Big Read Calendar
Events for November, 2009
A Lesson Before Dying Reading & Discussion Program
Thursday November 5, 2009
10:30 AM
City of Fairfax Library
10360 North Street map it
Fairfax, VA 22030This event is part of The Big Read.
Similar to Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, Gaines uses capital punishment to explore humanity in his book A Lesson Before Dying. Join guest scholar, Wendi Kaufman, and explore the place, themes, and history behind this book. No registration required. For more information, visit fairfaxcounty.gov/library.
Lecture by Prof. Trudier Harris: "The Scary Mason-Dixon Line"
Friday November 6, 2009
12:30 PM - 2:00 PM
Virginia Foundation for the Humanities
145 Ednam Drive map it
Charlottesville, VA 22903Trudier Harris, the J. Carlyle Sitterson Professor of English Emerita at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will discuss her new book, The Scary Mason-Dixon Line: African American Writers and the South. A reception at 12:30 precedes her 1 p.m. lecture.
Prof. Harris is the author or editor of more than 20 volumes of criticism on African American literature and folklore. Regarding Dr. Trudier Harris' new book and the subject of her talk at VFH, LSU Press states: "New Yorker James Baldwin once declared that a black man can look at a map of the United States, contemplate the area south of the Mason-Dixon Line, and thus scare himself to death. In The Scary Mason-Dixon Line, renowned literary scholar Trudier Harris explores why black writers, whether born in Mississippi, New York, or elsewhere, have consistently both loved and hated the South." For more info, call 434-243-5176.
