WENDY M. THOMPSON at Books Inc. Alameda

Poet, Wendy M. Thompson joins The Book of Light Poetry Serie to read and sign copies of her new book, Black California Gold.

This exquisite debut poetry collection delves into the past and present of California's Bay Area, meditating on themes of family, migration, girlhood, and identity amidst a backdrop of urban redevelopment, gentrification, and the erasure of Black communities. Wendy M. Thompson meticulously charts a region where race, class, and language are but a few of the fault lines that fracture society, sparking recurrent tremors of violence and resistance and aftershocks of displacement and belonging.

Wendy M. Thompson is a poet, scholar, and writer from Oakland, California. Her debut poetry collection, Black California Gold (Bucknell University Press, 2025), maps out life in the Bay Area following the trajectory of the Second Great Migration and the changes it brought to families, racial identity, community, and the environment. Her poetry has most recently appeared in Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, Hoxie Gorge Review, Poetry South, and Juked. She is an Associate Professor of African American Studies at San José State University.

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