Book Talk with Johnisha Matthews Levi: Number's Up
Join us in celebration of Johnisha Matthews Levi, who is coming to the space to discuss her stirring new memoir,[Number's Up: Cracking the Code of an American Family](https://possiblefuturesbooks.com/item/BYHrBGnWD-paURba10nSw)_, which recounts how public policy has directly disrupted Black institutions and communities, including her own family. Johnisha will be in conversation with Ferentz Lafargue.
More about the book:
For four decades, Johnisha Matthews Levi believed a conventional story about her birth, picturing her happy parents at the hospital together. While sorting through her late mother's belongings, however, she discovered a document indicating that her father was instead serving time in Lorton Correctional Complex. This revelation, along with rumors about an FBI investigation of her deceased parents' "private business," leads Levi to unearth the hidden history of her family. She ties this story to public policy, demonstrating how state lottery legalization and the War on Drugs disrupted the Black institutions and communities in Washington, DC.
Levi's stirring memoir centers on her brilliant but troubled father, a Black World War II radioman who, facing economic barriers after his naval service, reinvents himself as a "numbers man" for an underground gambling operation. The job enables John Matthews to provide for his loved ones and to achieve a level of success far beyond his childhood dreams in the impoverished Jim Crow South. In the process, he becomes an indirect target of law enforcement.
By examining the circumstances of her father's incarceration, Levi explores how multiple generations of the Matthews family have been haunted by the specter of violence against Black people. Number's Up offers a unique but quintessentially American story of survival through ingenuity as it asks: Is forgiveness the sole means of moving forward?
More about Johnisha:
Born and raised in Washington, DC, Johnisha Matthews Levi (she/her) brings a critical eye to her writing based on her experiences as a development professional for social impact nonprofits, a former litigation attorney, and a culinarian. She graduated from Harvard University, New York University School of Law, and Johnson & Wales University. Her writing has appeared in Yes! Media, Wildsam, the kitchn, and Northern Virginia Magazine. She currently lives in Nashville, Tennessee with her husband, Jon. Number’s Up is her first book.
More about Farentz:
Ferentz Lafargue is an Asssociate Dean Residential College Life, Yale College, Director Mellon Mays and Edward A. Bouchet Undergraduate Fellowship Programs at Yale University. Dean Lafargue earned his PhD in African American and American Studies here at Yale and his teaching on nineteenth and post-twentieth century African American and Caribbean Literature and Culture. He is the author of Songs in the Key of My Life. His writing has appeared in such venues as 215 Magazine(link is external), Americas Quarterly(link is external), The Huffington Post(link is external), Next American City(link is external), Social Science Research Council(link is external) and Social Text: Periscope(link is external).