2021 Book to Action Highlights

SBPL’s 2021 explored family history, environmental impacts on place and people, racial justice, housing insecurity, community investment/divestment, and what all of these mean for Black and marginalized communities, and specifically, Black women. 

Winner of the 2019 National Book Award for Nonfiction, The Yellow House invites readers into a social history of a place and a family.

Programming included: 

• Drs. Stephanie Batiste and Felice Blake from the UCSB English Department. This event will explore the myriad themes of The Yellow House from both literary and justice perspectives by looking at what it means for the Black subject to speak the self and share that experience and the idea of representing an embodied experience through text.
• What is YOUR Santa Barbara? A community mapping project with CAUSE
• Poetry as Memoir: A Workshop with former Poet Laureate Sojourner Kincaid
• Research Justice and Documenting Our Stories with archivist Dez Alainz
• Local African American Life, Culture, and Contributions, 1890-1990, panel discussion with the Santa Barbara County Genealogical Society (archived on YouTube)
• Finding John Lee: A Black Family Story with Genealogist Nicka Smith (archived on YouTube)