It’s not often do go to a reading and a Grammy-award winner makes a guest appearance, but on June 1 at the Decatur Public Library, Thomas Chatterton Williams, author of Losing My Cool: How a Father’s Love and 15,000 Books Beat Hip-Hop Culture ended up sharing some of the spotlight with Killer Mike (aka Mike Bigga), an award-winning rapper who is based in Atlanta.
The well attended reading of approximately sixty people got a little more than just Williams reading his book, which is a personal account of the author reconciling a double life of “keeping it real,” which meant playing hoops and not appearing to be successful in school and his parallel journey to be a learned man – the result of a determined father who oversaw his son’s education. Losing My Cool began as an op-ed piece in the Washington Post that Williams wrote in 2007 as a graduate student at New York University.
After the mild-mannered Williams finished the reading, (the less mild-mannered) Killer Mike–who sat in the front row–introduced himself during the question and answer session and almost commandeered the reading. (Williams who was familiar with the rap star’s music skillfully prevented the takeover.) For several minutes, the two men debated articulately about the use of the phrase “hip-hop culture” in the subtitle of the book. Killer Mike felt that it was “disingenuous” for Williams to use “hip-hop culture” in a negative connotation that ignored the poetic, intellectual and social roots of the music form, which originated in the South Bronx around 1977. Williams admitted he didn’t necessarily embrace the subtitle of his book, but defended using “hip-hop culture” because black culture and hip-hop are usually (though erroneously) perceived as being the same. Williams believes that while “Black street culture is authentic, it should not be the end all and be all,” noting that blacks should be familiar with the works of Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, Miles Davis and John Coltrane, to name but a few.
After the reading and before the book signing, the two men talked briefly as shown here. (Williams on the left, Killer Mike on the right and in the middle Joe Davitch, an assistant at the Georgia Center of the Book) Not your common library fare for sure, as authors aren’t usually taken to task while on stage, but an interesting exchange, and anyone who attended probably felt like they witnessed some good ol’ fashioned public discourse.
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