From Rain to Renewal: What the LA Times Festival of Books Reminded Me About Hope
By Jeff Geoffray
Co-founder, The 431 Exchange
The day started in a downpour. Torrential by Los Angeles standards. As I pulled into USC’s campus for the LA Times Festival of Books this past April, I wondered whether anyone would show up. I half expected the outdoor stages would be empty and the grassy quads silent under soaked banners. But by late morning, the rain had given way—and so had the city. The campus was already buzzing, shoulder to shoulder, laughter and umbrellas bumping in every direction. The threat of rain couldn’t dampen our enthusiasm for stories, for truth, for each other.
The Festival of Books is one of the largest literary events in the world (and yes, ChatGPT confirmed it)—a sprawling, free celebration of ideas, publishing, and culture. But for me, this year’s event was more than a literary pilgrimage. It was a full-circle moment. I was back on campus, remembering the 2019 festival when I wandered these same paths with my sister Jeanne and our dear friend Raphael Morgan (Class of 1970), digging through ideas for our book-in-progress Exchange Place. That book—based on our mother’s work at the Adult Education Center in New Orleans—is in its final stages before being submitted for peer review.
Once again, I came to learn—and was not disappointed.
“The Black experience is not just a story of struggle—it’s a roadmap for renewal.”
The panel I attended, Inequality in America, featured three scholars whose books I’ve since had the privilege to read, review, and now share with our 431 Exchange community. Before I get to the authors, I want to take a moment to recognize the panel’s moderator, Dr. Anna-Lisa Cox. A historian of race relations and the African American experience—especially in the Midwest—Dr. Cox is the author of “The Bone and Sinew of the Land”, which was longlisted for the Carnegie Medal in nonfiction. Her research has reshaped how we understand the lives of free Black pioneers in the 19th-century American North and Midwest. I’ve been to more panels than I can count, but this was, hands down, one of the most skillfully moderated events I’ve ever attended. She brought clarity, depth, and generosity to each exchange, drawing out the best from every panelist.
Marcus Anthony Hunter (Radical Reparations), Martha S. Jones (The Trouble of Color), and Andrew W. Kahrl (The Black Tax) each delivered something rare: not just analysis, but moral clarity. Not just truth-telling—but a vision for where we go from here.
These books now sit at the heart of our latest review series on the 431 Exchange site. Here’s a glimpse:
The Trouble of Color
by Martha S. Jones
A daring memoir and archival excavation, this book reconstructs the story of the renowned historian’s own family, whose lineage spans from the enslaved, and newly freed, to college presidents who embodied what W.E.B. Du Bois once called “the talented tenth.” Her family’s experience with “passing,” and the racial misclassifications that followed, reveals how race in America is as much a fiction as it is a force. Jones’s personal papers are now housed at the Amistad Research Center—alongside the archive of our own Adult Education Center.
Radical Reparations
by Marcus Anthony Hunter
Written by renowned sociologist Marcus Anthony Hunter—creator of the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag—this book boldly reimagines what reparations could mean if we centered justice, not just dollars. Combining rigorous research with visionary storytelling, Radical Reparations offers a sweeping framework that includes political, legal, spiritual, and intellectual forms of repair.
The Black Tax
by Andrew W. Kahrl
A shattering exposé on how local property taxes were used to rob Black families of their homes, dreams, and legacies. But it’s also a story of resistance—how communities fought back through organizing, litigation, and vision. Kahrl gives thanks to Amistad in his acknowledgments—a nod to the archival research center behind his clarity.
As you’ll see in these reviews, the thread running through all three books is the same thread that runs through our mission: the Black experience is not just a story of struggle—it’s a roadmap for renewal.
That same theme echoed powerfully in another highlight of the day: a sold-out, standing-room-only conversation with Amanda Gorman. There she was—poet, activist, and now children’s book author—speaking with humor and grace about the power of girls, the challenge of speech, and the joy of reclaiming voice. I didn’t know until that day that Amanda grew up with a debilitating speech impediment, one that made it hard to pronounce the letter “R.” That’s not ideal when your favorite book is Harry Potter and your name is Gorman! But she got a laugh from the crowd as she shared how that very challenge shaped her commitment to poetry and public speaking.
Her new book, Girls on the Rise, includes the following excerpt—one that stayed with me:
“When one girl stands up,
She is never alone.
We are like wings,
Lifting each other up,
Making each other strong.
When a girl rights what’s wrong,
She brings others along.
We might have our own voices,
But we’re singing the same song.”
In that moment, I thought not only of the young women in Amanda’s book, but of the graduates of the Adult Education Center in New Orleans—many of them Black women who walked into a building that had once been a French Quarter nightclub and walked out with heads held high, their lives on the brink of transformation. They weren’t standing alone either. They were wings, lifting one another.
This is why the quote Amanda cited from the Greek poet Dinos Christianopoulos rang so true:
“They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds.”
Amanda said something else that stayed with me: “Hope is something that we make.” At the 431 Exchange, we see that every day. Every scholarship, every story, every act of advocacy is a form of planting. And what grows from it—whether it’s Aubany Moon, now a college professor with her name on the door; Christian Crout, who pursued advanced studies in physics and regularly mentors others on the same path; or Anthony Jones, who overcame housing insecurity to walk across the graduation stage with honors—is proof that renewal is not only possible. It is already underway.
Thanks for being part of this journey. I hope you’ll explore the reviews and share them with someone who could use a reminder: we’ve been here before. And we’ve always found a way through.
With gratitude,
Jeff Geoffray
jeff@431exchange.org