Charlie Thompson: "Going Over Home: A Search for Rural Justice in an Unsettled Land," in Conversation with Randall Kenan

Charlie Thompson, Professor of the Practice of Cultural Anthropology and Documentary Studies at Duke, will present his latest book "Going Over Home: A Search for Rural Justice in an Unsettled Land," for a reading and book signing at the Regulator Bookshop. Thompson will be joined in conversation by Randall Kenan. Free and open to the public.

In "Going Over Home: A Search for Rural Justice in an Unsettled Land," Thompson shares revelations and reflections, from cattle auctions with his grandfather to community gardens in the coal camps of eastern Kentucky, racial disparities of white and Black landownership in the South to recent work with migrant farm workers from Latin America. In this heartfelt first-person narrative, Thompson unpacks our country's agricultural myths and addresses the history of racism and wealth inequality and how they have come to bear on our nation's rural places and their people. Born in southwestern Virginia into an extended family of small farmers, Thompson witnessed the demise of every farm in his family. Over the course of his own life of farming, rural education, organizing, and activism, the stories of his home place have been his constant inspiration, helping him identify with the losses of others and to fight against injustices.