Chance Meetings Session 6: Daphne A. Brooks on Zora Neale Hurston’s "You Don’t Know Us Negroes and Other Essays"

The Authors Guild Foundation presents Chance Meetings, a new online literary seminar inspired by Rachel Cohen’s A Chance Meeting: American Encounters (NYRB Classics 2024). 

Following the book’s spirit and shape, the monthly sessions feature talks on beloved classics of American literature by contemporary writers with a personal connection to the works they are discussing. 

On October 17, join Daphne A. Brooks—author and Professor of African American Studies, American Studies, Women’s Gender & Sexuality Studies and Music at Yale University—for a discussion of Zora Neale Hurston's You Don’t Know Us Negroes and Other Essays. A quintessential gathering of provocative essays spanning more than three decades, from the Harlem Renaissance to the Civil Rights Movement, You Don't Know Us Negroes and Other Essays distills Hurston's "genius as a cultural critic and a theorist of Black life," as Brooks writes. “Hurston’s essays are also works of art—formalistically surprising and inventive, drenched in rich and unmistakable character, and often poignantly candid as well.”

For the seventh session of the Chance Meetings seminar series on November 13, Langdon Hammer will lead a discussion on Elizabeth Bishop’s North & South. 

This event takes place virtually via Zoom. Tickets are required for attendance.