One Read For Racial Justice: The Stars and the Blackness Between Them

What is a One Read?

The One Read for Racial Justice is an annual, collaborative, campus-wide initiative that seeks to raise awareness about racial justice issues, create opportunities for dialogues across difference and discipline, and to promote community. It’s like a giant book club where we all get together to read a common text and then discuss it as a community and plan other events that help deepen our understanding of the book and its themes. The One Read is an initiative led by the library in collaboration with a diverse group of students, faculty, staff, and alumni across departments and disciplines.

What book are we reading?

The Stars and the Blackness Between Them by Junauda Petrus

This year’s book is “a meditation on love—love of the self, of the family, of the desired, of blackness, of the natural and cosmic worlds, of life itself. Written in the poetics of black vernaculars, it tells the stories of two young women who love each other, the diasporic communities they come from, and the transformational power that is the multilayered blackness between them.” (—Alexis De Veaux, author of Yabo and Warrior Poet, A Biography of Audre Lorde). It is written in a mixture of fiction and prose and explores themes such as love, loss, healing, incarceration, abolition, food, friendship and centers Black, Queer diasporic experiences. Local author, Junauda Petrus is not only an incredible storyteller, but an artist, activist, and playwright.