Through literature, film, and other media, the Writing Injustice Book Group invites the Guilford community to explore the issues of race and inequality that shape our history and our world.
Conversations will be led and facilitated by Hazel V. Carby, the Charles C. and Dorathea S. Dilley Professor Emeritus of African American Studies and Professor Emeritus of American Studies at Yale University, and Donna Daniels, Ph.D., CEO of Possibility Labs, and Cultural Anthropologist.
This Winter/Spring 2026, Writing Injustice will consider three remarkable novels that grapple with the theme of memory and how the past, present, and future intertwine and shape us.
Set in Manchester County, Virginia, 20 years before the start of the Civil War, we learn of the death of Henry Townsend, a young Black slaveowner and master of a plantation. Ambitious and luminously written, The Known World ranges seamlessly between the past and future and back again to the present weaving together the lives of freed and enslaved Blacks, whites, and Native Americans — providing us with a deeper understanding of the enduring multidimensional world created by the institution of slavery.
Copies of The Known World will be available at the Reference Desk.
These programs are free and open to all. Please register online, by phone, or in person at the reference desk.
Please register.