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Image for event: One Maryland One Book Open Mic Featuring "Kin: Rooted in Hope"

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One Maryland One Book Open Mic Featuring "Kin: Rooted in Hope"

Presented by the Dialect of Prince George's County

2025-10-02 16:00:00 2025-10-02 17:30:00 America/New_York One Maryland One Book Open Mic Featuring "Kin: Rooted in Hope" Join us for a teen open mic inspired by "Kin: Rooted in Hope", the 2025 One Maryland One Book by Carole Boston Weatherford. This program will feature both an open mic and readings from the book. Teens are welcome to share their own original poetry, read poems from the book, or simply come to listen and support. Hillcrest Heights -

Thursday, October 02
4:00pm - 5:30pm

Add to Calendar 2025-10-02 16:00:00 2025-10-02 17:30:00 America/New_York One Maryland One Book Open Mic Featuring "Kin: Rooted in Hope" Join us for a teen open mic inspired by "Kin: Rooted in Hope", the 2025 One Maryland One Book by Carole Boston Weatherford. This program will feature both an open mic and readings from the book. Teens are welcome to share their own original poetry, read poems from the book, or simply come to listen and support. Hillcrest Heights -

Join us for a teen open mic inspired by "Kin: Rooted in Hope", the 2025 One Maryland One Book by Carole Boston Weatherford. This program will feature both an open mic and readings from the book. Teens are welcome to share their own original poetry, read poems from the book, or simply come to listen and support.

An imaginative and moving portrait of a Black family tree shaped by enslavement and freedom, rendered in searing poems by ALSC Children’s Literature Legacy Award winner Carole Boston Weatherford and stunning art by her son Jeffery Boston Weatherford.

I call their names:
Abram Alice Amey Arianna Antiqua
I call their names:
Isaac Jake James Jenny Jim
Every last one, property of the Lloyds,
the state’s preeminent enslavers.
Every last one, with a mind of their own
and a story that ain’t yet been told.
Till now.

Carole and Jeffery Boston Weatherford’s ancestors are among the founders of Maryland. Their family history there extends more than three hundred years, but as with the genealogical searches of many African Americans with roots in slavery, their family tree can only be traced back five generations before going dark. And so from scraps of history, Carole and Jeffery have conjured the voices of their kin, creating an often painful but ultimately empowering story of who their people were in a breathtaking book that is at once deeply personal yet all too universal.

Carole’s poems capture voices ranging from her ancestors to Frederick Douglass to Harriet Tubman to the plantation house and land itself that connects them all, and Jeffery’s evocative illustrations help carry the story from the first mention of a forebear listed as property in a 1781 ledger to he and his mother’s homegoing trip to Africa in 2016. Shaped by loss, erasure, and ultimate reclamation, this is the story of not only Carole and Jeffery’s family, but of countless other Black families in America.

Hillcrest Heights

Phone: 301-630-4900
Branch manager
Quemar Rhoden

Hours
Mon, Sep 29 10:00AM to 6:00PM
Tue, Sep 30 12:00PM to 8:00PM
Wed, Oct 01 12:00PM to 8:00PM
Thu, Oct 02 10:00AM to 6:00PM
Fri, Oct 03 10:00AM to 6:00PM
Sat, Oct 04 10:00AM to 5:00PM
Sun, Oct 05 Closed
Mon, Sep 29 10:00AM to 6:00PM
Tue, Sep 30 12:00PM to 8:00PM
Wed, Oct 01 12:00PM to 8:00PM
Thu, Oct 02 10:00AM to 6:00PM
Fri, Oct 03 10:00AM to 6:00PM
Sat, Oct 04 10:00AM to 5:00PM
Sun, Oct 05 Closed

About the branch

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