2024 Program:
Writing and Journalism on Race
Thursday November 21
As most organizers and advocates know, books such as Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow can play a major role in changing the national discussion about urgent social issues. A well-written book that makes a compelling argument can be an essential tool to inject transformative ideas into the popular discourse. At The New Press, we’ve found that movement leaders can be best positioned to share a unique vision for a just future.
The New Press’s senior editors will illustrate how a book can help leverage change. Participants will gain practical knowledge about how to move through the stages of book publishing, including: developing a book concept; preparing a cogent, well-informed proposal; drafting a manuscript; publicizing the book; and collaborating with organizations to amplify the book’s impact.
We will share relevant resources, key examples, and case studies, and participants will have an opportunity to practice in small groups and have their questions answered by veteran editors. The New Press is uniquely positioned as a non-profit publisher in the public interest to seek out authors committed to social change, and to develop works of non-fiction that set forth new, paradigm-shifting ideas.
Our catalog includes works from Noam Chomsky and Lisa Delpit, and more recent contributions to conversations in criminal justice and education reform, including Mariame Kaba and Andrea Ritchie’s No More Police: A Case for Abolition and Monique Couvson’s Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools.
Books have long been an instrument for narrative change in movements, helping shift conversations and awareness to more positive aspects of society as well as providing context and guidance to combat the systemic issues impeding racial and social change. Titles from "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass" to "Borderlands" to "The Sum of Us" have been utilized and referenced in organizing spaces to gain a firmer grasp of the unity between communities, the impact of Western imperialism, and how civil rights continue to be attacked.
Rinku Sen, executive director at Narrative Initiative, and Minal Hajratwala, founder of Unicorn Authors Club, will lead this panel discussion and intersperse their presentation with interactive questions and writing prompts on the importance of books as tools for organizing. The panelists will discuss how they see their work as writers and engaging with organizers/writers to help understand the need for narrative shifts.
The discussion will explore how and what books have provided lessons on organizing by blending historical analysis with personal stories to center diaspora stories. Sen and Hajratwala will also share how their respective experiences led to a partnership on publishing interventions programming.
This session will include writing prompts to engage attendees on how they can frame their writing/work into a resource for narrative and social change.
Frame-breaking narratives shape-shift our collective landscape, offering clues about the value of our past in service of tomorrow. "Rooted: Cultivating Black Wealth in Place" is more than a wealth-building strategy and potential policy innovation. Rooted is an invitation to think and act differently, to step boldly into a new story designed to signal a new way forward, toward a St. Louis where every neighborhood is a chosen place to live, raise children, and grow old.
Join us for a film screening and panel discussion; hear from participants, activation partners, and journalists actively shaping stories of possibility and transformation. Get familiar with "Rooted: Cultivating Black Wealth in Place" by stepping into Invest STL’s innovative approach to narrative reframing and storytelling.
Meet neighborhood residents participating in Rooted through the content and meet the content creators through the panel and Q&A. Invest STL is not only embarking on a three-year journey with participants in the initiative but also developing and producing a storytelling partnership with Missouri School of Journalism professors Ron Stodghill and Alicia Haywood to span the breadth of the initiative.
They will be joined by Invest STL's Narrative + Communications Partner, Michael Pagano, to discuss these emerging stories, what we are hearing, how we are listening, and where we might be heading.
Every neighborhood can be a pathway to opportunity and prosperity for the people who call it home, but race often determines the ease of that pathway. Purpose Built Communities and the Purpose Built Network partner with local residents to execute a holistic model for equitable neighborhood revitalization in communities around the country experiencing the effects of historic and chronic race-based disinvestment.
Part of the success of our work depends on a new narrative. In 2020, we engaged the FrameWorks Institute to help us unpack the story being told versus what story we should be telling to affirm people, place, and race. Those efforts birthed the "Where We Thrive narrative project," which launched in 2023 and gives advocates more complete and considerate language for talking about the beauty of Black and Brown neighborhoods while highlighting the historic and ongoing harms through policy and practice.
Session participants will:
1) Learn about best practices for a collaborative research process;
2) Receive practical recommendations and strategies for telling affirming stories about neighbors and neighborhoods and communicating with dignity; and
3) Learn about how to best engage residents and local partners in shared narrative change efforts.
Participants will have an opportunity to apply these lessons to their own work and ask questions for shared learning.
“White Women Cry and Call Me Angry” is neither a call out of white women nor a call in. It is about the author’s ability to name what happened to her during the decade she spent fighting for racial justice in the DC philanthropic sector. It is about her ability to find community with others who have had similar experiences, regardless of where they work. It is another step toward healing.
This 90-minute session will explore racism in the workplace—interpersonal, institutional, and structural. We will also do a deep dive on three of the book’s most important themes—weathering, mental health, and pleasure. Weathering describes the accelerated aging of Black women’s bodies due to racism related stress. Mental health implications of that stress will also be discussed as well. Audre Lorde’s “Uses of the Erotic” as a way to undergird our discussion of the theme of pleasure.
In the second half of the conversation, we will discuss the writing and self-publishing journey; the role of Black women in the author’s decision to publish; and the need for more stories by Black women and other women of color. We will close by talking about the response to the book; how books influence narratives and can lead to spaces for collective discernment and healing; and what’s next for the author as a facilitator of healing spaces. The author will share a short sizzle reel of the film adaptation of the book, which is currently in production.