2020/21 Portland Arts & Lectures: Ibram X. Kendi
$90-355 (Series)
Ibram X. Kendi is a New York Times bestselling author and the founding director of The Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University. A professor of history and international relations, Kendi is a contributing writer at The Atlantic. He is the author of The Black Campus Movement and Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, which won the 2016 National Book Award for Nonfiction. Kendi was awarded the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship and he was honored on The Root 100 in 2019. Kendi’s third book, How to Be an Antiracist, debuted at no. 2 on the New York Times bestseller list and was hailed by the New York Times as “the most courageous book to date on the problem of race in the Western mind.” A young adult version of Stamped from the Beginning, co-authored with Jason Reynolds published in March 2020. Kendi lives in Boston, MA.
“Navigating truth is my writing. As a scholar, I am not striving to be objective. I am striving to share the truth, even when the truth challenges me and my ideas. Truth is complicated. It is difficult to share the multi-layered truth in abstract ways. Narrative allows me to share truth in its personal and societal complexities.” (PEN)
“The key to great writing is great ideas. There are many people who can put together a beautiful sentence. But what makes a sentence memorable is the idea it projects.” (PEN)
On writing How to Be an Antiracist: “Initially, I was like, that central character will not be me. I’m too private. I don’t want to show all of my bones and all of my baggage and all those shameful moments that I’m still ashamed of. I don’t know — I don’t want to do that. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized: How can I ask other people to share those shameful moments, to free themselves of their baggage, to confess the most racist moments of their lives, if I’m not willing to do that, too?” (Washington Post)
Praise for How to Be an Antiracist:
“The most courageous book to date on the problem of race in the Western mind.” — The New York Times
“Ibram Kendi is today’s visionary in the enduring struggle for racial justice. In this personal and revelatory new work, he yet again holds up a transformative lens, challenging both mainstream and antiracist orthodoxy. He illuminates the foundations of racism in revolutionary new ways, and I am consistently challenged and inspired by his analysis. How to Be an Antiracist offers us a necessary and critical way forward.” — Robin DiAngelo, New York Times bestselling author of White Fragility
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Ibram X. Kendi
Ibram X. Kendi is a #1 New York Times bestselling and National Book Award-winning author, the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University, and the founding director of the BU Center for Antiracist Research. His relentless and passionate research puts into question the notion of a post-racial society and opens readers’ and audiences’ eyes to the reality of racism in America today. Kendi’s lectures are sharp, informative, and hopeful, serving as a strong platform for any institution’s discussions on racism and being antiracist.
Kendi is the author of Stamped from the Begining: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction, and The Black Campus Movement, which won the W.E.B. Du Bois Book Prize. He is also the author of the #1 New York Times bestsellers, How to Be an Antiracist, and Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, a young adult remix of Stamped from the Beginning, co-authored with Jason Reynolds. He most recently authored the #1 Indie bestseller, Antiracist Baby, available as a board book and picture book for caretakers and little ones. Kendi alongside the award-winning historian Dr. Keisha N. Blain edited the upcoming Four Hundred Souls (February 2021), a choral history of African Americans covering four hundred years in the voices of ninety writers.
Kendi is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a CBS News correspondent. Kendi has published numerous essays in periodicals, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, The Huffington Post, and The Root. Kendi has received research fellowships, grants, and visiting appointments from a variety of universities, foundations, professional associations, and libraries, including the American Historical Association, Library of Congress, National Academy of Education, Lyndon B. Johnson Library & Museum, Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis, Brown University, Princeton University, Duke University, University of Chicago, and UCLA. He was a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow. He will also become the 2020-2021 Frances B. Cashin Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for the Advanced Study at Harvard University. Kendi lives in Boston, Massachusetts.
