P&P Live!: Morgan Jerkins – Wandering in Strange Lands: A Daughter of the Great Migration Reclaims Her Roots – in conversation with Karen Attiah

This event will be streamed online as part of our P&P Live! Series.

Between 1916 and 1970, six million black Americans left their rural homes in the South for jobs in cities in the North, West, and Midwest in a movement known as The Great Migration. But while this event transformed the complexion of America and provided black people with new economic opportunities, it also disconnected them from their roots, their land, and their sense of identity, argues Morgan Jerkins. In this fascinating and deeply personal exploration, she recreates her ancestors’ journeys across America, following the migratory routes they took from Georgia and South Carolina to Louisiana, Oklahoma, and California.

Morgan Jerkins is the author of the New York Times bestseller, This Will Be My Undoing, and the Senior Editor at ZORA. A visiting professor at Columbia University, Jerkins’s short form work has been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, ELLE, Esquire, and The Guardian, among many others. She is based in Harlem.

Karen Attiah is the Global Opinions editor at The Washington Post, where she commissions and edits commentary on global issues from a variety of international writers.

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