The People’s History: Writing the Wrongs

Nearly one year has passed since uprisings across the United States and around the world decried anti-Black violence, including the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and momentous discussions of police brutality and mass incarceration continued to illuminate the lurking specters of horrific histories. Amid the pandemic, surging anti-Asian hate crimes have led to a swell of activism within, and in support of, AAPI communities—and likewise brought to light the ugly American legacies that have sustained hate across centuries.

In a riveting opening night conversation moderated by Maria Hinojosa of Latino USA, whose recent memoir Once I Was You intimately explored America’s ongoing immigration crisis, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and Imbolo Mbue confront questions of how to reconcile our collective pasts, challenging and reframing contested histories underlying today’s inequities.

In The Committed, the sequel to Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Sympathizer, an exposed Communist spy is catapulted into life as a refugee in Paris, where he grapples with his place within capitalist society—and the country that colonized his native Vietnam. The New York Times staff writer Nikole Hannah-Jones locates the history of transatlantic slavery at the core of United States’ origin story in her groundbreaking, Pulitzer Prize-winning The 1619 Project. The latest from Cameroonian author Imbolo Mbue, How Beautiful We Were, follows an intrepid young woman as she incites a revolution against a U.S. oil company in her small African village.

This digital event will start at 8pm ET / 5pm PT. If you have any questions, please visit our FAQs.

Presented in collaboration with Strand Book Store.

The People’s History: Writing the Wrongs