Based on Cornelius Eady’s poem cycle, Brutal Imagination is a powerful examination of the notorious 1994 incident in which a white woman in South Carolina, Susan Smith, claimed that a Black man had kidnapped her children. The FBI searched for the man until Smith confessed that she had invented the Black man and had drowned her children. Brutal Imagination, two voices inside one consciousness, brings this invented man to life.

Zoom webinar registration: https://bit.ly/4b1rqyf

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, racism and discrimination meant that few occupations were open to Black people in New Haven and elsewhere in Connecticut. Although a small number of formally educated Black men became doctors, lawyers, educators, and other professionals, the majority worked as barbers, porters, waiters, and laborers. Black women worked outside the home as well, often as cooks, laundresses, seamstresses, or household staff.

Christian Wiman and Danielle Chapman are poets, essayists, parents, and partners. This event will feature their new non-fiction works, Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair and Holler: A Poet Among Patriots, as well as a discussion about faith, writing, race, love, and grief. The event will be in Marquand Chapel and will be followed by a reception in the Upper Common Room.

Michael Willrich, Leff Families Professor of History at Brandeis University, will present on his new book “American Anarchy: The Epic Struggle between Immigrant Radicals and the US Government at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century.”

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