How It Feels To Be Free: A Conversation with Ruth Feldstein and Naomi Extra

Join author and professor Ruth Feldstein and poet and writer Naomi Extra for a live conversation about How It Feels To Be Free, the American Masters Documentary, based on Professor Feldstein’s book, about trailblazing Black Female Entertainers Lena Horne, Abbey Lincoln, Diahann Carroll, Nina Simone, Cicely Tyson and Pam Grier.
To stream the documentary visit https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/how-it-feels-to-be-free-documentary/15247.This event is presented by the Departments of History and African American and African Studies at Rutgers University-Newark, with support from the Newark Public Library.

*Ruth Feldstein is a professor of history and American studies at Rutgers University–Newark. She is the author of Motherhood in Black and White: Race and Sex in American Liberalism, 1930–1965 (2000), and the award-winning How It Feels to Be Free: Black Women Entertainers and the Civil Rights Movement (2014). She is an associate producer of the documentary based on her book, How It Feels to Be Free, directed by Yoruba Richen, with Alicia Keys as executive producer.

*Naomi Extra is a freelance writer, poet, and doctoral candidate in American Studies at Rutgers University-Newark. In both her creative and scholarly work she explores the themes of agency and pleasure in the lives of Black women and girls. She has been awarded fellowships by Cave Canem, Jack Jones Literary Arts, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Crescendo Literary, and the African American Intellectual History Society. Her writing has appeared in Glamour, Zora, Ms. Magazine Blog, Lit Hub, The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 2: Black Girl Magic, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. Her poetry manuscript entitled Ratchet Supreme was selected by Tiana Clark as the winner of the 2019 BOAAT Chapbook Prize.