The Ohio Center for the Book is proud to collaborate with Ursuline College’s Rust Belt Humanities Lab, Case Western Reserve University, and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards to host a series of book discussions on three Award-winning titles at the Cleveland Public Library’s new Martin Luther King, Jr. Branch at 10601 Euclid Avenue.
Wednesday, March 19, 4:00 pm
Natasha Trethewey’s Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir (2021 Anisfield-Wolf Nonfiction Award)
A chillingly personal and exquisitely wrought memoir of a daughter reckoning with the brutal murder of her mother, and the moving, intimate story of a poet coming into her own in the wake of a tragedy. At nineteen, Natasha Trethewey had her world turned upside down when her former stepfather shot and killed her mother. Grieving and still new to adulthood, she confronted the twin pulls of life and death in the aftermath of unimaginable trauma and now explores the way this experience shaped the artist she became. Moving through her mother’s history in the deeply segregated South and through her own girlhood as a “child of miscegenation” in Mississippi, Trethewey plumbs her sense of dislocation and displacement and the harrowing crime that took place on Memorial Drive in Atlanta in 1985. – Ecco
Wednesday, April 16, 4:00 pm
Isabel Allende’s Paula (2017 Anisfield-Wolf Lifetime Achievement Award)
Paula is a soul-baring memoir that, like a novel of suspense, one reads without drawing a breath. In December 1991, Isabel Allende’s daughter Paula became gravely ill and shortly thereaAer fell into a coma. During months in the hospital, the author began to write the story of her family for her unconscious daughter. In the telling, bizarre ancestors appear before our eyes; we hear both delightful and bitter childhood memories, amazing anecdotes of youthful years, the most in<mate secrets passed along in whispers. Chile, Allende’s native land, comes alive as well, with the turbulent history of the military coup of 1973, the ensuing dictatorship, and her family’s years of exile. This magical book carries the reader from tears to laughter, from terror to sensuality and wisdom. – HarperCollins
Wednesday, May 21, 4:00 pm
John Edgar Wideman’s Brothers and Keepers (2011 Anisfield-Wolf Lifetime Achievement Award)
A “brave and brilliant” (The Philadelphia Inquirer) portrait of lives arriving at different destinies, this classic John Edgar Wideman memoir is a haunting portrait of two brothers—one an award-winning writer, the other a fugitive wanted for a robbery that resulted in a murder. Wideman recalls the capture of his younger brother, Robby, details the subsequent trials that resulted in a sentence of life in prison, and provides vivid views of the American prison system. A gripping, unsettling
account, Brothers and Keepers weighs the bonds of blood, affection, and guilt that connect Wideman
and his brother and measures the distance that lies between them. – Simon & Schuster
Discussions are hosted by Dr. Valentino Zullo, Anisfield-Wolf Postdoctoral Fellow in English and Public Humanities at Ursuline College, and Dr. Jamie Hickner, Lecturer and Anisfield-Wolf Fellow in the English Department at Case Western Reserve University.