Writers LIVE: Jabari Asim, We Can't Breathe: On Black Lives, White Lies, and the Art of Survival

This collection of insightful and searing essays celebrates the vibrancy and strength of black history and culture in America. In We Can't Breathe, Jabari Asim disrupts what Toni Morrison has exposed as the "Master Narrative" and replaces it with a story of black survival and persistence through art and community in the face of centuries of racism. In these wide-ranging and penetrating essays, he explores such topics as the twisted legacy of jokes and falsehoods in black life, the importance of black fathers and community, the significance of black writers and stories, and the beauty and pain of the black body. What emerges is a rich portrait of a community and culture that has resisted, survived, and flourished despite centuries of racism, violence, and trauma.

Jabari Asim was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. For eleven years, he was an editor at The Washington Post, where he also wrote a syndicated column on politics, popular culture and social issues. Since 2007 he has been the editor-in-chief of Crisis magazine, the NAACP's flagship journal of politics, culture and ideas. Asim is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Creative Arts and the author of four books for adults, including The N Word, and six books for children.

Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by The Miss Howard Hubbard Adult Programming Fund.

Recorded On: Tuesday, October 16, 2018