This past Tuesday, Staff Writer Ava Slocum attended Columbia’s African American and African Diaspora Studies Department’s discussion of Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature by Dr. Farah Griffin.

How do our own lives and experiences add to our readings of great literature? That was the question behind Tuesday’s conversation, Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature. The hour-long Zoom webinar, co-presented by Columbia’s African American and African Diaspora Studies Department and The Institute for Research in African-American Studies, discussed the brand new book of the same title by Dr. Farah Griffin, which was published by Norton on September 14, 2021.

Dr. Farah Jasmine Griffin is the William B. Ransford Professor of English and Comparative Literature and African-American Studies at Columbia School of the Arts. She is the author of numerous books about African American literature, history, and music, including Who Set You Flowin?: The African American Migration Narrative (1995) and If You Can’t Be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday (2001), both of which she referenced during her discussion of her most recent publication.

Dr. Griffin’s latest book examines the work of such literary luminaries as Toni Morrison, Malcolm X, Phillis Wheatley, and Stevie Wonder. Read Until You Understand, in a departure from Griffin’s prior scholarly work, intertwines autobiographical elements with her discussion of the texts, putting the authors’ ethics and identities in conversation with parts of her own life. “What I decided to do with this book,” she said, “was to be honest with myself and my ‘writer voice,’ which comes most naturally to me,” adding that in some of her previous works, she felt that she sacrificed personal reflection for the sake of an unbiased academic tone. Read Until You Understand was a conscious attempt to blend thoughtful literary and cultural analysis with a more personal, accessible voice.

For Tuesday’s conversation, Dr. Griffin was joined by Dr. Daphne Brooks, who is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of African American Studies at Yale University, and Dr. Imani Owens, who is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Princeton as well as one of Dr. Griffin’s former graduate students. Owens, fittingly, began the discussion by asking Dr. Griffin about how her teaching inspires her work. Griffin responded that “everything” about her writing is informed by the students she has had over the years and the texts that she’s worked through with them.

Griffin’s previous work has been lauded in academic and literary circles. However, she intends for her newest book to stay within the grasp of a broader audience: “[This book] is a way to reach people who I never had in a classroom, readers who might never enter a college classroom.” Read Until You Understand, she hopes, will resonate with people from all walks of life, from “readers who listen to NPR, people who listen to podcasts,” to “brothers and sisters who are incarcerated and reading up a storm.”

In Read Until You Understand, Griffin discusses important moments from her own life that led to her academic interests. It’s not surprising, therefore, that she credits her family with influencing much of her work. In her discussion about teaching and its effect on her writing, Griffin mentioned that her own first teacher was her father, who died when she was nine years old in what she described as “traumatic circumstances.” Her book’s title comes from a note that he left behind for her before his passing. In the margin of one of many scrapbooks that he kept during his life, he urged his young daughter to read more and more until she understood the legacy of the books, jazz music, and African American culture that her parents began exposing her to at an early age.

Griffin noted that Read Until You Understand is “haunted by death,” from some of the darker parts of her own family’s story, to the tragic, “early and unnecessary” deaths of several of the authors whom she analyzes. However, the book is also a celebration of the elements of her life and studies that have made her who she is. In its pages, she discusses the importance of “music, style, spirituality,” and her Philadelphia upbringing to herself and her family, personal stories shared alongside reflections on the books and authors who changed her life.

“It is my hope that readers… will have a similar experience,” Dr. Griffin read at the start of the discussion, quoting from the introduction to her book. “And along the way, I hope that they, like my students and myself, will take pleasure in the beauty and the brilliance of the literature. Through the meditations presented within these pages, I think we will learn that writing by African Americans holds many important lessons for all people.”

A recording of the webinar will be posted on YouTube and the Columbia African American and African Diaspora Studies Department’s website within the next few days.

Presentation Snapshot via Zoom event screenshot