Melissa is founder and president of the Anna Julia Cooper Center, an independent organization advancing justice through intersectional scholarship and action. Along with Dorian Warren, Melissa co-created and co-hosts System Check. She is currently serving as interim host of The Takeaway from WNYC public radio. Melissa is an award-winning author, sought after public speaker, and accomplished media professional.

From 2012-2016, she hosted the television show “Melissa Harris-Perry” on weekend mornings on MSNBC and was awarded the Hillman Prize for broadcast journalism. She has served as editor-at-large Elle.com and for ZORA. She continues to serve as contributing editor for The Nation.

story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, won the 2021 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the 2020/2021 Story Prize, and the 2020 LA Times Book Prize: The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction. The Secret Lives of Church Ladies focuses on Black women, sex, and the Black church, and is being adapted for television by HBO Max with Tessa Thompson executive producing. Deesha is also a Kimbilio Fiction Fellow and will be the 2022-2023 John and Renée Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi.

 

America, Goddam: Violence, Black Women, and the Struggle for Justice

America, Goddam explores the combined force of anti-Blackness, misogyny, patriarchy, and capitalism in the lives of Black women and girls in the United States today. Through personal accounts and hard-hitting analysis, Black feminist historian Treva B. Lindsey starkly assesses the forms and legacies of violence against Black women and girls, as well as their demands for justice for themselves and their communities.

America Goddam powerfully demonstrates that the struggle for justice begins with reckoning with the pervasiveness of violence against Black women and girls in the United States. Combining history, theory, and memoir, America Goddam renders visible the gender dynamics of anti-Black violence. Black women and girls occupy a unique status of vulnerability to harm and death, while the circumstances and traumas of this violence go underreported and understudied. Lindsey also shows that the sanctity of life and liberty for Black men has been a galvanizing rallying cry within Black freedom movements.

But Black women--who have been both victims of anti-Black violence as well as frontline participants in it, and quite often architects to these freedom movements--are rarely the focus. Black women have led movements demanding justice for Breonna Taylor, Sandra Bland, Toyin Salau, Riah Milton, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, and countless other Black women and girls whose lives have been curtailed by numerous forms of violence. Across generations and centuries, their refusal to remain silent about violence against them led many to envisioning and building toward Black liberation through organizing and radical politics.

Echoing the energy of Nina Simone's searing protest song which inspired the title, America, Goddam is a call to action in our collective journey toward just futures."

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