Online: Documentary Screening & Discussion with the Director of "Beyond the Mask"

 

For National Poetry Month, the Chilmark, Vineyard Haven, West Tisbury and Edgartown libraries present an opportunity to view the film “Beyond the Mask,” a documentary about Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906), the first African American to achieve national fame as a writer. Library patrons are invited to self-screen the film from April 8-12, and join us online on Saturday, April 10 at 6 pm to  meet the director, Dr. Frederick Lewis, as he speaks about his film and the legacy of Paul Laurence Dunbar.

Dunbar’s story strongly reflects the African American experience around the turn of the century. Born to former slaves in Dayton, Ohio, where he was boyhood friends with the Wright Brothers, Dunbar is best remembered for his poem “We Wear The Mask” and for lines from “Sympathy” that became the title of Maya Angelou’s famous autobiography “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” Dunbar, whom abolitionist Frederick Douglass called “the most promising young colored man in America,” wrote widely published essays critical of Jim Crow laws, lynching and what was commonly called “The Negro Problem.” However, to earn a living, he also wrote poems and short stories in “Plantation dialect” and contributed lyrics for Broadway musicals that bordered on blackface minstrelsy. Link to the trailer: https://vimeo.com/253063876

Participants will be able to stream the film 'Beyond the Mask' on their own time from April 8th - April 12th (a link to access the film will be sent out to registered participants on April 8th). 

Contact Library Program Coordinator Anne McDonough at amcdonough@clamsnet.org to register.