BWM friends welcome Kathryn “Kitsi” Watterson as we host a reading and book signing of I Hear My People Singing: Voices of African American Princeton (Princeton University Press, 2017, $29.95).

Saturday, October 21, from 2:00pm-5:00pm Kitsi Watterson will read from her newest book that provides testimony from African American Princetonians of the twentieth century. Regarded as “An extraordinary and most necessary book,” I Hear My People Singing “shines a light on a small but historic black neighborhood at the heart of one of the most elite and world renowned Ivy-League towns, Princeton, New Jersey.

“I Hear My People singing recasts American history as a whole by presenting in their own words the full lives of black Princetonians, lives forged within the utterly everyday Americanness of enslavement, segregation, and insult. This book is so very welcome, now that we are facing up to the realities of white supremacy in even so admirable a place as Princeton.”

Nell Irvin Painter, author of The History of White People, and Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol

“I Hear My People Singing stands alone in its telling of stories untold, stories essential to understanding the unwritten history of America. At this moment, this beautiful book is essential reading.”
Emily Mann, Artistic Director, McCarter Theatre

Kathryn “Kitsi” Watterson teaches creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania and “has devoted her entire life as a writer to issues of social justice.” She is the award winning author of Women in Prison, and Not by the Sword.

Please help me celebrate this powerful contribution detailing a unique and under-exposed moment of American history. Kitsi Watterson will read with student accompaniment with a reception to follow.