Reading for Change is a free virtual monthly book club presented by the Stowe Center for Literary Activism in partnership with CREC, with River Bend Bookshop as our book partner.
Our book selections are drawn from Stowe Prize shortlists and winners—works that engage with social justice, tell honest histories, and model how we can all be part of change for good.
Through our partnership with CREC, we invite educators to read alongside us, join these community conversations, and explore how the ideas and questions raised by each book can continue in their own learning communities.
Get the Book
Our friends at River Bend Bookshop are offering Reading for Change participants 10% off Stowe Prize books.
Mention the Stowe Center at checkout when shopping in person, or use code STOWEFORCHANGE when purchasing online.
Join Ashley D. Farmer and Kamora Herrington in a community conversation about Queen Mother: Black Nationalism, Reparations, and the Untold Story of Audley Moore!
From an award-winning historian of radical Black politics comes the definitive biography of Queen Mother Audley Moore—foremother of the Black Nationalism movement and trailblazer in the fight for reparations.
In the world of radical Black politics, the name Audley Moore commands unquestioned respect. Across the nine decades of her life, Queen Mother Moore distinguished herself as a leading progenitor of Black Nationalism, the founder of the modern reparations movement, and a mentor to some of America’s most influential Black activists from her homes in North Philadelphia and Harlem.
And yet, she is far less remembered than many of her peers and protégés—Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, and Muhammad Ahmad, to name just a few—and the ephemera of her life are either lost or plundered. In Queen Mother, celebrated writer and historian Ashley D. Farmer restores Moore’s faded portrait, delivering the first ever definitive account of her life and enduring legacy.
Deeply researched and richly detailed, Queen Mother is more than just the biography of an American icon. It’s a narrative history of 20th-century Black radicalism, told through the lens of the woman whose grit and determination sustained the movement.
Facilitators
Dr. Ashley Farmer is an internationally known and award-winning writer, researcher, and cultural analyst who explores and reports on Black history and its implications today. She is the author of Remaking Black Power: How Black Women Transformed an Era and Queen Mother: Black Nationalism, Reparations, and the Untold Story of Audley Moore. Farmer’s ideas and insights have appeared in numerous venues, including Harper’s Bazaar, NPR, the Washington Post, and Teen Vogue. Ashley lives, reads, and writes in Austin, Texas, and teaches at the University of Texas at Austin.
Kamora Le’Ella Herrington is a mother first, in all of the ways that a mother is. She is the founder and visionary of Kamora’s Cultural Corner and is an active Cultural Humility presenter and educator who began her formal career as a teacher for the City of Hartford’s Early Learning Centers.
