Please join us for an author conversation with Leila Taylor and Angelica Jade Bastién. The pair will be discussing Taylor's new book, Darkly: Black History and America's Gothic Soul.
Haunted houses, bitter revenants and muffled heartbeats under floorboards -- the American gothic is a macabre tale based on a true story. Part memoir and part cultural critique, Darkly: Blackness and America's Gothic Soul explores American culture's inevitable gothicity in the traces left from chattel slavery. The persistence of white supremacy and the ubiquity of Black death feeds a national culture of terror and a perpetual undercurrent of mourning. If the gothic narrative is metabolized fear, if the goth aesthetic is romanticized melancholy, what does that look and sound like in Black America?
Leila Taylor is a former goth kid and current Creative Director at Brooklyn Public Library. She's given talks at the International Gothic Association and the Morbid Anatomy Museum, has an MFA in Graphic Design from Yale University and an MA in Liberal Studies from The New School of Social Research. This is her first book.
Angelica Jade Bastién is a Southern born staff writer for New York Magazine’s Vulture. She lives in Chicago with her two cats, Professor Butch Cassidy and Paul Newman.
Our store is wheelchair accessible, however--there is a narrow hallway and sharp 90-degree turn on the way to our bathrooms. Seating is first-come, first-served, but we are happy to reserve seats for people with disabilities. Please call the store at 773-769-9299 the day of the event if you need a reserved seat or have additional questions.
