As America’s major spectator sports plot a return from their COVID-19-induced hiatus, reactions range from elation to apprehension to … why?

What has made anti-black violence such a predominant feature of life not only in the U.S. but around the world? Why does race seem to color almost every feature of our moral and political universe? How does slavery, in all of its cultural, intellectual, and other modern forms, continue to define the African American experience? Frank B. Wilderson explores those questions in his book Afropessimism, which the University of California, Irvine, professor discusses in a special, two-part online Library event.
 

Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island, is more than just a picture postcard of iconic stone statues. It’s a microcosm of a planet in flux. Native Rapanui grapple with a booming tourism trade that brings in money – but also waste – and a changing climate that threatens the Pacific island’s fragile ecology.

The Library begins a series of programs exploring issues related to COVID-19 with an examination of the immediate and long-term effects that the pandemic likely will have on children.