A Country for Brown Kids: Tina Chang and Mira Jacob

An author-illustrator and poet respond to the current political atmosphere and discuss the fate of their children growing up in a country divided by race.

Poet Tina Chang (Hybrida) and graphic memoirist Mira Jacob (Good Talk) explore motherhood, politics, love, and devotion in their respective work. Joined by literary critic and scholar, Sonya Posmentier, they discuss their singular creative approaches to document the turn America has taken in recent years, the tolls it has exacted on families of color, and the hope they struggle to maintain. 

Tina Chang, Brooklyn Poet Laureate, is the author of Half-Lit Houses(2004), Of Gods & Strangers (2011), and most recently Hybrida (2019) which was named A Most Anticipated Book of 2019 by NPR, Lit Hub, The Millions, Oprah magazine, Publisher’s Weekly and was named a New York Times Book Review New & Noteworthy collection. She is also the co-editor of the W.W. Norton anthology Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond (2008). Chang teaches at Sarah Lawrence College.

Mira Jacob is the author and illustrator of Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations. Her critically acclaimed novel, The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing, has been translated into seven languages. Her writing and drawings have appeared in The New York Times, Electric Literature, and Tin House, among others. She teaches at The New School, and she is a founding faculty member of the MFA Program at Randolph College.

Sonya Posmentier is a literary critic and associate professor of English at NYU. She is the the author of Cultivation and Catastrophe: the Lyric Ecology of Modern Black Literature (JHUP 2017), as well as essays in The New York Times Book Review, Public Books, American Literature, and elsewhere.

Mid-Sentence presents a series of conversations with groundbreaking literary voices. Indie authors and cult favorites explore the intersections between literature and lived experience.

ASL interpretation and real-time (CART) captioning available upon request. Please submit your request at least two weeks in advance by emailing accessibility@nypl.org.