April 25 | 2 p.m.
The Ballard House

Join MCPF and Southern Danceworks for a poetry workshop inspired by James Baldwin’s writing and work.

In a televised 1962 interview with the psychologist Kenneth Clark, James Baldwin said, “I’m terrified at the moral apathy, the death of the heart, which is happening in my country.” In 1963, Baldwin published The Fire Next Time which included the essay, “My Dungeon Shook: A Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation.” In the essay, James Baldwin offers his nephew, James, a roadmap on how to navigate the “deliberately constructed” “details and symbols” of his life while learning how to love his “innocent countrymen” who are “trapped in a history which they do not understand.”  As America approaches its 250th birthday, local poet and educator—Jermaine Thompson—will lead participants through a 90-minute generative writing workshop that invites participants to examine the rhetorical brilliance of Baldwin’s essay and use his model of the personal as a vehicle for the political to craft pieces that reveal our common struggle, shared morality, and collective freedom. 

This event is a lead up to Southern Dance Works' Baldwin: A Letter to My Nephew event on June 13 and 14.