Virtual Author Talk: Jerald Walker

Register Online

• How to Make a Slave and Other Essays by Dr. Jerald Walker
• Monday, February 28, 2022—7pm ET on Zoom
• Presented by: Ashland Public Library, Public Library of Brookline, Tewksbury Public Library, Waltham Public Library, Watertown Free Public Library, and the State Library of Massachusetts

Join us on February 28th for an online conversation with Dr. Jerald Walker, author of How to Make a Slave and Other Essays, which was a National Book Award Finalist and the winner of the 2020 Massachusetts Book Award for Nonfiction. This online event is presented in partnership with the libraries of Ashland, Brookline, Newton, Tewksbury, and Watertown, and is free and open to all.

About the book:
For the Black community, Jerald Walker asserts in How to Make a Slave, “anger is often a prelude to a joke, as there is broad understanding that the triumph over this destructive emotion lay in finding its punchline.” It is on the knife’s edge between fury and farce that the essays in this exquisite collection balance. Whether confronting the medical profession’s racial biases, considering the complicated legacy of Michael Jackson, paying homage to his writing mentor James Alan McPherson, or attempting to break free of personal and societal stereotypes, Walker elegantly blends personal revelation and cultural critique. The result is a bracing and often humorous examination by one of America’s most acclaimed essayists of what it is to grow, parent, write, and exist as a Black American male. Walker refuses to lull his readers; instead, his missives urge them to do better as they consider, through his eyes, how to be a good citizen, how to be a good father, how to live, and how to love.

About the author:
Dr. Jerald Walker is the author of The World in Flames: A Black Boyhood in a White Supremacist Doomsday Cult and Street Shadows: A Memoir of Race, Rebellion, and Redemption, winner of the 2011 PEN New England Award for Nonfiction. He has published in magazines such as Creative Nonfiction, Harvard Review, Mother Jones, and Oxford American, and he has been widely anthologized, including five times in The Best American Essays series. The recipient of James A. Michener and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, Walker is Professor of Creative Writing at Emerson College.

To register for this free online event, please visit: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/2016414241464/WN_dhtmMjXcSiuBxggIXhauRA

Author Talks Committee
State Library of Massachusetts