Sponsored by the University Press of Kentucky. A Reception will be held at 5:00 pm followed by the lecture at 6:00 pm.
Joshua "Josh" Gibson (1911–1947) is a baseball
legend—one of the greatest power hitters in the Negro Leagues, and in all of
baseball history. At the height of his career, this trailblazing athlete
suffered grueling physical ailments, lost his young wife who died giving birth
to their twins, and endured years of Jim Crow–era segregation and
discrimination—all the while breaking records on the ball field.
Dorian Hairston's debut poetry collection explores the Black
American experience through the lens of Gibson's life and seventeen-year
baseball career, which culminated in his posthumous election to the Baseball
Hall of Fame in 1972. Hairston brilliantly reconstructs the personas of Gibson
and others in his orbit whose encounters with white supremacy interweave with
the inevitability of losing loved ones. By alternating between the perspectives
of Gibson, members of his family, and contemporary Black baseball players,
Hairston captures the complexity and the pain of living under the oppressive
weight of grief and racial discrimination.
Emotive, prescient, and absorbing, these powerful poems
address social change, culture, family, race, death, and oppression—while
honoring and giving voice to Gibson and a voiceless generation of African
Americans.
Dorian Hairston is a poet, scholar, and former
University of Kentucky baseball player from Lexington, Kentucky. He is a member
of the Affrilachian Poets and his work has appeared in Shale, Anthology of
Appalachian Writers, and pluck!