Professor Derek Handley Recommends Books by Black Authors on WUWM

Assistant Professor of English Derek Handley joined WUWM on-air to recommend three books by Black authors. Read more from Dr. Handley about his selections below or listen to the full story here.

Where Do We Go from Here? by Dr. Martin Luther King II
Handley says, “What some people may not know is Doctor King was a wonderful and beautiful writer — a premier public intellectual. And we get the sense in this book where his ideas and where his thoughts were about the civil rights movement and reflection — looking back and his thoughts about the growing impact of the of the Black power movement.”

AFRICAN/AFRICAN AMERICAN FOLKLORE CHOICE:
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
“[It’s about] the relationship that African Americans may have psychologically about escaping some of the issues or the conditions or the perils of this country,” Handley says. “I think if you want to begin reading Toni Morrison, I think. This is a good book.”

HISTORICAL FICTION CHOICE:
Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Handley reveals, “[The story is] taking a look at slavery and the Underground Railroad … With fiction, we can go a little bit deeper. We can go into the minds of the people who are alive in this and experiencing it and seeing it from their perspective. That these people that they were people they were not just slaves. They were people who were enslaved.”