Bookworm #76 – Author Conversation with Laura Helton “Scattered and Fugitive Things: How Black Collectors Created Archives and Remade History”

In this talk, Laura Helton will discuss her recent book, Scattered and Fugitive Things: How Black Collectors Created Archives and Remade History. This book tells the story of a remarkable generation of early twentieth-century bibliophiles, librarians, and scrapbook makers who dedicated themselves to documenting the history of African American life at a time when dominant institutions cast doubt on the value or even the idea of Black history. Traveling from the parlors of the urban north to HBCU reading rooms and branch libraries in the Jim Crow south, Scattered and Fugitive Things draws on overlooked sources–such as book lists and card catalogs–to reveal the risks these collectors took to create Black archives. The book also explores the social life of collecting, highlighting the communities that used these collections from the South Side of Chicago to Roanoke, Virginia. In each case, archiving was alive in the present, a site of intellectual experiment, creative abundance, and political possibility.

Purchase Scattered and Fugitive Things here with a 20% discount using code CUP20