Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route - Book Discussion

Join Michelle Commander, University of Tennessee Assistant Professor of English and Africana, for a discussion of Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route by Saidiya Hartman at this month's KCPL Books Sandwiched In. "A slave is a stranger," Hartman says, "torn from kin and community, exiled from one's country, dishonored and violated." Hartman went to Ghana in search of strangers and tells about her journey to reclaim the dead and to reckon with the lives undone by slavery.

"Saidiya Hartman's Lose Your Mother traces transatlantic slavery's continued impact on the author and Black Americans, in general," Commander says. "The institution of slavery is often described as the United States' original sin, as it set the stage for what followed, including lynching, Jim Crow legislation, the denial of full citizenship rights to Black Americans, and other race-related injustices. By visiting and researching at the vestiges of slavery that exist on Ghana's coastline, Hartman catalogs the history of dispossession and loss experienced by enslaved Black people and their descendants."

Books Sandwiched In is a free lecture series of the Knox County Public Library.  The July discussion is presented in partnership with the East Tennessee Historical Society.  Attendees can bring a "Brown Bag Lunch" - drinks will be available for purchase.