Guest speaker Kenneth Warren, who made the controversial argument that the concept of an African American literature became well-established only in response to the Jim Crow regime in his previous publication What is African American Literature?, contended during the event that much of African American literature that came after 1919 may not represent “a realization of militancy, but the management of the idea of race, color, religion and ideas of identity”.
Eve Ewing, meanwhile, gave a presentation of her newly published book of poetry 1919, reading several poems from the book such as “This is map” and “I saw Emmett Till this week at the grocery store”, and sang her lyric poem “Jump/Rope”. Ewing, who is a writer, comic book author as well as a sociology professor at the University of Chicago, later joined Warren in conversation about her own complicated identity, and debated with him on whether there is a definitive relationship between “the contemporary catastrophes that are defining our times and the production of the literature…right now.” Warren cautioned against thinking of current literary movements as another “Black Renaissance,” while Ewing supported the idea that the nation is seeing another “black cultural movement of note”.
