Authors@Google: Jennifer Baszile April 9, 2009

Favorite:

The Authors@Google program welcomed Jennifer Baszile to Google's New York office to discuss her book, "A Memoir - The Black Girl Next Door ".

About the Speaker:

"Jennifer Baszile received her B.A. from Columbia University and her Ph.D in American History from Princeton University. She was the first black female professor to join Yale University's history department and has been named of the "Thirty Leaders of the Future" by Ebony Magazine. She resides in Connecticut."

About the Book:

"Jennifer Baszile tells the inspiring story that explores what happened during the early years of America's most dramatic social experiment: racial integration. As a thirty-something black woman, Jennifer Baszile is part of the first generation of Americans born after lawmakers outlawed segregation and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., defined the dream of black and white children playing together. But after five hundred years of African American exclusion, no one knew how to make the dream a reality. Baszile and her contemporaries shouldered the nation's burdened legacy and the responsibility for the realization of Dr. King's dream. Children,, like Baszile, attempted to do what generations of adults had failed to do.

Baszile shares moments that confirmed the best hopes of the American Dream, and her family's relentless pursuit of achievement. She also looks inside her own family to understand how segregation, the underside of the American Dream, affected her parents' approach to everything from her hairstyle to dating. President Barack Obama and Jennifer Baszile are of the same generation--his struggle for integration and the achievement of the American Dream is also the struggle of Baszile and many other Americans"

This event took place on February 5, 2009.