Author Shonda Buchanan discusses her memoir, Black Indian, which explores her family’s legacy of being African Americans with American Indian roots in Michigan and how they dealt with the consequences of this dual inheritance. In honor of Veterans Day, Buchanan’s talk will highlight several episodes of Black and Indigenous military engagement. Registration is required.  

About the Book
“Black Indian, searing and raw, is Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club and Alice Walker’s The Color Purple meets Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony—only, this isn’t fiction. Beautifully rendered and rippling with family dysfunction, secrets, deaths, alcoholism, and old resentments, Shonda Buchanan’s memoir is an inspiring story that explores her family’s legacy of being African Americans with American Indian roots and how they dealt with not just society’s ostracization but the consequences of this dual inheritance.”

About the Author
Award-winning author and educator, Shonda Buchanan has freelanced for the Los Angeles Times, the LA Weekly, AWP’s The Writer’s Chronicle, Indian Country Today, Westways Magazine, Sisters of AARP and The International Review of African American Art. Shonda is also published in Tab Journal, Inlandia Institute’s The Black Experience Anthology, the Mississippi Review, Urban Voices: 51 Poems from 51 American Poets, Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noire, Art Meets Literature: An Undying Love Affair, Phati’tude Literary Magazine, Red Ink, Strange Cargo: An Emerging Voices Anthology, Step into a World: A Global Anthology of New Black Literature, Arise! Magazine, Def Jam Poetry’s Bum Rush the Page, Geography of Rage: Remembering the Los Angeles Riots of 1992 and Rivendell. Shonda has served as a judge for multiple writing and grants contests including the Poetry Foundation, the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, CavanKerry Press, Library of Virginia’s Poetry Book Awards, North Carolina Arts Council Poetry Fellowship, the George Floyd Youth Justice Poetry Contest, the Amanda Gorman Youth Poetry Contest, the Virginia Commission for the Arts Fiction Contest, the Metrorail Public Art Project Poetry Contest and NAACP ACT So Poetry Contest.