Decades in the making, our series, Let's Talk About It, Oklahoma!, remains one of our most popular events. Every semester, a new theme is selected for this Oklahoma Humanities-sponsored book club series. Books are free to borrow from the program and anyone may participate. Join us for illuminating presentations and community-building through group discussions. Delve into topics from civil rights, to history, to mystery 鈥� and beyond!
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Current Season of at OCU
Free loaner copies of books available this summer at Dulaney-Browne Library! Availability is on a first-come, first-serve basis.
This season's theme:
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"Of Shadows and Light: Stories of African American Resilience"
A Theme
Over the past century, African Americans have labored to shatter the crucible of racism. Presently, this incredible saga of Black resilience has become highly politicized. Learning about the African American experience can be painful, but it can also be enriching. It can be simultaneously unsettling and beautiful, familiar and yet, strange鈥攂ut most of all it presents a deeper dimension to the American story as African American novelist Richard Wright (1941) pointed out. 鈥淲e Black folk,鈥� he wrote, 鈥渙ur history and our present being, are a mirror of all the manifold experiences of America. What we want, what we represent, what we endure is what America is.鈥� Like all ethnic groups within the United States, African Americans have a unique history that contextualizes their experiences, both on an individual level and collectively. This history contains the legacies of slavery and segregation. Even though the tangible relics of slavery and Jim Crow have been retired to museums long ago, systemic racism and bigotry remain in the 21st century. Barriers to economic opportunity, inequities within the justice system, voting restrictions, ghettoization, failing educational systems, police brutality, and micro-aggressions persist as signposts of an earlier time in the nation鈥檚 history. Yet, Black people have managed to make lives for themselves, to be creative, and to have the courage to remind the nation that 鈥淲e, too, are America鈥� with the same aspirations and dreams as everyone else. However, discussing the African American experience can be difficult because of the history of racism that envelops it.
This series on the modern African American experience explores the theme of resilience in the struggle against marginalization and exclusion that have historically shaped Black life. Collectively, these works not only give insight into the endeavor of trying to find a sense of place and belonging within American society, but also challenge us to reflect upon the meaning of the democratic ideals that bind Americans together.
To learn more about the books and theme, click for a copy of the full series essay. Printed copies of the theme essay will also be available with book check-out. If the program's copies of the books run out, community members are also welcome to join with their own copies!
The program will begin September 10th and books will come available for checkout this summer. Stay tuned for more details!
All sessions will take place at 6:30 p.m. Tuesdays, at 野狼社区 University
Petree College of Arts & Sciences Walker Center, Room 151
NW 26th and N. Florida
Each session features a short lecture, followed by small-group discussion of the book.
| DATE | BOOK TITLE | PRESENTER |
|---|---|---|
| SEPT. 10 | A Matter of Black and White by Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher (1996) | Dr. Sunu Kodumthara, SWOSU Professor of History |
| SEPT. 24 | Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (2015) | Dr. Cedric Tolliver, African American literature specialist from OU |
| OCT. 8 | Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine (2014) | Dr. Tracy Floreani, Center Director |
| OCT. 22 | Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston (1937) | Dr. Kalenda Eaton, Professor in Clara Luper Department of African and African American Studies at OU |
| NOV. 12 | The Cross and the Lynching Tree by James Cone (2011) | Rev. Valerie Steele, Lead Pastor at Quail Springs United Methodist Church |
Free parking is available in the lots surrounding the building.
Thanks to our partnership with Oklahoma Humanities, we've been given the ability to go back in time! Take a trip down memory lane and scroll through an extensive list of every Let's Talk About It theme from the past.
| YEAR | THEME |
|---|---|
| SPRING 2024 | Where We Come Together |
| FALL 2023 | Native American Identity: From Past to Present |
| SPRING 2023 | Immigration Stories in Contemporary Fiction: Suspended Between Borders |
| FALL 2022 | Speculative Women, Future Bodies |
| SPRING 2022 | Memories, Memorials, & Painful Pasts: A More Perfect Union Theme |
| FALL 2021 | Travel, New Ways of Seeing |
| SPRING 2020 | Working to Survive, Surviving to Work |
| FALL 2019 | Coming and Going in Oklahoma Indian Country |
| SPRING 2019 | Wade in the Water |
| FALL 2018 | Living with Limits |
| SPRING 2018 | War, Not War, and Peace: A Pulitzer Prize Centennial Series |
| FALL 2017 | The American Frontier: A Pulitzer Prize Centennial Series |
| SPRING 2017 | Young Adult Crossover Fiction: Crumbling Borders between Adolescents and Adults |
| FALL 2016 | Civil Rights and Equality: A Pulitzer Prize Centennial Series |
| SPRING 2016 | Play Ball |
| FALL 2015 | Hope Amidst Hardships |
| SPRING 2015 | The Dynamics of Dysfunction: To Laugh or Cry or Both |
| FALL 2014 | Oklahoma Private Investigations |
| SPRING 2014 | Muslim Journeys: American Stories |
| FALL 2013 | Making Sense of the American Civil War |
| SPRING 2013 | Myth and Literature |
| FALL 2012 | Native American Writers of the Plains |
| SPRING 2012 | The Oklahoman Experience: From Wilderness to Metropolis |
| FALL 2011 | Much Depends on Dinner: What We Eat and What It Says About Us |
| SPRING 2011 | What America Reads: Myth Making in Popular Fiction |
| FALL 2010 | Rebirth of a Nation: Nationalism and the Civil War |
| SPRING 2010 | Journey Stories |
| FALL 2009 | The Worst Hard Time Revisited: Oklahoma in the Dust Bowl Years |
| SPRING 2009 | Do You See What I See: Growing Up in the Wide World? Contemporary World Literature |
| FALL 2008 | American Icons: The American President |
| SPRING 2008 | Mysterious Fears and Ghastly Longings |
| FALL 2007 | Crime and Comedy: The Lighter Side of Crime and Misdemeanor |
| SPRING 2007 | The Oklahoma Experience: The Thirties |
| FALL 2006 | Invisibility and Identity: The Search for Self in African American Fiction |
| SPRING 2006 | The Journey Inward: Women's Autobiography |
| FALL 2005 | Piercing the Quilt, Stirring the Stew: Ethnic American Women's Voices |
| SPRING 2005 | The Oklahoma Experience: Re-Vision - Reading and Discussing |
| FALL 2004 | Vietnam |
| SPRING 2004 | Crime and Punishment |
| FALL 2003 | The American Renaissance |
| SPRING 2003 | Friendship in Literature: Reading and Discussing |
| FALL 2002 | The Gilded Age: The Emergence of Modern America |
| SPRING 2002 | Private Investigations: Hard-Boiled and Soft-Hearted Heroes |
| FALL 2001 | Liberty and Violence: The Heritage of the French Revolution |
| SPRING 2001 | Many Trails, Many Tribes: Images of American Indians in Contemporary Fiction |
| FALL 2000 | Individual Rights and Community in America |
| SPRING 2000 | Making a Living, Making a Life: Work and its Rewards in a Changing America |
| FALL 1999 | The Unknown Americans: Contemporary Latin American Literature |
| SPRING 1999 | Generation to Generation: Contemporary Young Adult Fiction |
| FALL 1998 | Being Ethnic, Becoming American: Struggles, Successes, Symbols |
| SPRING 1998 | Writing Worlds: The Art of Seeing in Anthropology, Fiction, and Autobiography |
For more information, check out the
