The Practicing Refusal Collective

About this event

City Lights and FSG Originals celebrate the publication of Thinking from Black: A Lexicon by The Practicing Refusal Collective (Editors:Tina Campt, Kaiama L. Glover, Canisia Lubrin, Tavia Nyong’o, Christina Sharpe, Alexander Ghedi Weheliye) Published by FSG Originals Joining us will be Ronald Cummings, Canisia Lubrin, Darieck Scott, Jared Sexton, Savannah Shange, and Christina Sharpe in discussion. Thinking from Black: A Lexicon is an unusual reference book. Its contributors—the Practicing Refusal Collective—are visual artists, poets, dancers, historians, writers, architects, painters, theorists, activists, anthropologists, filmmakers, educators, and musicians. Each has engaged with the idea of a lexicon of Black living and taken up the invitation to think from Black in relation to their own medium. Some terms are enunciated in a poetic register—such as Redaction, Seeing, and Song. Some are aspirational—such as Solidarity, Garden, and Care. Some entries, such as BlackSound, Fantasy, Mathematics, and Dispossession, work in a more theoretical idiom. Words such as Gesture and Syncopation are composed of both text and drawings, and summon the body in motion. The word Time, which is defined twice, carries with it musicality, duration, and refusal. Together, these definitions offer a sense of some of the many ways that Black people tend to each other and the world. Read in relation to each other, the terms create a rich, startling lexicon that is eclectic, elliptical, cross-genre, historical, speculative, and literary—a set of words, phrases, concepts, and ideas that are part of the many languages constituting and animating Black life. Thinking from Black is a book to be read with others, as it was created. It is a book to live and think and act with, in the world. About the participants Ronald Cummings is Professor of Caribbean Literature and Black Diaspora Studies at McMaster University (Hamilton, Canada). His work focuses on Caribbean Studies, queer studies, literary archives and historiography, Black political thought and social movements. Canisia Lubrin is a writer, editor, and teacher. Lubrin’s books include Code Noir, The Dyzgraphxst, and The World After Rain. Born in St. Lucia, Lubrin lives in Whitby. Darieck Scott is Professor of African American Studies at UC Berkeley. Scott is the author of Keeping it Unreal: Black Queer Fantasy and Superhero Comics (2022), a 2023 Lambda Literary Award winner, and Extravagant Abjection (2010). Scott’s novels are The Dream-Slaves (2024), Hex (2007) and Traitor to the Race (1995). Jared Sexton is an educator and critic based in Los Angeles, and professor emeritus of African American studies at UC Irvine. His most recent book is Lucifer’s Nocturne. Savannah Shange is associate professor of Anthropology and Critical Race & Ethnic Studies at UC Santa Cruz. Her book, Progressive Dystopia: Abolition, Anti-Blackness and Schooling in San Francisco (Duke 2019) is an ethnography of the afterlife of slavery. She currently works in collaboration with organizers to document and amplify the practice of abolition in everyday life. Christina Sharpe is a writer and professor. The author of three books, she is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (2024), the Canada Council for the Arts Molson Prize for the Sciences and Humanities (2024), a Windham-Campbell Prize in Nonfiction (2024) and the Killam Prize (2025). This event is made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation.

The book

• Thinking from Black: A Lexicon

Venue

Canneti's Bookshop

Moraga Way, Orinda, CA 94563

Venue website

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