Dr. Anna Malaika Tubbs will discuss her New York Times bestselling book, “The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation,” during an online Germanna Community Conversation at 7 p.m. on Thursday, April 6. Dr. Tubbs will focus on how mothers shaped history and how their stories are not told often enough.
It’s free and open to the public. Registration is required at Germanna.edu/Conversations.
“The Three Mothers,” a New York Times Bestseller, a New York Times Editors Choice, and an Amazon Editor’s Choice, has achieved critical acclaim and has been featured in Oprah Daily, People Magazine, USA Today, The Skimm, Fortune Magazine, MSNBC, CBS, C-Span, NPR, Forbes, The 19th News, GMA.com, Yahoo News, The Washington Post, Southern Living Magazine, and more.
A New York Times book reviewer wrote:
“Of course, we should know more about the mothers of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and James Baldwin. They are the inception, the root, and the core. As Malcolm himself put it: ‘The mother is the child’s first teacher. The message she gives that child, that child gives to the world.’
It’s such an obvious statement that it is hard to understand how Louise Little, Alberta King, and Berdis Baldwin are not household names. Portraits of the three mothers are ‘mostly limited or completely inaccurate,’ Tubbs writes in ‘The Three Mothers.’ They’ve been thoroughly “ignored even though it should have been easy throughout history to see them, to at least wonder about them.” Tubbs aims to correct that erasure by piecing together what she can from the ‘margins and footnotes’ of books, speeches, funeral programs, and letters.”
As an undergraduate student at Stanford University, Anna took from what she’d seen in her parents’ work and began honing her identity as an activist. She served as the president of Stanford’s Black Student Union and the Executive Director of Stanford’s Alternative Spring Break. In these roles, she organized events focused on the concerns of the Black community and fundraised for women’s clinics in the Bay Area.
Tubbs holds a Master’s in Multidisciplinary Gender Studies, a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Cambridge, and a Bachelor’s in Medical Anthropology from Stanford University.
She has published articles on topics ranging from celebrating motherhood to addressing the forced sterilization of Black women and the importance of feminism, intersectionality, and inclusivity. Her writing has been featured in TIME Magazine, New York Magazine, CNN, Motherly, the Huffington Post, For Harriet, The Guardian, Darling Magazine, and Blavity.
