Chance Meetings: Daphne A. Brooks on Zora Neale Hurston's "You Don't Know Us Negroes and Other Essays" + Special Pricing Inside!

The Authors Guild Foundation is excited to present Chance Meetings, a new online literary seminar inspired by Rachel Cohen’s A Chance Meeting, a dazzling group biography that offers a striking vision of the making and remaking of the American mind and imagination from the Civil War to the Vietnam War.

We are pleased to announce that our customers can attend at a special price of $25 per ticket, instead of the regular price of $40. Check out the official page on the Authors Guild website, select the online seminar you'd like to attend, and enter the code CMDISC at checkout to get your special price.

The next seminar will take place on October 17th, 12:30 PM EST, where Daphne A. Brooks will focus on Zora Neale Hurston's You Don't Know Us Negroes and Other Essays. 

"One of the greatest writers of our time."--Toni Morrison

You Don't Know Us Negroes is the quintessential gathering of provocative essays from one of the world's most celebrated writers, Zora Neale Hurston. Spanning more than three decades and penned during the backdrop of the birth of the Harlem Renaissance, Montgomery bus boycott, desegregation of the military, and school integration, Hurston's writing articulates the beauty and authenticity of Black life as only she could. Collectively, these essays showcase the roles enslavement and Jim Crow have played in intensifying Black people's inner lives and culture rather than destroying it. She argues that in the process of surviving, Black people re-interpreted every aspect of American culture--"modif[ying] the language, mode of food preparation, practice of medicine, and most certainly religion." White supremacy prevents the world from seeing or completely recognizing Black people in their full humanity and Hurston made it her job to lift the veil and reveal the heart and soul of the race. These pages reflect Hurston as the controversial figure she was--someone who stated that feminism is a mirage and that the integration of schools did not necessarily improve the education of Black students. Also covered is the sensational trial of Ruby McCollum, a wealthy Black woman convicted in 1952 for killing her lover, a white doctor.

Demonstrating the breadth of this revered and influential writer's work, You Don't Know Us Negroes and Other Essays is an invaluable chronicle of a writer's development and a window into her world and mind.

Learn more about Chance Meetings and the seminar schedule here.