Morgan Jerkins, Wandering in Strange Lands Reading & Signing
Join us on Thursday, September 28th as we welcome Nevada Reads 2023 author, Morgan Jerkins. She will be reading from her book Wandering in Strange Lands, One of TIME's 100 Must Read Books of 2020 and one of Good Housekeeping's Best Books of the Year.
Between 1916 and 1970, six million black Americans left their rural homes in the South for jobs in cities in the North, West, and Midwest in a movement known as The Great Migration. But while this event transformed the complexion of America and provided black people with new economic opportunities, it also disconnected them from their roots, their land, and their sense of identity, argues Morgan Jerkins. In this fascinating and deeply personal exploration, she recreates her ancestors' journeys across America, following the migratory routes they took from Georgia and South Carolina to Louisiana, Oklahoma, and California.
Following in their footsteps, Jerkins seeks to understand not only her own past, but the lineage of an entire group of people who have been displaced, disenfranchised, and disrespected throughout our history. Through interviews, photos, and hundreds of pages of transcription, Jerkins braids the loose threads of her family's oral histories, which she was able to trace back 300 years, with the insights and recollections of black people she met along the way--the tissue of black myths, customs, and blood that connect the bones of American history.
Incisive and illuminating, Wandering in Strange Lands is a timely and enthralling look at America's past and present, one family's legacy, and a young black woman's life, filtered through her sharp and curious eyes.
Morgan Jerkins is the author of the New York Times bestseller This Will Be Undoing as well as the critically acclaimed books, Wandering in Strange Lands and Caul Baby. She holds a Bachelor's in Comparative Literature from Princeton University and an MFA from the Bennington Writers Seminars. Jerkins is a Forbes 3o Under 30 Leader in Media alumna, a 2021 ASME Next recipient for her literary initiative at Medium's ZORA, and an ASME Award winner for co-editing a special issue on the tenth anniversary of Trayvon Martin and the Black Lives Matter movement for New York Magazine. Her short-form work has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Rolling Stones, The Guardian, ELLE, Vogue, and The Atlantic, among many other publications. She's held professorships at Pacific University, Leipzig University in Germany, Columbia University, and the New School. Black Madonna, her debut short film, which she wrote and co-directed, was selected at the Big Apple Film Festival, Pan African Film & Arts Festival, and New Filmmakers Los Angeles. She's currently based in New York and teaches at Princeton University.
