WILLIAMSBURG — Local author and Bruton High and William and Mary graduate Eileen O’Brien will be hosting a book launch party at Column 15 Cafe on July 11.
O’Brien is currently a professor of sociology at Saint Leo University and a sociologist of racism and antiracism. Her new book, “Beautiful Solidarity, Symbolic Impacts,” is an accounting of the collective activism and social unrest exhibited in 2020.
“When I was at Bruton High School, I dated interracially and all hell broke loose. I decided I wanted to study stuff about that because it really upturned my sort of white middle-class straight-A existence. I was now the kid that was always on restriction and in trouble because I was doing what my parents didn’t want to do type of thing,” O’Brien explained.
O’Brien began writing the book after watching her children during the civil unrest during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. O’Brien and her children went to a march at the courthouse. She had already been planning on taking a sabbatical to do research. She found, in both interviews and in wider research, that globally, more whites were coming out than usual. She was puzzled and wanted to know what was different about 2020 compared to any other time.
Though O’Brien’s book focuses on the national scope of the U.S. Racial Justice Uprisings of 2020, it features several participants from the Williamsburg events, as well as a local photographer’s work from one of those events. The photographer, local Latonya Wallace Conyers, will also be in attendance at the book launch, as well as Turn the Page bookshop owner Ralph Tedeschi.
E Mackey, who is based in Atlanta and is credited for the book cover photo, will also be in attendance. O’Brien noted his work has been featured in museums including the Harvey B. Gantt Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina. The photographer also gave a TED Talk about the work he did in 2020.
The launch event will be on July 11 from 7-9 p.m. at Column 15. To learn more about the book, please visit the official website.
