May 11: Shades of Black by Nathalie Etoke

May 11, Tuesday11am New York | 2 pm Yaoundé | 3pm Paris Friendly guided discussion about Shades of Black. Author Nathalie Etoke will join us for the final half hour to chat with partcipants.   Discussion hosted by Bhakti Shringarpure About the BookOne might say that the womb of death—the Middle Passage, slavery, and colonization—gave birth to Black populations. Taking this observation as her point of departure, Nathalie Etoke examines Black existence today in her riveting new book, Shades of Black. In a white-supremacist world, Black bodies hold a specific position, invested with a range of meaning that maintains them in a fixed role, with a script they did not write. The white world has invented and defined the Black person according to its own interests, endowing her with a bereaved humanity. The Black person is confronted with an essential paradox—exist as Black or as a human being? Does the Black person exist for herself or for the other? In the white world, is the Black race the