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A New Origin Story
by Nikole Hannah-Jones
A dramatic expansion of a groundbreaking work of journalism, The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story offers a profoundly revealing vision of the American past and present.
In late August 1619, a ship arrived in the British colony of Virginia bearing a cargo of twenty to thirty enslaved people from Africa. Their arrival led to the barbaric and unprecedented system of American chattel slavery that would last for the next 250 years. This is sometimes referred to as the country's original sin, but it is more than that: It is the source of so much that still defines the United States.
The New York Times Magazine's award-winning "1619 Project" issue reframed our understanding of American history by placing slavery and its continuing legacy at the center of our national narrative. This new book substantially expands on that work, weaving together eighteen essays that explore the legacy of slavery in present-day America with thirty-six poems and works of fiction that illuminate key moments of oppression, struggle, and resistance. The essays show how the inheritance of 1619 reaches into every part of contemporary American society, from politics, music, diet, traffic, and citizenship to capitalism, religion, and our democracy itself.
This is a book that speaks directly to our current moment, contextualizing the systems of race and caste within which we operate today. It reveals long-glossed-over truths around our nation's founding and construction—and the way that the legacy of slavery did not end with emancipation, but continues to shape contemporary American life.
Featuring contributions from: Leslie Alexander • Michelle Alexander • Carol Anderson • Joshua Bennett • Reginald Dwayne Betts • Jamelle Bouie • Anthea Butler • Matthew Desmond • Rita Dove • Camille T. Dungy • Cornelius Eady • Eve L. Ewing • Nikky Finney • Vievee Francis • Yaa Gyasi • Forrest Hamer • Terrance Hayes • Kimberly Annece Henderson • Jeneen Interlandi • Honorée Fanonne Jeffers • Barry Jenkins • Tyehimba Jess • Martha S. Jones • Robert Jones, Jr. • A. Van Jordan • Ibram X. Kendi • Eddie Kendricks • Yusef Komunyakaa • Kevin M. Kruse • Kiese Laymon • Trymaine Lee • Jasmine Mans • Terry McMillan • Tiya Miles • Wesley Morris • Khalil Gibran Muhammad • Lynn Nottage • ZZ Packer • Gregory Pardlo • Darryl Pinckney • Claudia Rankine • Jason Reynolds • Dorothy Roberts • Sonia Sanchez • Tim Seibles • Evie Shockley • Clint Smith • Danez Smith • Patricia Smith • Tracy K. Smith • Bryan Stevenson • Nafissa Thompson-Spires • Natasha Trethewey • Linda Villarosa • Jesmyn Ward.
You can see the full discussion in our legacy forum here. This discussion will contain spoilers!
Some of the recent comments posted about The 1619 Project:
“Until Americans replace mythology with history...an arc of the American universe will keep bending toward injustice.” What are your thoughts, comments, or reactions in response to this quote?
Totally agree with the quote. Sadly, I don't know what is necessary to change the trajectory other than for each of us to speak up when we see the mythology spoken or written. - BuffaloGirl
“We are at one of those critical moments...when we will either double down on romanticizing a false narrative about our violent past or accept that there is something better waiting for us.” Where do you think we are as a country?
At this point in our country, I’m not sure whether we are doubling down or moving ahead slowly especially with a presidential election on the horizon. Change is not linear…. It grows forward and back and forward again. - angelaw
“What would it mean to reframe our understanding of U.S. history by considering 1619 as our country’s origin point?” How would you answer the author? Would your opinion have been different before reading the book?
I don't agree that 1619 was America's origin point. And honestly, I do have a problem with the authors promoting this. America's and the rest of the Western Hemisphere's origin point, in my view, was when the first indigenous ... - BuffaloGirl
"If we are a truly great nation, the truth cannot destroy us..[F]acing the truth liberates us to build the society we wish to be." Do you agree? What would that society look like, and what changes would need to be made?
ritah hit the nail on the head with the quote from Diderot. Old white men (and those who hang on their coattails) need to quit thinking about theirselves and their fortunes and do what is right for ALL of America. - BuffaloGirl
Did the Black Lives Matter movement impact your understanding of racism in the US and if so, in what ways? Have you had conversations with friends or relatives about the movement in recent years? What were those conversations like?
I had an extremely racist father which honestly made me look at what racism was, how I as a white child growing up in the 1960s was part of it, and how it impacted non-whites. For me, Black Lives Matter was and is an organized movement as was and ... - BuffaloGirl
"In this substantial expansion of the New York Times Magazine's 2019 special issue commemorating the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in America, Pulitzer winner Hannah-Jones and an impressive cast of historians, journalists, poets, novelists, and cultural critics deliver a sweeping study of the 'unparalleled impact' of African slavery on American society... a bracing and vital reconsideration of American history." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Those readers open to fresh and startling interpretations of history will find this book a comprehensive education. A much-needed book that stakes a solid place in a battlefield of ideas over America's past and present." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Readers will discover something new and redefining on every page as long-concealed incidents and individuals, causes and effects are brought to light by Hannah-Jones and seventeen other vital thinkers and clarion writers...The revelations are horrific and empowering...This visionary, meticulously produced, profound, and bedrock-shifting testament belongs in every library and on every reading list...[An] invaluable and galvanizing history...revelatory." —Booklist (starred review)
"Powerful...This work asks readers to deeply consider who is allowed to shape the collective memory. Like the magazine version of the 1619 Project, this invaluable book sets itself apart by reframing readers' understanding of U.S. history, past and present." —Library Journal (starred review)
"[A] groundbreaking compendium...These bracing and urgent works, by multidisciplinary visionaries ranging from Barry Jenkins to Jesmyn Ward, build on the existing scholarship of The 1619 Project, exploring how the nation's original sin continues to shape everything from our music to our food to our democracy. This collection is an extraordinary update to an ongoing project of vital truth-telling." — Esquire, Best Books of Fall 2021
This information about The 1619 Project was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Nikole Hannah-Jones is a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter covering racial injustice for the New York Times Magazine, and creator of the landmark 1619 Project. In 2017, she received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, known as the Genius Grant, for her work on educational inequality. She has also won a Peabody Award, two George Polk Awards, three National Magazine Awards, and the 2018 John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism from Columbia University. In 2016, Hannah-Jones co-founded the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, a training and mentorship organization geared toward increasing the number of investigative reporters of color.
The 1619 Project is an ongoing initiative from the New York Times Magazine that began in August 2019, the four hundredth anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It is led by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, along with New York Times Magazine editor-in-chief Jake Silverstein, Ilena Silverman, and Caitlin Roper.
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