Author: Chad L. Williams in conversation with Sarah Ladipo Manyika
Channel: San Francisco Public Library
Date: 2023-05-04

Chad Williams shares the dramatic story of W. E. B. Du Bois's reckoning with the betrayal of Black soldiers during World War I — and a new understanding of one of the great twentieth-century writers. 

This is a hybrid event. Registration is required for Zoom attendance. In-person attendance does not require registration; seats available first come, first served.


In The Wounded World, Williams offers the dramatic account of Du Bois’s failed efforts to complete what would have been one of his most significant works. The surprising story of this unpublished book offers new insight into Du Bois’s struggles to reckon with both the history and the troubling memory of the war, along with the broader meanings of race and democracy for Black people in the twentieth century. 

Chad L. Williams is the Samuel J. and Augusta Spector Professor of History and African and African American Studies at Brandeis University. He is the author of the award-winning book Torchbearers of Democracy: African American Soldiers in the World War I Era and the coeditor of Charleston Syllabus: Readings on Race, Racism, and Racial Violence. His writings and op-eds have appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Time, and The Conversation. He lives in Needham, Massachusetts.  

Sarah Ladipo Manyika is a writer of novels, short stories and essays translated into several languages. She is author of the best-selling novel In Dependence (2009) and the multiple shortlisted novel, Like A Mule Bringing Ice Cream To The Sun (2016). She has had work published in Granta, The Guardian, The Washington Post and Transfuge among others. Named one of the "100 Most Influential Africans” by New African in 2022, Sarah has served on a number of non-profit Boards including as Board Director for the Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, and as Board Chair for the women’s writing residency, Hedgebrook. Sarah is a San Francisco Library Laureate, an Audie finalist, a Mary Carswell MacDowell fellow, and a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Her most recent book is Between Starshine and Clay: Conversations from the African Diaspora. 

Book sale and signing with Folio Books