What we’re about
Black Men Read is a statement to break stereotypes around the perceived lack of literacy and narrow-minded views of black men. This group is for brothers who seek to expand their horizons through reading, as well as the reflections that come along with it. Each month, attending members suggest a shortlist of books and we discuss the selected book the following month. As organizer, I do not vote during these meetups, so most book selections are driven by the members, although I do arbitrarily personally pick a few books throughout the year for discussion. \
We learn from one another, we challenge each other and work to understand different perspectives. Culturally, it’s about taking knowledge and putting action to it in our every day lives.
Demographically, the general perspective towards black men worldwide has not been one of intellectualism, favoring limited avenues of exposure to who we are and what we represent. This group's existence defies stereotypes by creating a dynamic where we create the narrative and give back to our community while doing so.
-Ja'Rod
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Upcoming events (3)
See all- (Joint Session) The Male Brain: A Breakthrough Understanding...Link visible for attendees
#### Join us for this joint session with Women of Color meetup group (Queen Bee) We'll join to provide our perspective on The Male Brain: A Breakthrough Understanding of How Men and Boys Think by Louann Brizendine.
Dr. Louann Brizendine, the founder of the first clinic in the country to study gender differences in brain, behavior, and hormones, turns her attention to the male brain, showing how, through every phase of life, the "male reality" is fundamentally different from the female one. Exploring the latest breakthroughs in male psychology and neurology with her trademark accessibility and candor, she reveals that the male brain:
-is a lean, mean, problem-solving machine. Faced with a personal problem, a man will use his analytical brain structures, not his emotional ones, to find a solution.-thrives under competition, instinctively plays rough and is obsessed with rank and hierarchy.
-has an area for sexual pursuit that is 2.5 times larger than the female brain, consuming him with sexual fantasies about female body parts.
-experiences such a massive increase in testosterone at puberty that he perceive others' faces to be more aggressive.The Male Brain finally overturns the stereotypes. Impeccably researched and at the cutting edge of scientific knowledge, this is a book that every man, and especially every woman bedeviled by a man, will need to own.
- (Joint Session w/ BookTini) Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow AsylumLink visible for attendees
Join us for a joint session with the ladies of BookTini Book Club, based out of Oakland, CA.
#### On a cold day in March of 1911, officials marched twelve Black men into the heart of a forest in Maryland. Under the supervision of a doctor, the men were forced to clear the land, pour cement, lay bricks, and harvest tobacco. When construction finished, they became the first twelve patients of the state’s Hospital for the Negro Insane. For centuries, Black patients have been absent from our history books. Madness transports readers behind the brick walls of a Jim Crow asylum.
In Madness, Peabody and Emmy award-winning journalist Antonia Hylton tells the 93-year-old history of Crownsville Hospital, one of the last segregated asylums with surviving records and a campus that still stands to this day in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. She blends the intimate tales of patients and employees whose lives were shaped by Crownsville with a decade-worth of investigative research and archival documents. Madness chronicles the stories of Black families whose mental health suffered as they tried, and sometimes failed, to find safety and dignity. Hylton also grapples with her own family’s experiences with mental illness, and the secrecy and shame that it reproduced for generations.
As Crownsville Hospital grew from an antebellum-style work camp to a tiny city sitting on 1,500 acres, the institution became a microcosm of America’s evolving battles over slavery, racial integration, and civil rights. During its peak years, the hospital’s wards were overflowing with almost 2,700 patients. By the end of the 20th-century, the asylum faded from view as prisons and jails became America’s new focus.
In Madness, Hylton traces the legacy of slavery to the treatment of Black people’s bodies and minds in our current mental healthcare system. It is a captivating and heartbreaking meditation on how America decides who is sick or criminal, and who is worthy of our care or irredeemable.