Join us at Pilsen Community Books for a book event in celebration of the publication of Point contributor Aaron Robertson’s debut book, The Black Utopians: Searching for Paradise and the Promised Land in America. He will be joined in conversation by Lauren Michele Jackson.
About the author
Aaron Robertson is a writer, an editor, and a translator of Italian literature. His translation of Igiaba Scego’s Beyond Babylon was shortlisted for the 2020 PEN Translation Prize and the National Translation Award, and in 2021 he received a National Endowment for the Arts grant. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Nation, Foreign Policy, n+1, The Point, and Literary Hub, among other publications. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
About the interlocutor
Lauren Michele Jackson is an assistant professor of English at Northwestern and a contributing writer to the New Yorker. She is the author of White Negroes (2019), a collection of critical essays on appropriation in popular culture, and her second book, Back, is forthcoming from Amistad/HarperCollins.
About the book
How do the disillusioned, the forgotten, and the persecuted not merely hold on to life but expand its possibilities and preserve its beauty? What, in other words, does utopia look like in black?
These questions animate Aaron Robertson’s exploration—based on his essay for issue 22 of The Point, “It Was More Than a Notion”—of Black Americans’ efforts to remake the conditions of their lives. Writing in the tradition of Saidiya Hartman and Ta-Nehisi Coates, Robertson makes his way from his ancestral hometown of Promise Land, Tennessee, to Detroit—the city where he was born, and where one of the country’s most remarkable Black utopian experiments got its start. The Shrine of the Black Madonna combined Afrocentric Christian practice with radical social projects to transform the self-conception of its members, launching a nationwide liberation movement that would come to be known as Black Christian Nationalism. The Shrine’s members opened bookstores and co-ops, created a self-defense force, and raised their children communally, eventually working to establish the country’s largest Black-owned farm, where attempts to create an earthly paradise for Black people continues today.
Alongside the Shrine’s story, Robertson reflects on a diverse array of Black utopian visions, from the Reconstruction era through the countercultural fervor of the 1960s and 1970s and into the present day. By doing so, Robertson showcases the enduring quest of collectives and individuals for a world beyond the constraints of systemic racism.
The Black Utopians offers a nuanced portrait of the struggle for spaces—both ideological and physical—where Black dignity, protection, and nourishment are paramount. This book is the story of a movement and of a world still in the making—one that points the way toward radical alternatives for the future.
The Black Utopians
Wednesday, October 2nd, 7 p.m.
Pilsen Community Books
1102 W. 18th St.
Chicago, IL 60608
Join us at Pilsen Community Books for a book event in celebration of the publication of Point contributor Aaron Robertson’s debut book, The Black Utopians: Searching for Paradise and the Promised Land in America. He will be joined in conversation by Lauren Michele Jackson.
About the author
Aaron Robertson is a writer, an editor, and a translator of Italian literature. His translation of Igiaba Scego’s Beyond Babylon was shortlisted for the 2020 PEN Translation Prize and the National Translation Award, and in 2021 he received a National Endowment for the Arts grant. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Nation, Foreign Policy, n+1, The Point, and Literary Hub, among other publications. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
About the interlocutor
Lauren Michele Jackson is an assistant professor of English at Northwestern and a contributing writer to the New Yorker. She is the author of White Negroes (2019), a collection of critical essays on appropriation in popular culture, and her second book, Back, is forthcoming from Amistad/HarperCollins.
About the book
How do the disillusioned, the forgotten, and the persecuted not merely hold on to life but expand its possibilities and preserve its beauty? What, in other words, does utopia look like in black?
These questions animate Aaron Robertson’s exploration—based on his essay for issue 22 of The Point, “It Was More Than a Notion”—of Black Americans’ efforts to remake the conditions of their lives. Writing in the tradition of Saidiya Hartman and Ta-Nehisi Coates, Robertson makes his way from his ancestral hometown of Promise Land, Tennessee, to Detroit—the city where he was born, and where one of the country’s most remarkable Black utopian experiments got its start. The Shrine of the Black Madonna combined Afrocentric Christian practice with radical social projects to transform the self-conception of its members, launching a nationwide liberation movement that would come to be known as Black Christian Nationalism. The Shrine’s members opened bookstores and co-ops, created a self-defense force, and raised their children communally, eventually working to establish the country’s largest Black-owned farm, where attempts to create an earthly paradise for Black people continues today.
Alongside the Shrine’s story, Robertson reflects on a diverse array of Black utopian visions, from the Reconstruction era through the countercultural fervor of the 1960s and 1970s and into the present day. By doing so, Robertson showcases the enduring quest of collectives and individuals for a world beyond the constraints of systemic racism.
The Black Utopians offers a nuanced portrait of the struggle for spaces—both ideological and physical—where Black dignity, protection, and nourishment are paramount. This book is the story of a movement and of a world still in the making—one that points the way toward radical alternatives for the future.
The Black Utopians
Wednesday, October 2nd, 7 p.m.
Pilsen Community Books
1102 W. 18th St.
Chicago, IL 60608