Thistle & Verse | Black Trauma in Books: a Roundtable @ThistleVerse | Uploaded March 2021 | Updated October 2024, 10 minutes ago.
Panelists are
Kiki of @ifthisisparadise: instagram.com/ifthisisparadise
Bre of Loc'd Booktician: youtube.com/c/Loc%E2%80%99DBooktician
Harli of Cerebral Hedonist: thescholarlysquid.com
Njeri of Onyx Pages: youtube.com/channel/UC_reNHCI5mUeKGbvkN2_bTA

If you've been on book twitter, you've likely heard the Black trauma v Black joy discourse. Readers have called for more books featuring Black protagonists that are about Black joy or that don't focus on Black trauma. I think it's generally well understood why books about anti-Black racism (be they fiction or nonfiction) are a big presence in the Black book world. I think it's assumed that there's a unity in our definitions and experiences that has kept the conversation relatively surface level. The conversations I saw largely focused on realistic contemporary or historical fiction set in the US and didn't neatly map onto my experiences reading sci fi and fantasy. That disconnect intrigued me, and I thought that bringing together people with a variety of reading backgrounds could enrich the current conversation. How do we define Black trauma? How do we feel about the current discussions around it? How is it pertinent to our favorite genres?

Thanks to Adri of Perpetual Pages (youtube.com/user/perpetualpages) for reviewing the questions for this panel!