Searching for Healing Truth with Contributors to "Ukweli," a South Carolina Anthology

Hub City is excited to welcome contributors to Ukweli: Searching for Healing Truth to the Bookshop for an evening of readings and conversation. This anthology features the work of forty-five South Carolina writers, each exploring the trauma of slavery and its legacy of systemic racial bias. Co-editor Herb Frazier will be joined by Al Black, poet and cofounder of the Poets Respond to Race initiative. The word "Ukweli" means "truth" in Swahili, and the book aims to move toward a healing truth that will address and redress racial violence in America.

This event is free and open to all, but be sure to save your spot and your copy of the book at the link. We can't wait to see you at 6pm on Tuesday, July 12th!

Register!

About the Book

Ukweli is the Swahili word for truth. This book meets this moment in America as a healing truth to overcome the trauma of slavery and the decades of violence that followed it. The personal accounts and insights from forty-five writers and poets will educate White Americans about the systematic racial bias employed to stymie African American progress.

Ukweli provides insight into the struggles Black people have faced as they’ve made substantial contributions to America, and helped to define its soul. It shows a part of American history often overlooked or misunderstood. This book is inspired by a poetry, lecture, and dialogue series of the same name organized by poet Horace Mungin in 2020 at Charleston’s McLeod Plantation.

About Herb Frazier

Herb Frazier is special projects editor at the Charleston City Paper, a weekly newspaper in his hometown. He’s an author and the former marketing director at Magnolia Plantation and Gardens in Charleston. He has edited and reported for five daily newspapers in the South. When Herb was on the staff of The Post and Courier in Charleston he was named the S.C. Press Association’s 1990 Journalist of the Year. He is a former Michigan Journalism Fellow at the University of Michigan. He has led journalism workshops in Africa and South America for a federal agency and a Washington, D.C.-based journalism foundation. He is a former member of the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor Commission.

About Al Black

Al Black is a Hoosier in the land of cotton. He writes poetry and hosts workshops and arts events in the midlands of South Carolina. He is author of two books of poetry, I Only Left for Tea (2014 Muddy Ford Press), Man with Two Shadows (2018 Muddy Ford Press); co-editor Hand in Hand: Poets Respond to Race (2017 Muddy Ford Press); co-founded the Poets Respond to Race Initiative, co-hosts the Chewing the Gristle, a poetry chat Youtube series. He was the 2017 Jasper Literary Artist of the Year.