The Big Read and “A Lesson Before Dying”

Thursday, April 29, 2010 at Busboys & Poets (5th and K Sts. NW) at 7:00 pm. FREE!

For the fourth year in a row, SpeakeasyDC will be part of DC’s Big Read. The Big Read is designed to restore reading to the center of American culture. Each year, a new book is chosen. This year’s book, A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines (1993), poses one of the most universal questions literature can ask: Knowing we’re going to die, how should we live? It’s the story of an uneducated young black man named Jefferson, accused of the murder of a white storekeeper, and Grant Wiggins, a college-educated native son of Louisiana, who teaches at a plantation school. In a little more than 250 pages, these two men named for presidents discover a friendship that transforms at least two lives. Hear true, contemporary stories that highlight the themes and subjects in the book.  Stories will be followed by a short Q&A with the storytellers.

FEATURING

Harold Wilson

After 16 years and a total of three death sentences, DNA evidence let to the aquittal of Harold Wilson in 2005. He was the nation’s 122nd person to be freed from death row. Thanks to Witness to Innocence for putting us in touch with Harold Wilson. Witness to Innocence is the nation’s only organization composed of, by and for exonerated death row survivors and their loved ones.  These individuals are actively engaged in the struggle to end the death penalty, challenging the American public to grapple with the problem of a fatally flawed criminal justice system that sends innocent people to death row. Find out more at www.witnesstoinnocence.org.

Geraldine Buckley

Geraldine is an award-winning performance poet. She is an ordained minister and has an MA in communications form Regent University. She live in Frederick, MD and will share a story about creativity workshops she conducted in the largest men’s prison in Maryland.

Ruby DeLillye

Ruby, mother of four children went from state prisoner to state employee. Ruby spent four years in a Virginia prison. She now works as a supervisor at Morgan State University in Maryland. Ruby had a profound experience in prison centered around 12 chocolate chip cookies. This experience changed her life for good!

The Big Read, is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services and Arts Midwest. The Big

Read – D.C. is presented by the Humanities Council of Washington, DC and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and DC Public Libraries.