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To continue the crucial conversations that began during 2020’s NEA Big Read of Claudia Rankine’s award-winning “Citizen: An American Lyric,” Shake Rag Alley is hosting another year of monthly book discussions via Zoom. Meetings start at 6:30 pm and are free, although donations are welcome.
New in 2022, we’ll spend two months per book for a total of six titles, which will include:
The 1619 Project
Nikole Hannah-Jones
The Fire Next Time
James Baldwin
The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race
Jesmyn Ward
Men We Reaped
Jesmyn Ward
The Undocumented Americans
Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
Isabel Wilkerson
Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism
James W. Loewen
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston
A Peculiar Indifference: The Neglected Toll of Violence on Black America
Elliott Currie
So You Want to Talk About Race
Ijeoma Oluo
FREE copies are available at the Shake Rag Alley office, in the Little Free Library on campus, and at these libraries:
Rescheduled and Mostly Virtual NEA Big Read of ‘Citizen’ Kicks Off Sept. 24
MINERAL POINT, Wis.—Together with the Mineral Point Public Library and Mineral Point School District libraries, Shake Rag Alley Center for the Arts invites the public to come together during the rescheduled NEA Big Read of “Citizen: An American Lyric” beginning Sept. 24 and running through November.
Originally scheduled for April, a month of activities had been planned around Claudia Rankine’s award-winning innovative work of poetry, prose, and art that addresses the individual and collective effects of racism. But when the COVID-19 pandemic prompted the statewide shutdown this spring, the NEA Big Read was put on hold and a program of free and largely virtual events is being developed for this fall.
An initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest, the NEA Big Read broadens our understanding of our world, our communities, and ourselves through the joy of sharing a good book. Shake Rag Alley was one of 78 nonprofit organizations nationwide to receive an NEA Big Read grant to host a community reading program in 2019-20.
The NEA Big Read showcases a diverse range of titles that reflect many different voices and perspectives, aiming to inspire conversation and discovery during dynamic community reading programs designed around a single selection.
“When our NEA Big Read Committee chose ‘Citizen’ from among more than 30 books for its use of poetry and art to explore the impact words have on concepts of identity and inclusion, we could not have anticipated the nationwide protests against systemic racism touched off this summer by George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis,” said Shake Rag Alley Executive Director Sara Lomasz Flesch. “Claudia Rankine’s book remains as relevant as when it was first published in 2014 and turned a spotlight on the microaggressions that compound the trauma of racism.”
Beginning Sept. 24, the NEA Big Read of “Citizen” will feature a virtual kickoff event via Zoom that will detail the planned events and ways to access and engage with the book and its themes including:
In preparation for the NEA Big Read, free copies of “Citizen” are available to program participants. Copies are available now at the Mineral Point Public Library and at Shake Rag Alley. Additional resources are available on the NEA Big Read page on the Shake Rag Alley website, including reading guides, video lectures and audio recordings of the Virtual Community Conversation series on systemic racism that Shake Rag Alley hosted in June-August. While not an official part of the NEA Big Read, Shake Rag Alley is pleased to support the Mining & Rollo Jamison Museums’ three-part lecture series on slavery in Platteville beginning Sept. 17. For more information and to register, see mining.jamison.museum.
Materials Produced in Conjunction with RACE – the power of Illusion
Claudia Rankine Reading from Citizen | The Loft Literary Center | Minneapolis. [14:42]
The Making of Citizen | Woodberry Poetry Room | Harvard University
Claudia Rankine Citizen | 92nd Street Y | New York City
How Art Teaches a Poet to See | International Festival of Arts & Ideas, 2015
Claudia Rankine: On Whiteness – ArtsEmerson in Boston, on March 24, 2017
The White Card – A Play by Claudia Rankine
The Art of Poetry No. 102 – Claudia Rankine in the Paris Review
Learn how this program came about and get an overview of the many ways to connect with the community of local readers currently reading Citizen: An American Lyric.
If you missed (or miss) these NEA Big Read book discussions,
please consider joining any or all of the virtual Antiracist Book Club monthly discussions listed above.
Shake Rag Alley Chapter Book Club
Oct. 1 – Nov. 12 | Thursdays, 6-8pm | Free Virtual Event
Weekly meeting via Zoom to discuss Citizen: An American Lyric, by Claudia Rankine, chapter by chapter.
Mineral Point Public Library Book Discussion
Oct. 9 | 2pm | Free In-Person Event
Join the Mineral Point Public Library’s book discussion of Citizen outside in Library Park (please bring a lawn chair to assist with social distancing) or in the City Hall Community Room in the event of inclement weather.
Driftless Poets Book Discussion
Oct. 10 | 2-4pm | Free In-Person Event
The Driftless Poets invite you to join them during their in-person workshop time outside on the Green at Shake Rag Alley to discuss and share poetry inspired by Citizen: An American Lyric. In the event of inclement weather, the discussion will move indoors to the spacious Lind Pavilion.
Platteville Public Library Book Discussion
Nov. 2 | 6-7pm | Free Virtual Event
Rountree Gallery Book Discussion
Nov. 13 | Friday, 5:30-7pm | Free In-person or Virtual Event
Rountree Gallery invites you to join them in-person OR via Zoom to discuss Citizen: An American Lyric.
Saturday, Sept. 26 | 4:30-5:30 pm
Eric May, Chicago Public Library 21st Century Author, whose book Bedrock Faith was named a Notable African-American Title by Publishers Weekly, shortlisted for the 2014 Great Lakes Great Reads Prize and declared a top read by: Roxane Gay; Booklist; O, The Oprah Magazine; Chicago Reader; and Chicago Tribune/Printers Row, will give a talk on writing about race.
James Baldwin in Paris – Philip Hartigan
Sunday, Sept. 27 | 5:30 pm
Philip Hartigan, Columbia College Chicago adjunct professor for its Creative Writing in Paris course, will give a multi-media talk about James Baldwin in Paris on Sunday evening.
FREE
Please REGISTER HERE to receive a link to the recording of this presentation.
Virtual Keynote Panel – Citizen Author & the American Story
Sunday, Nov. 1 | 3 pm
On the eve of the most important act a citizen can undertake, join Shake Rag Alley Center for the Arts in collaboration with Hypertext Magazine & Studio for “Citizen Author and the American Story,” the free virtual keynote panel for Shake Rag Alley’s NEA Big Read of Claudia Rankine’s “Citizen: An American Lyric.”
Faisal Mohyuddin, author of “The Displaced Children of Displaced Children” and “Riddle of Longing,” teaches at Highland Park High School in suburban Chicago, as well as Northwestern University, and serves as a master practitioner for the global not-for-profit Narrative 4. Faisal Mohyuddin will moderate a discussion on the book and its themes with:
Desiree Cooper: A 2015 Kresge Artist Fellow, Desiree Cooper is a former attorney, Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist and Detroit community activist. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Callaloo, Detroit Noir, Best African American Fiction 2010 and Tidal Basin Review, among other online and print publications. Cooper was a founding board member of Cave Canem, a national residency for emerging black poets, and she is a Kimbilio fellow, a national residency for African-American fiction writers.
Amina Gautier, Ph.D., is the author of three award-winning short story collections and, for her body of work, the first African-American woman to receive the Pen/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story in 2018.
Sahar Mustafah is the daughter of Palestinian immigrants. Her debut novel “The Beauty of Your Face” is currently a finalist for the Chicago Review Books for fiction and the Chicago Writers Association’s Book of the Year Award. It was also long-listed for the Center of Fiction First Novel Prize.
Chris L. Terry is author of the novel “Black Card,” about a mixed-race punk bassist with a black imaginary friend. NPR called “Black Card” “hilariously searing” and listed it as one of the best books of 2019. Terry’s debut novel “Zero Fade” was on Best of 2013 lists by Slate and Kirkus Review.
FREE
In preparation for our NEA Big Read of Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine, Shake Rag Alley hosted a series of virtual community conversations relevant to ideas explored within the book. These 1.5 hour Zoom meetings gave us a chance to explore issues Claudia Rankine addresses before taking a deep dive into the text this fall. Listen to audio recordings of these Zoom meetings, with accompanying videos, links, and data charts.
Race & Policing: Professor Michael Thornton
Systemic Racism & Education: Jessica Fleischmann, Ed. D
OCTOBER 21
6:30-8:30 PM
Shake Rag Alley Lind Pavilion
411 Commerce St., Mineral Point, WI
Using women’s magazines from the 1930s through the 1970s, we will generate work reflective of collagist Wangechi Mutu, featured in Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine.
September 30: Mineral Point Public Library recorded a virtual storytime of Sulwe, by Lupita Nyong’o with a companion grab-and-go craft kit to accompany the story.
Call the Mineral Point Public Library at (608) 987-2447 to learn how to pick up an art kit. Watch the story & craft demonstration here.
Youth take-and-make art kits are being developed in collaboration with the Mineral Point Elementary School Library’s featured selection, I Am Every Good Thing.
Claudia Rankine has authored five poetry collections including Citizen: An American Lyric and Don’t Let Me Be Lonely; two plays including Provenance of Beauty: A South Bronx Travelogue, numerous video collaborations, and is the editor of several anthologies including The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind. For her book Citizen, Rankine won both the PEN Open Book Award and the PEN Literary Award, the NAACP Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. (Citizen was the first book ever to be named a finalist in both the poetry and criticism categories); and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Citizen also holds the distinction of being the only poetry book to be a New York Times bestseller in the nonfiction category. Among her numerous awards and honors, Rankine is the recipient of the Poets & Writers’ Jackson Poetry Prize and fellowships from the Lannan Foundation and the National Endowment of the Arts. She lives in California and teaches at Yale University as the Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry.
In 2016, Claudia Rankine was named a MacArthur Fellow. Using the funding associated with this prize she launched The Racial Imaginary Institute an interdisciplinary cultural laboratory exploring the invented concept of race “that nevertheless operates with extraordinary force in our daily lives, limiting our movements and imaginations.”
Cindy, who participated in the Shake Rag Alley Chapter Book Club, shared this statement, made by U.S. District Judge Carlton W. Reeves at the sentencing of those convicted for the murder of James Craig Anderson in 2011. [Full Text Available Here]
Wisconsin, the Dairy State, depends upon immigrant labor. In our corner of the state, the Multicultural Outreach Program (MCOP) offers services to our newest neighbors, including: translation services; English language tutoring, forums on community and immigration issues; after-school help for Spanish-speaking students; and a mobile health clinic. If reading Citizen: An American Lyric has inspired you to work toward change, consider becoming a MCOP tutor or volunteer. [Learn How Here]
Thank you to these partners for supporting the Shake Rag Alley Center for the Arts NEA Big Read grant proposal and working to bring this opportunity to our beloved community.
18 Shake Rag St.
Mineral Point, WI 53565
(608) 987-3292
