Join us for an in-person book talk with Keri Leigh Merritt, Robert Tsai, Yohuru Williams and Rhae Lynn Barnes for their latest book After Life: A Collective History of Loss and Redemption in Pandemic America. After Life is a collective history of how Americans experienced, navigated, commemorated, and ignored mass death and loss during global the COVID-19 pandemic, mass uprisings for racial justice, and the near presidential coup in 2021 following the 2020 election. Inspired by the writers who documented American life during the Great Depression and World War II for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the editors asked twenty-first-century historians and legal experts to focus on the parallels, convergences, and differences between the exceptional “long 2020” while it unfolds and earlier eras in U.S. History.
This book documents how Americans have dealt with grief, pain, and loss, both individually and communally, and how we endure and thrive. The title is an affirmation that even in our suspended half-living during lockdowns and quarantines, we are a nation of survivors—with an unprecedented chance to rebuild society in a more equitable way.
If joining in-person, please be prepared to show proof of vaccination and ID.
