Beyond the Bars: A Community Meet and Greet

The MOH welcomes One Book One New Orleans, who masterminded the below:

Zachary Lazar’s “Vengeance” challenges readers to think critically about justice and incarceration. Come meet local organizations whose mission revolves around these issues!

We’re bringing together community justice organizations that think beyond the bars: The First 72+, Operation Restoration.OR, Louisiana Books 2 Prisoners, Roots of Renewal, Louisiana Center for Children’s Rights, Daughters Beyond Incarceration, The Promise of Justice Initiative, and Innocence Project New Orleans. Guests will have the opportunity to meet representatives from each organization and find out how they can get involved.

As always, we will provide free food to our community! This event is free, family-friendly, and open to the public.

ABOUT ONE BOOK ONE NEW ORLEANS
A campaign for literacy and community, One Book One New Orleans calls on New Orleans residents to share the experience of reading the same book at the same time, works to provide literacy resources to adults, and emphasizes the importance of dialogue between diverse groups of people. Our 2019 community book distribution is funded under a grant from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, the state allfiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and a grant from Entergy. One Book One New Orleans’ selection for our 2019 citywide reading and literacy initiative is “Vengeance” by Zachary Lazar.

ABOUT “VENGEANCE”
“Vengeance” chronicles the journey of a narrator who meets an incarcerated man, Kendrick, at Louisiana’s state penitentiary, Angola. As the narrator becomes increasingly determined to get to the bottom of Kendrick’s claim that he did not commit murder, the lines between seemingly clear-cut concepts such as guilt and innocence begin to blur. The book, a blend of fiction and nonfiction, encourages readers to see the humanity of people in prisons—a group that is often marginalized. “Vengeance” sparks conversations about the relationships between those of us walking free and those of us behind bars, suggesting that we are not as different as it would seem.