ABOUT US
Mission
The #SmartBrownGirl book club is widening space for the public to engage with research, theory, and history across a wide-range of backgrounds and knowledge bases.
By pairing texts with historiographical components via reading guides/syllabi and hosting live online group discussions, we allow the public to participate in the type of dialogical reading typically confined within the gates of elite institutions.
Located Online, Focused on the Black Girls in the Forgotten Spaces…
We push to move the conversation outside of meeting Black women in New York City, Atlanta, Los Angeles and Washington DC. We never want our access to say, you must live in or near the most expensive cities in this country to have the full experience with us. We meet them in Natchez, Birmingham, Florence and Grove City.
"Without community, there is no liberation...but community must not mean a shedding of our differences, nor the pathetic pretense that these differences do not exist."
Audre Lorde
We offer two reading tracks curated by a group of graduate-level Black women researchers to this end:
Both tracks engage the public in an immersive experience that inspires critical thought via an online class model, and provide the scaffolding necessary to critically engage with academic texts. Our members participate in mid-read discussions via Facebook Group, and have access to a bi-monthly syllabus/reading guide that contains notes on major motifs/themes, questions to facilitate comprehension, links to outside sources journal/news stories relating to reading, dictionary, etc.
Meet Our Staff
Donate to Our Video Project Campaign!
#SBG is working to expand our ongoing strategy of widening access to theory as conversations have swelled around the role of reading lists, teach-ins, and workshops in the push for political education in the wake of the recent murders of Black folks and subsequent uprisings.
Make a tangible donation to help our efforts to raise fund to produce a video series that will break down a variety of foundational texts that address prison abolition, imagination, and community building.