On Wednesday, February 26, 2014, I joined Karma Chavez on her radio program, A Public Affair. The interview mostly centered on Living with Lynching but it was also part of their fundraising drive. They gave copies of my book for those who pledged $50 or more and issued challenges to create some healthy competition. I caught the spirit and issued a challenge of my own.
It was a great conversation and a great time! I'm happy to have discovered the community that supports this Madison, Wisconsin community radio station.
Listen to the entire show HERE.
On Thursday, February 20, 2014, I gave a lecture at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. It proved to be a truly special campus visit because my presentation was preceded by a dramatic reading of one of the lynching plays, Georgia Douglas Johnson's Safe, which I discuss in Chapter 5 of Living with Lynching.
This was a major accomplishment that represented the commitment of not only the students who made time to rehearse but also of Professor Karlos Hill, who arranged my visit. Dr. Hill partnered with Professor Courtney Brown from Theatre, who served as director, guiding the students through rehearsals.
The dramatic reading set up my lecture even more beautifully than I assumed it would. I can only assume that the lively Q&A, which featured several questions that I had never received before, benefited from the context the actors provided. A truly remarkable visit that I will never forget!
I will give a lecture at Texas Tech University on Thursday, February 20th. It is free and open to the public, and it will be preceded by a dramatic reading of a one-act lynching play by Texas Tech students.
On, Wednesday, February 26th, I will be the guest on A Public Affair, an hour-long community radio show based in Madison, Wisconsin on WORT 89.9FM. The insightful host is Karma Chavez, author of Queer Migration Politics: Activist Rhetoric and Coalitional Possibilities. We will discuss Living with Lynching, Black History Month, racial violence, and discourses and practices of U.S. citizenship. Please tune in ONLINE if you're not in Madison. (The "Listen Live" link is at the top right of the show's webpage.) AND, please feel free to CALL IN: 608- 256-2001. The show airs Noon to 1PM Central time, 1PM to 2PM Eastern time.
On Thursday, February 27th, I will give a lecture at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. Though it is in the middle of the day—the college's common hour, from 11am to noon—it is free and open to the public. Please spread the word! It would be great to have people from outside of campus attend.
Well, you can't beat that with a stick!! $2.99!!! I don't feel cheap at all, just accessible. :-)
I want my work to make a difference, and I believe it can if people
actually read it. We really don't know much about our history, and Living with Lynching truly offers a new way to understand how we managed
to survive and thrive.
You'll see this price on Amazon and other outlets throughout the month of February, and 4 other University of Illinois Press titles are also available for this amazing price. Details in the announcement from the press HERE.
Living with Lynching received a favorable review in the journal Legacy, alongside a book I very much admire, Crystal Feimster's Southern Horrors (Harvard UP). The reviewer, Jennie Lightweis-Goff, is author of Blood at the Root: Lynching As American Cultural Nucleus.
She begins by marking how dramatically scholarship on racial violence has proliferated since 2002. She notes, "However, despite the upsurge of scholarship on lynching, Koritha Mitchell's Living with Lynching suggests that the process of
redress has scarcely begun.
Mitchell begins her book with a bracing introduction that
radically reimagines the relationship between scholarship on lynching and
the photography of the dead.... " Also, "In addition to unearthing an underexplored archive of black
women's writing, Mitchell engages with one of the central problematics
of feminist and critical race theories: the ethics of representing
atrocity."
Lightweis-Goff concludes, "Mitchell's alternative account of black communities and values and
Feimster's counter-narratives about white and black women's
responses to lynching are essential reading in a scholarly climate that
provides a plethora of writing on collective violence"
For the full review, see Legacy 30.2 (2013): 417 - 20.
