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The book and series were enthusiastically accepted by Penguin a few weeks later. With the input of our former Schomburg Center Director Kevin Young, I revised and streamlined the proposal and we submitted this first title and Kevin’s wonderful idea for a new Schomburg series for consideration to Penguin Classics. Around the same time, I conducted preliminary research and wrote the book proposal for Unsung. In that book, I examined the longings of Black Americans for Africa and their various migrations and uses of their creativity to locate their imagined ancestral motherland.Ĭurious about my own family’s mobility or lack thereof, I tinkered with a book proposal for a while, and eventually finalized a contract from NYU Press in the summer of 2019.

Avidly Reads Passages began as a kernel of an idea after the publication of my first book, Afro-Atlantic Flight: Speculative Returns and the Black Fantastic. As you might imagine, this has been a stressful, but rewarding time. (Her comments have been lightly edited.) How did you end up working on two book projects simultaneously? Commander discusses her projects, both of which were released this month. Additionally, she wrote Avidly Reads: Passages, which discusses modes of transportation such as the slave ship, train, automobile, and bus as a way to trace the journeys of her ancestors in her hometown in South Carolina.īelow, Dr.

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Commander edited the anthology Unsung: Unheralded Narratives of American Slavery & Abolition, plus developed a reading list with the publisher. Through a partnership with Penguin Classics, Dr. Commander, Associate Director and Curator of the Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery, used her time last year to work on two books. To help slow the spread of COVID-19, people have spent more time indoors reconnecting with friends and relatives through Zoom or taking up new hobbies.

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