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The Language of Bronzeville
Tuesday, September 24, 2019, 6:00 p.m. - 7:30 p.m.
Newberry Library
60 West Walton Street, Chicago, IL 60610 (Map)View the video of this event.
What words come to mind when you think about Chicago? How did poets and writers in this city develop a voice and a language distinct to the city?
If Chicago after the 1919 race riots cordoned off black neighborhoods through restrictive housing covenants, then the writers of Bronzeville also were emboldened by their community’s quest for cultural self-determination. By the 1930s, Bronzeville became the city’s most creative zone of literary and artistic ferment, a place that inspired work by writers such as Gwendolyn Brooks, Frank Marshall Davis, Margaret Walker, and Richard Wright.
This program will feature readings and conversation about literary language that gives voice to Chicago’s difficult and often violent history. Participating in the conversation will be writer and scholar Eve L. Ewing, whose new book of poems explores the 1919 race riots, and Kenneth Warren, Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor and Professor of English at the University of Chicago.
The Newberry’s Director of Chicago Studies, Liesl Olson, will moderate.