New Jersey Chapter
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Box 1483, Palmer Square Station, Princeton, NJ 08542-1483 |
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Advocacy
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African American Read-In Princeton Public Library
Community Room
Sunday, February 7, 2010
2:00pm-3:30pm
Princeton University alumna Jennifer Baszile will read excerpts from her memoir, The Black Girl Next Door, at the Princeton Public Library on Sunday, February 7, 2010, at 2:00p.m. as part of the 21st Annual African American Read-In. The African American Read-In, sponsored by the Black Caucus of the National Council of Teachers of English, urges citizens nationwide to make literacy a significant part of Black History Month by hosting and coordinating read-ins in their communities.
This event is co-sponsored by the Princeton Public Library and the Black Caucus of the American Library Association in New Jersey (BCALA-NJ). All Princeton Public Library programs are free and open to the public. The library is in the Sands Library Building at 65 Witherspoon St. in Princeton Borough. Convenient parking is available on neighboring streets and in the borough-operated Spring Street Garage, which is adjacent to the library. For more information about library programs and services, call (609) 924-9529 or visit www.princetonlibrary.org.
A powerful, beautifully written memoir about coming of age as a black girl in an exclusive
white suburb in "integrated," post-Civil Rights California in the 1970s and 1980s.
At six years of age, after winning a foot race against a white classmate, Jennifer Baszile was humiliated to hear her classmate explain that black people "have something in their feet to make them run faster than white people." When she asked her teacher about it, it was confirmed as true. The next morning, Jennifer's father accompanied her to school, careful to "assert himself as an informed and concerned parent and not simply a big, black, dangerous man in a first-grade classroom."
This was the first of many skirmishes in Jennifer's childhood-long struggle to define herself as "the black girl next door" while living out her parents' dreams. Success for her was being the smartest and achieving the most, with the consequence that much of her girlhood did not seem like her own but more like the "family project." But integration took a toll on everyone in the family when strain in her parents' marriage emerged in her teenage years, and the struggle to be the perfect black family became an unbearable burden.
A deeply personal view of a significant period of American social history, The Black Girl Next Door deftly balances childhood experiences with adult observations, creating an illuminating and poignant look at a unique time in our country's history.
(source: Simon & Schuster Web site, viewed on 8 January 2010)