Volume 28, Number 2, Summer 2021

                                      Books&People

               IN THIS ISSUE          BLACK LITERATURE MATTERS:

 The New York City Book Awards        A Q&A with Dr. Farah Jasmine Griffin
                              PAGE 4
                                      In the busy days before the opening of Black Literature Matters, Farah Jasmine Griffin
                Are You an Expert?    found time to answer questions about her role as guest curator of the exhibition.
                              PAGE 6  Professor Griffin is the William B. Ransford Professor of English and Comparative
                                      Literature and African American Studies and the chair of the African Diaspora Studies
One More Picture                      Department at Columbia University. Professor Griffin has written widely on race and
                                      gender, feminism, jazz, and cultural politics. She is the author of numerous books,
                              PAGE 8  including Who Set You Flowin?: The African American Migration Narrative; If You Can’t
                                      Be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday, and Harlem Nocturne: Women Artists
                                      and Progressive Politics During World War II. Professor Griffin was recently awarded
                                      a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship. Her latest book, Read Until You Understand: The
                                      Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature, will be published this fall by W.W.
                                      Norton & Company. Questions for the Q&A prepared by Harriet Shapiro, Head of Exhibitions

                                      How did the Black Lives Matter movement and the current political climate affect your work
                                      on Black Literature Matters? I think you’d actually come up with idea of doing an exhibition
                                      titled Black Literature Matters, and Library trustee Adrienne Ingrum reached out to me
                                      about serving as a guest curator. I jumped at the opportunity because I knew that much of
                                      Black literary history speaks directly to the context that has given birth to the Black Lives
                                      Matter movement. Last spring, after the killing of George Floyd and the global protests that
                                      followed, many people turned to books and articles by contemporary Black writers to gain
                                      insight. I thought this would be an opportunity to introduce them to generations of writers
                                      for whom Black lives have always mattered.

                                              With room for relatively few books in the display cases, what were your selection criteria?
                                              I notice you didn’t include Ralph Ellison and Richard Wright. Were there any others you
                                              particularly regretted not including? Leaving out Wright and Ellison was especially
                                              difficult, but I thought that, because they are among the best-known and most
                                              widely read African American authors, I would not include them. That left space
                                              for lesser-known but important figures like Marita Bonner (who may have
                                              influenced a young Richard Wright), or Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

                                              Not to corner you—but maybe yes! How did you find the Library’s collection of Black
                                              writers and related materials, its strength, its weaknesses? I actually was surprised
                                              by the richness of the collection! The well-known writers are there, but so are some
                                              of those with whom readers might be less familiar. I was also surprised to learn that
                                              many of these books were acquired at the time of publication and that members
                                              checked them out at that time.