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Students, professors and community members will kick off Penn State Altoona's 24th annual African American Read-In this weekend with the theme Black ecologies, which celebrates environmental writing by Black authors.
Exploring topics ranging from urban nature to geography to environmental science, this multi-day event aims to engage attendees with both contemporary and historical works by Black writers from a range of genres, according to the Read-In's website.
"American literature is made up of many different voices and traditions," Megan Simpson said. "If literature both reflects and shapes who we are as a people -- as I believe it does -- then we can't truly know ourselves and who we are as Americans without hearing voices from all these traditions."
Simpson, African American Read-In chairwoman and associate professor of English and women's, gender and sexuality studies, noted that texts authored by Black people and other minorities are much more likely to be banned.
"Books by diverse authors, or featuring experiences of LGBTQ or Black or Brown characters, are significantly overrepresented, if not targeted directly, in many book bans and challenges," Simpson said.
The events begin at 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 18, in the Port Sky Cafe. Attendees are invited to share a short reading from AARI's recommended reading list or from a Black author of their choice.
Readers will receive a commemorative T-shirt and dinner guests "may pick a book to take home with them," the release read. Reservations for the dinner are closed, but the reading is open to the public.
Blair County NAACP President Andrae Holsey said the NAACP is a financial backer of the Read-In and that it uses money from its Freedom Fund to buy books "for people of all ages to read about the African Diaspora based on the theme of the year."
"I think the loss of critical literature in learning environments is negatively impactful on education," Holsey said. "Many of the banned book lists I've seen over the years are driven by national political currents and often overlook the historical importance of certain books for understanding our past."
Simpson echoed this, saying that it is in literature by Black authors that readers can learn more about Black heritage, recorded history and make sure it is passed down. She said that they read works from "all time periods throughout the 400-year history of the African American literary tradition each year" and that they celebrate those voices and learn from them.
The Read-In will continue on Feb. 19 with a Monday Marathon, an open mic event in the Titelman Study of the Misciagna Family Center for Performing Arts. Various readings, presentations and games celebrating Black writers will occur between 9 a.m. and
5 p.m., and community members are welcome to join throughout the day. From noon to 1 p.m., Carolyn Finney will give a keynote address. She is an environmental studies professor of practice in the Franklin Environmental Center at Middlebury College.
The aim of Finney's work is to "develop greater cultural competency within environmental organizations and institutions, challenge media outlets on their representation of difference, and increase awareness of how privilege shapes who gets to speak to environmental issues and determine policy and action," according to a news release on the event.
At 5:30 p.m., the Read-In's featured author Tyree Daye will give a reading of his works, followed by a book signing. Daye is an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.
Simpson noted that the Read-In is well received by the community and that about 300 people participate every year, with 200 of those being students.
All events are free and open to the public.
Mirror Staff Writer Rachel Foor is at 814-946-7458.
Black Ecologies Recommended Reading List
The Black Ecologies reading list of nearly 100 suggestions includes novels, short fiction, children's books, poetry and more. On the list is "The Chaneysville Incident," written by Bedford County native David Bradley. The book, a PEN/Faulkner Award-winning novel, was inspired by the author's mother, who researched 13 unmarked Bedford County graves and learned they belonged to runaway slaves.
*indicates book is in the Eiche Library at Penn State Altoona
This is a sampling of the many works that fit this year's theme.
Novels
David Bradley, "The Chaneysville Incident"
Octavia Butler, "Parable of the Sower"
Octavia Butler, "Parable of the Talents"
Julie Dash, "Daughters of the Dust"
Zora Neale Hurston, "Their Eyes Were Watching God"
N.K. Jemison, "Broken Earth Trilogy"
Imbolo Mbue, "How Beautiful We Were"
Toni Morrison, "Beloved, Sula, Song of Solomon"
Barbara Neely, "Blanche Cleans Up"
Jesmyn Ward, "Sing, Unburied, Sing, Salvage the Bones"
Short fiction
Toni Cade Bambara, various short stories, including "Blues Ain't No Mockin Bird"
Charles Chesnutt, "Conjure Tales"
*Zora Neale Hurston, "John Redding Goes to Sea"
N.K. Jemison, "Sinners, Saints, Dragons, and Haints, in the City Beneath the Still"
Jamaica Kinkaid, "At the Bottom of the River"
Alice Walker, "The Flowers"
YA Fiction
Tomi Adeyemi, "Children of Blood and Bone"
Tochi Onyebuchi, "War Girls"
Sherri L. Smith, "Sparrow"
Renée Watson, "Piecing Me Together"
Children's Books
*Ashley Bryan, "Beautiful Blackbird"
Nathan Bryon, illustrated by Dapo Adeola, "Rocket Says Clean Up!"
Donald Crews, "Cloudy Day Sunny Day"
Christopher Paul Curtis, "The Madman of Piney Woods"
Julie Fogliano (illustrated by Christian Robinson), "Just in Case You Want to Fly"
Ruth Forman (illustrated by Talia Skyles), "Bloom"
Nikki Grimes (illustrated by Elizabeth Zunon), "Off to See the Sea"
Nikki Grimes (illustrated by Jerry Pinkney and Brian Pinkney), "A Walk in the Woods"
Tony Hillery, Illustrated by Jessie Hartland, "Harlem Grown: How One Big Idea Transformed a Neighborhood"
Langston Hughes, "An Earth Song"
Margo Humphrey, "The River That Gave Gifts: an Afro American Story"
Julius Lester (illustrated by Joe Cepeda), "What A Truly Cool World"
*Melinda Mangai, "Jayden's Impossible Garden" (featured picture book selection for 2024)
Melinda Mengai, "Jayden's Secret Ingredient"
*Faith Ringold, "Tar Beach"
Jacqueline Woodson (illustrated by Rafael López), "The Year We Learned to Fly"
Kevin Young (illustrated by Chioma Ebinama), "Emile and the Field"
Drama
*August Wilson, "Seven Guitars"
Poetry
Samaa Abdurraqib, ed., "From Root to Seed: Black, Brown, and Indigenous Poets Write the Northeast"
Will Alexander, "The Stratospheric Canticles"
Wanda Coleman, "Requiem for a Nest," "Beaches, Why I Don't Like Them"
*Tyree Daye, many poems in "River Hymns and Cardinal"
Rita Dove, "Daystar," "Parsley"
*Camille T. Dungy, ed., "Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry"
Camille T. Dungy, "Trophic Cascade"
Paul Laurence Dunbar, "The Haunted Oak"
Nikki Giovanni, "For Saundra," "The Yellowjacket"
Langston Hughes, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers"
*Yusef Komunyakaa, Selected poems in "Magic City" and "Pleasure Dome"
Clarence Major, many poems, including "On Watching a Caterpillar Become a Butterfly"
Naomi Shihab Nye, "Cast Away: Poems for Our Time"
Richard Wright, "Between the World and Me"
Non-Fiction & Memoir
Henry Bibb, "Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself"
Christian Cooper, "Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World"
Frederick Douglass, "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Written by Himself"
*Camille T. Dungy, "Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden"
Carolyn Finney, "Hiking While Black"
John Francis, "Planet Walker"
*Eddy Harris, "Mississippi Solo"
*Drew Lanham, "The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man's Love Affair with Nature"
Derick Lugo, "The Unlikely Thru-Hiker: An Appalachian Trail Journey"
*Wangari Muta Maarthai, "Unbowed: A Memoir"
Norris McDonald, "Diary of an Environmentalist"
Rue Mapp, ed, "Nature Swagger: Stories and Visions of Black Joy in the Outdoors"
James Edward Mills, "The Adventure Gap"
John C. Robinson, "Birding for Everyone: Encouraging People of Color to Become Birdwatchers"
*Lauret E. Savoy, "Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape"
Sharkey, Erin, ed. "A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars"
*Alice Walker, "Am I Blue," Alice Walker: Banned
Evelyn C. White, "Black Women and the Wilderness," The Stories that Shape Us: Contemporary Women Write about the West
Scholarship
*Natalie Baszle, ed., "We Are Each Other's Harvest: Celebrating African American Farmers, Land, and Legacy"
Robert Bullard, "Dumping in Dixie"
Robert Bullard, "Race and Environmental Justice in the United States," Yale Journal of International Law, vol 18, 1993, 319-35.
Robert Bullard and Beverly Wright, "Race, Place, and Environmental Justice After Hurricane Katrina: Struggles to Reclaim, Rebuild, and Revitalize New Orleans and the Gulf Coast"
Robert Bullard and Beverly Wright, "The Wrong Complexion for Protection: How Government Response to Disasters Endangers African-American Communities"
Majora Carter, "Sustainable South Bronx A Model for Environmental Justice"
Sarah Jane Cervenak, "Black Gathering: Art, Ecology, Ungiven Life"
Stefani Dunning, "Black To Nature: Pastoral Return and African American Culture"
Carolyn Finney, "Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors"
Dianne D. Glave, "Rooted in the Earth: Reclaiming the African American Environmental Heritage"
Diane D. Glave and Mark Stoll," To Love the Wind and the Rain: African Americans and Environmental History"
Nathan Hare "Black Ecology" (The Black Scholar, vol.1, issue 6, April 1970)
Tatiana C. Height, et al, "Call for Environmental Justice Amplification Among Ecology Scholars and Practitioners: A Black Ecology Perspective" Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America, vol. 104, iss. 1, Jan. 2023, pp. 1-14 .
*bell hooks, "Touching the Earth" in At Home on the Earth: Becoming Native to Our Place, ed. by David Landis Barnhill
*bell hooks, "Earthbound" in The Colors of Nature, 2011
Zakiyyah Iman Jackson, "Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World"
LeiLani Nishime and Kim D. Hester Williams, "Racial Ecologies"
Leah Penniman, "Black Earth Wisdom: Soulful Conversations with Black Environmentalists"
Leah Penniman, "Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm's Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land"
J.T. Roan and Justin Hosbey, "Mapping Black Ecologies" (in Current Research in Digital History, vol. 2, 2019)
Kimberly N. Ruffin, "Black on Earth: African American Ecoliterary Traditions"
South End Press Collective, eds., "What Lies Beneath: Katrina, Race, and the State of the Nation"
*Alison H. Deming and Lauret E. Savoy, "The Colors of Nature: Culture, Identity, and the Natural World," rev. ed. 2011 (1st edition was 2002).
Dorceta Taylor, "The Environment and the People in American Cities: 1600-1900s: Disorder, Inequality, and Social Change"
Dorceta Taylor, "The Rise of the American Conservation Movement: Power, Privilege, and Environmental Protection"
Dorceta Taylor, "Toxic Communities: Environmental Racism, Industrial Pollution, and Residential Mobility"
Wright, Willie Jamaal, "As Above, So Below: Anti-Black Violence as Environmental Racism"
*Harriett A. Washington, "A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind"