Schomburg Courtyard Salon | Farah Jasmine Griffin

Join us for an intimate salon with author Farah Jasmine Griffin reading from her latest work Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature. The Schomburg Courtyard Salon series is an outdoor event featuring authors whose books were published during quarantine. The author will be available to sign books throughout the evening.

A brilliant scholar imparts the lessons bequeathed by the Black community and its remarkable artists and thinkers. Farah Jasmine Griffin has taken to her heart the phrase "read until you understand," a line her father, who died when she was nine, wrote in a note to her. She has made it central to this book about love of the majestic power of words and love of the magnificence of Black life. Griffin has spent years rooted in the culture of Black genius and the legacy of books that her father left her. A beloved professor, she has devoted herself to passing these works and their wisdom on to generations of students. Griffin entwines memoir, history, and art while she keeps her finger on the pulse of the present, asking us to grapple with the continuing struggle for Black freedom and the ongoing project that is American democracy. She challenges us to reckon with our commitment to all the nation’s inhabitants and our responsibilities to all humanity.

Farah Jasmine Griffin was the inaugural chair of the African American and African Diaspora Studies Department at Columbia University, where she is also William B. Ransford Professor of English and Comparative Literature. She is the author of numerous books, most recently of Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature, and the recipient of a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship. She lives in New York.

PUBLIC NOTICE AND DISCLAIMER By registering for this event, you are acknowledging that an inherent risk of exposure to COVID-19 exists in any public place where people are present. By attending an in-person program at The New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, you voluntarily assume all risks related to exposure to COVID-19 and agree not to hold The New York Public Library, its Trustees, officers, agent and employees liable for any illness or injury.

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Revisit our 2021 Schomburg Center Literary Festival virtual program, Read Until You Understand: Farah Jasmine Griffin in conversation with Tressie McMillan Cottom.

PUBLIC NOTICE AND DISCLAIMER

POLICIES & PROCEDURES To ensure the health and safety of the public and our staff as our libraries reopen with nearly full service, policies and procedures created in collaboration with safety experts must be followed. As of July 6, at all our open locations, visitors must wear a mask the duration of the program, in accordance with the Library policy. Patrons not wearing a face covering will not be permitted to enter.

By registering for this event, you are acknowledging that an inherent risk of exposure to COVID-19 exists in any public place where people are present. By attending an in-person program by The New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, you voluntarily assume all risks related to exposure to COVID-19 and agree not to hold The New York Public Library, its Trustees, officers, agent and employees liable for any illness or injury.

PRESS Please send all press inquiries (photo, video, interviews, audio-recording, etc) at least 24-hours before the day of the program to Leah Drayton at [email protected].

Please note that professional video recordings are prohibited without expressed consent.

Host or Publisher Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library