Five Reads for Friday: July 10, 2020

At the University of Iowa, we love our writers, our programs, we love our graduates and our students -- and we love the wealth of engagement that they gift us, simply by being here.

We have created "5 Reads for Friday" as an easy, laid-back series, compiling a short list of inspirational and helpful treasures from our family to yours. Enjoy what you find, take what you need, and be well.

 

• From The UI Stanley Museum of Art: "Summoned Mother," a video memoir series of a particular American motherhood: Black and uniquely precarious.
  
  This three-volume video series features Dr. Tameka Cage Conley, a literary artist and mother to a six-year-old Black boy, as she responds to George Floyd’s breathless call on motherhood. Conley juxtaposes the works of Elizabeth Catlett with those of contemporary Black poets.
   

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  From the Iowa Review archive: Entangled Freedom - An Interview with Charles Johnson
  
  "What I brought to that story—to that theme—was my interest in the billion-dollar beauty industry we’ve created in America, and how that industry negatively affects black women in terms of things like very expensive weaves."
   

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  From University of Iowa Press: An interview in the @LittleVillage with University of Iowa Press author Barry Phipps!
  
  "Iowa City multimedia artist Barry Phipps has released his most recent book of photographs, Driving a Table Down. It’s a visual travelogue told over 18 days and 108 pages, detailing a trip taken with his mother from Iowa to Florida, to visit (and deliver the titular furniture to) family."
   

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• From our Free Online Courses: How Writers Write Poetry I
  
  This MOOC-Pack presents the International Writing Programs's first poetry writing MOOC, designed for beginning and experienced writers.
   

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  From the Iowa Writers' Workshop: Read an excerpt from Workshop alum C Pam Zhang's debut novel How Much of These Hills is Gold in the Johannesburg Review of Books
  
  "Those gold men really think this land belongs to them" — How Much of These Hills is Gold, is a revisionist immigrant fable set during the American gold rush which reimagines the myth of the American West

And that's it!
We hope you enjoy. And check back each week for a new list.