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Event
Frank Wilderson: Afro-Pessimism
KPFA Radio 94.1 FM and Marcus Books present:
FRANK B. WILDERSON
AFROPESSIMISM
With Kris Welch
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Wednesday, April 22, 7:30 PM
Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar Street, Berkeley, CA
advance tickets: $12: brownpapertickets.com ::T: 800-838-3006 or Marcus Books, Pegasus Books (3 sites), Books Inc (Berkeley), Moes, Walden Pond Bookstore, East Bay Books, Mrs.Dalloways Books $15 door, benefits KPFA Radio 94.1FM info: kpfa.org/events ..
In the tradition of Edward Saids Orientalism and Franz Fanons Black Skin, White Masks, Afropessimsm is a brilliant account of the experience of being black. The black radical tradition has drawn upon the term as a way to acknowledge the power, depth, and vitality of the resilience and radical imagination of people of African descent.
A seminal work that strikingly combines groundbreaking philosophy with searing flights of memoir, Afropessimism presents the dynamic principles of an increasingly influential intellectual movement that theorizes blackness through the lens of perpetual slavery. Rather than interpreting slavery through a Marxist framework of class oppression, Frank B. Wilderson demonstrates that the social construct of slavery, as seen through pervasive , anti-black subjugation and violence, is hardly a relic of the past but an almost necessary force in our civilization today, and that black struggles cannot be conflated with the experiences of any other oppressed group. In exceptionally clear prose, Wilderson juxtaposes his own seemingly idyllic upbringing mid-century Minneapolis with the harsh reality he would later encounter, whether in radicalized, late 1960s Berkeley or in the slums of Soweto. Following in the rich literary tradition of works by W.E.B. DuBois, Malcolm X and James Baldwin, Afropessimism reverberates with wisdom and painful clarity.
A writer of hard, searing lyricism, Wilderson is, to my mind, an indispensable thinker. Fred Moten
Professor and chair of African American studies at the University of California, Irvine, and author of Incognegro, A Memoir of Exile and Apartheid, Frank B. Wilderson has received an NEA Literature Fellowship and a Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Legacy Award for Creative Nonfiction.
KRIS WELCH is a veteran, very popular KPFA on-air host, a mother, and a devoted grandmother.
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LocationHillside Club (View)
2286 Cedar Street
Berkeley, CA 94709
United States
Categories
| Kid Friendly: Yes! |
| Dog Friendly: No |
| Non-Smoking: Yes! |
| Wheelchair Accessible: Yes! |
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