What: Commentator, author and cultural critic Toure will discuss his provocative new book, Who’s Afraid of Post-Blackness? What It Means to be Black Now. The lecture is free and open to the public. A book signing will follow.
When: Monday, February 20 at 7 p.m.
Where: Rittenberg Lounge in Mather Hall on the Trinity campus, 300 Summit Street.
Background: A resident of New York City, Toure is an American novelist, essayist, music journalist, cultural critic and television personality. He is the host of Fuse’s Hiphop Shop and On The Record, and he is a contributor to MSNBC’s The Dylan Ratigan Show and Rolling Stone.
His book, Who’s Afraid of Post-Blackness, was published late last year. In it, Toure tackles what it means to be black in the United States in an age when Barack Obama is president and racial attitudes have become more complicated and nuanced than at any time in the nation’s history.
Toure’s book examines the concept of Post-Blackness, a term that has come to define artists who are proud to be black but don’t want to be limited by “identity politics” and race. According to one book review, Toure argues “that Blackness is infinite, that any identity imaginable is Black, and that all expressions of Blackness are legitimate.”
Toure not only discusses how race and racial expectations have shaped his life but he explores how Post-Blackness functions in politics, society, psychology, art and culture. His book includes thought-provoking views expressed by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Cornel West, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., former New York Gov. David Paterson, and Soledad O’Brien, among others.
He is the author of three other books: The Portable Promised Land, a collection of short stories; Soul City, a magical realist novel about life in an African-American Utopia; and Never Drank the Kool-Aid, a collection of his writings from Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Village Voice, Playboy and others, all written between 1994 and 2005.
The program is co-sponsored by MOCA, TCBWO, the SGA, and the Office of Multicultural Affairs.