June 15, 2007
My
Dear Friends:
I want to share
the joy, excitement and relief that I’m feeling since the launch of
Love Cemetery by HaperOne (formerly HarperSanFrancisco) on June
12. I had hoped to get this note out to you earlier but, as I’m sure
you all know, everything takes longer than you think.
I’ve just finished
the first leg of the tour in Dallas with a wonderful evening at the
First Unitarian Church. Friends, family, some of the people I write
about in the book have been showing up all week to help celebrate.
Tomorrow I’ll be
in South Carolina and on Sunday, in Atlanta. My
schedule, as I know it so far is appended below. Please note the
it includes a very unusual pilgrimage that I’ll be leading in October,
in France, to a number of Black Madonna sites.
In the meantime, I
thank you for supporting this book during its six-year gestation.
Please continue to help by getting the word out! Forward this message
to people you know in the cities where I’ll be reading. See if your
local bookstore has Love Cemetery in stock, visit it on Amazon
(link below), and add a review if you’re moved to.
Love Cemetery at Amazon
Gratefully,
China
Here are some of
the wonderful things being said about the book:
“This is the
riveting story of a remarkable effort to resurrect the dead. And it
couldn't have come at a more crucial time. What Nobel Laureate Czeslaw
Milosz called our ‘refusal to remember’ threatens, in the midst of a
fantastic proliferation of mass media, to sever our links to the past
and leave us a nation of amnesiacs sliding into the memory hole. Here
is an antidote: The search by a handful of dedicated people, inspired
by one woman's persistence, to uncover a long-neglected burial ground
and give the anonymous folk interred there the voice denied them as
slaves. Read on; I guarantee that once you start, you will not stop,
and when you are done, you will have discovered the healing power of
Love Cemetery.”
– Bill Moyers, Bill Moyers Journal
“Racial injustice
continues to be a wound in American life that calls out for particular
and concrete narratives of healing. This book is just such a
narrative, but an especially evocative one. Galland captures the
struggle to reclaim one small cemetery in Texas with such engrossing
drama and personal detail that the story becomes something larger
still--a universal struggle to reclaim the ground of Deep Compassion
that lies untended in the human heart. Love Cemetery is a moving work
of immense social consciousness and spiritual power written by a very
gifted writer.”
– Sue Monk Kidd,
author of The Secret Life of Bees
“If racial justice
and reconciliation are to be achieved, they will most certainly begin
in the humble but profound relationships shared here.”
– Susan Glisson, director
of the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation, University
of Mississippi
"Love Cemetery is
a white woman's odyssey into the shrouded past of racist America, a
covert history that has been become as overgrown as the burial ground
in the title. The author's journey back to her family's ancestral home
of East Texas reconstructs the constancy of oppression and hate, a
legacy of unexpressed sorrow firmly rooted in our national psyche. In
the near forgotten African-American Love Cemetery lies centuries of
grief that Galland exhumes within herself and for the reader.
To create a
page-turner about our collective shadow is the sweetest gift a writer
can offer. May you weep, as did I, for what she discovers in these
piney woods, and through this offering know your country and self in
humbling new ways."
– Paul Hawken, author of Blessed Unrest:
How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and
Why No One Saw It Coming
(Viking, May, 2007)
Schedule:
Dallas
Thursday, June 14, 7:00 PM: First Unitarian Church of
Dallas.
Reading/talk followed by signing.
4015 Normandy Ave Dallas. Tel: 214.528.3990.
Charleston,
SC
Friday June 15, 6:00 PM: The Sophia Institute
Book
party reading, conversation, and signing
297
E. Bay Street, Charleston, SC 29401 tel: 843.720.8528
Map
Saturday, June 16, 10 AM – 3 PM: Mepkin Abbey
Talks and Panels with China Galland, Barbara Burgess, Marcy Walsh,
Elayna Shakur.
Slave cemetery visit and ritual of commemoration; service with the
Benedictine monks of Mepkin Abbey and a labyrinth walk. [bring
your own lunch]
1098
Mepkin Abbey Road, Moncks Corner, SC 29461
Saturday, June 16, 4:00 PM The Sophia Institute
Dialogue
Atlanta,
GA
Wed, June 20, 7:00 PM: Phoenix
& Dragon Bookstore.
Talk
and signing.
5531
Roswell Rd, Atlanta 404-255-5207..
Thursday, June 21
7:15
PM: Georgia Center for the Book,
Talk
and signing.
Decatur Public Library
215
Sycamore St. Decatur.
Contact: Joe Davich 404-370-8450 X2285.
Bay Area
Wed, June 27, 7:00 PM: A Great Good Place for Books.
Talk
and signing
6120
LaSalle Ave.
Oakland, Contact: Kathleen Caldwell 510.
339.8210.
Saturday, June 30, 3:00
PM: Museum of the African Diaspora
Talk, video
showing and signing.
685 Mission Street
(at Third).
San Francisco, Contact: Shiree Dyson, 415-358-7215.
MOAD Website
New York
Wed, July 18, 6:30
PM: New York Public Library
Talk
and reading
455 Fifth Avenue
at 40th Street New York, New York 10016
Contact: Debbie Hirsch. 212.340.0849
New York Library Website
New England
Tuesday,
July 24, 7:00 PM: Concord Free Public Library
Talk and signing
[Sponsored by the
Women’s Well, Human Rights and the Concord Free Public Library.]
129 Main St.
Concord, MA 01742 (978) 318-3300
San Francisco
Tuesday, July 31, [time tba] Commonwealth
Club
Commonwealth Club Website
France
October 9-21,
2007: Central France: Quest for the Black Madonna
China leads a
pilgrimage to various sites of Black and Dark Madonnas
Contact:
Lindsay McClead
GATE (Global Awareness Through Experience)
912 Market St.
La Crosse, WI 54601-8800
608.791.5283
fax 608.782.6301
www.GATE-Travel.org
[More events are being planned. My new website,
www.ChinaGalland.com, which is “live” but still being worked on,
will have updated information as events are added.]
Order Love Cemetery through Amazon Today!