The Trouble of Color: An American Family Memoir
From Hard Histories director, Martha Jones. Coming to Baltimore in March and April.
Some followers will recall that during a lecture at Harvard Law School, Hard Histories director, Martha Jones, revealed that her connections to the history of slavery and the university were as much personal as they were scholarly. Jones’s family — her grandmother’s kin from Danville, Kentucky — had been held enslaved by more than one college president. Family recollections paired with the archives of Danville’s Centre College revealed that story.
Now Jones has retold that story and more in her debut memoir The Trouble of Color: An American Family Memoir, just out from Basic Books. Writing for the New York Times Book Review, historian Kerri Greenidge explained: ““The Trouble of Color” is a pointed rebuttal to those who still insist that enslaved peoples’ histories are unknowable, or that Black people cannot be trusted as narrators of their own past…. Jones has done more than honor her family’s history; she reinscribes their story on the tablet of our collective imagination.” The book is a lyrical, deeply felt meditation on the most fundamental matters of identity, belonging, and family.
You can listen in on Jones’s conversation with WYPR’s Tom Hall on Midday. The book tour for The Trouble of Color — which started in Cambridge, Mass. at the Harvard Bookstore and the Library of Congress — arrives this month in Baltimore and all are welcome:
Monday, March 10, 7 pm, at the Enoch Pratt Library Writers LIVE! series, with NPR’s All Things Considered host Juana Summers.
Tuesday, March 25, 7 pm at Greedy Reads Remington, with Danielle Evans.
Wednesday, March 26, at 7 pm, at Red Emma’s, with Jeanne Theoharis.
Thursday, March 27, 6 pm at the Maryland Center for History and Culture, with Wanda Heard and Elgin Klugh.
Monday, March 31, 6:30 pm, Bird in Hand Coffee and Books.
Saturday, April 5, 1 pm at the CityLit Festival, with Lawrence Jackson, Irvin Weathersby, Jr., and Karsonya (Kaye) Wise Whitehead.
Additional dates include Brooklyn, NY (3/19); Raleigh, NC (4/8); Chicago (4/15); Los Angeles (4/26); San Francisco (4/28); and Washington, DC (5/3). Check for updates here, at the Basic Books website.
Stayed tuned here for news from the Hard Histories at Hopkins Lab. Our documentary film collaboration is underway, partnered with the JHU Film and Media Program. More soon!
— MSJ