Navigating the messy middle between the truths of a chaotic and beautiful world, together.
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Navigating the messy middle between the truths of a chaotic and beautiful world, together.
Jennifer worked in international relations for over 20 years, focusing on global geopolitics, intelligence, and East Asian policy, before turning her attention and cross-cultural skills towards the most polarizing issues within the United States and beyond. She is dedicated to learning how to communicate on difficult and polarizing issues
Jennifer worked in international relations for over 20 years, focusing on global geopolitics, intelligence, and East Asian policy, before turning her attention and cross-cultural skills towards the most polarizing issues within the United States and beyond. She is dedicated to learning how to communicate on difficult and polarizing issues, in good faith, to develop citizens (and herself) in building a strong and diverse community for democracy to thrive.
Winkfield is an author and former law professor. He has written essays and articles in many magazines including the National Black Law Journal, the Pennsylvania Lawyer, and the Intellectual Conservative. His self-published works are On the Road to Oak Lawn: Truth, Reconciliation and the Twymans (December 1, 2018) and Gotterdammerung (July 3, 2019).
Unsatisfied with the relentless pace and narrow constraints of social media, two Americans, Winkfield Twyman, Jr. and Jennifer Richmond — a black man and a white woman — rediscovered the art of letter writing and maintained a years-long correspondence about race in the United States. In Letters in Black and White, they share their exchanges in full for the first time, charting their journey from wary strangers to trusted confidants.
At a time when many Americans are dazed, confused, and angered by the country’s current state of race relations, they offer a model not only for having those needed but difficult conversations but also for a better way forward. Marked by well-crafted turns of phrase, sharp wit, and sober reflection, they intentionally avoid those fashionable words and phrases that have been drained of real meaning or hopelessly saddled with excessive baggage, such as antiracism, white fragility, allyship, and wokeness. Rather, on topics ranging from the murder of George Floyd to the launch of the 1619 Project to the debate over reparations, they tell the truth as they see it in their own uncorrupted language, speaking for no one but themselves.
Particularly critical of the ideological battles that fuel media programming and entrench political rivalries and the noble-sounding social and cultural projects that fail time and again to offer any meaningful solutions, they identify productive ways to unify across our differences, to find our common humanity, and to mend America’s divided soul. Ultimately, they offer an inspirational message of hope and optimism for all — one that does not allow the past to define our present or determine our future.
In our book we reference many original documents. Click below to check them out for yourself, from William Richmond's deed bequeathing his slaves to his son, to the inventory and appraisal of Daniel Brown's estate and so much more.
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Order Wink & Jen's book, Letters in Black & White: A New Correspondence on Race in America.