BONUS AFTER-HOURS EVENT: Attendees who purchase a copy of I’m Still Here: Loving Myself in a World Not Made for Me from FAN’s partner bookseller The Book Stall are invited to attend an AFTER-HOURS event hosted by Channing Brown that will start immediately after the webinar. Details on the webinar registration page.

Austin Channing Brown’s first encounter with race in America came at age seven, when she discovered that her parents had named her Austin to trick future employers into thinking she was a white man. Growing up in majority-white schools and churches, Channing Brown writes, “I had to learn what it means to love Blackness,” a journey that led to a lifetime spent navigating America’s racial divide as a writer, speaker, and expert helping organizations practice genuine inclusion.

In I’m Still Here: Loving Myself in a World Not Made for Me, a young readers’ adaptation of her bestselling and critically acclaimed memoir I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness, Channing Brown explores how America’s racial dynamics show up in the classrooms, friend groups, and conversations kids inhabit every day. “I love being a Black girl,” she writes. “And sometimes being a Black girl in America is hard.” Covering topics like representation, self-love, allyship, and being Black in public, Brown helps kids nourish their identity and make sense of how they fit into the world.

Channing Brown will be in conversation with Natalie Y. Moore, an award-winning journalist covering segregation and inequality for WBEZ, Chicago’s NPR affiliate. Moore is the author of The Billboard, a play about abortion, and the acclaimed book The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation (2016). Ms. Moore’s reporting tackles race, housing, economic development, food injustice, and violence and her work has been broadcast on the BBC and Marketplace, and on NPR’s Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition.

This event suitable for youth 12+. It will be recorded and available on our website and YouTube channel.

This event is presented by Family Action Network (FAN). Gorton Center is proud to partner with FAN as a sponsor of this event to bring this programming to our patrons.