Winter Break Book Club with Professor Kiel!

Looking for something to fill your time in the lull between final exams and the start of the spring semester??  What better way than to participate in the inaugural winter break book club.  The book is Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America by James Forman, Jr., and the book club will culminate in January with a discussion among book club members and a visit from the author on January 31.  BLSA is co-sponsoring the 1/31 event on main campus in recognition of this book winning the Hooks Institute National Book Award.  

 Locking Up Our Own is a Pulitzer Prize-winning exploration of the policies that have given rise to the crisis of mass incarceration in the US.  Yale law professor and author James Forman, Jr., utilizes his experiences as a public defender to drive a story that investigates the larger policies impacting his clients.  Locking Up Our Own reveals how these policies were often supported by local Black leaders at the time, but have had devastating effects on Black communities.  

 The Locking Up Our Own book club will meet to discuss the book on a to-be-determined date in January and will attend the lecture by the author on January 31.  Interested students should send an email to Professor Kiel (dkiel@memphis.edu) – if you submit your interest by December 7, you will be entered to win one of five free copies of the book.