This is an in-person event, free and open to all. The program will be recorded. The video recording will be available on this page approximately two weeks after the event for future viewing.

Join us for a powerful talk and reading by Oakland-based poet and scholar Wendy M. Thompson, as she explores the shifting boundaries of Black life in California through poetry, memory, and place. 

How does a poet and a descendant of black Southern migrants map the boundary lines and exploratory paths of the Second Great Migration in a region where corporate-driven progress has overwritten historic districts and legacies of struggle? What does a landscape of dreams denied look like when investors have the authorial power to prioritize new skylines and developments over community resistance and neighborhood futures? Where is the center of black life in California and the West when that center is rapidly shifting? 

For black residents in the Bay Area, the racial and spatial boundary lines have always been both concrete and ever changing. Freedom and opportunity, once thought of as tangible things to work toward (keep going further west until you can’t see Jim Crow, only pristine ocean views and breathtaking sunsets), have become increasingly marred by municipal projects and policies designed to attract capital and ease mobility. These projects and policies often act as boundary lines and zones of containment for black residents who are priced and pushed out of future growth projections and redevelopment plans. 

As an Oakland-based poet and scholar, this talk explores the boundaries and boundarywork of black residents who push back and challenge the borders applied to black life, renegotiating the lines of spatial occupation and existence, and defining the city and region for themselves. Taking into consideration one’s childhood landscape, Thompson accounts for how land and landmarks, space, movement, infrastructure show up as boundaries in her poetic work and how they work as faultlines for self-creation, connection, and resistance. This talk will include a reading from Thompson's debut poetry collection, Black California Gold. 

Following the reading, Thompson will be joined in conversation by Aliyah Dunn-Salahuddin, performing artist, filmmaker, and PhD candidate in History at Stanford University. Her research examines the Black freedom struggle in San Francisco at the intersection of race, infrastructure, and environment, with particular focus on the Bayview-Hunters Point community. A former Department Chair of African American Studies at City College of San Francisco, Dunn-Salahuddin brings a vital historical and cultural lens to this dialogue. Together, Thompson and Dunn-Salahuddin will reflect on art, history, memory, and place, creating a conversation that bridges poetry and scholarship, lived experience and historical analysis.

Speaker Bios

Wendy M. Thompson is a poet and Associate Professor of African American Studies at San José State University. Her debut poetry collection Black California Gold maps out life in the Bay Area in the 1980s and 90s as the descendant of black Southern migrants (Bucknell University Press, 2025). She is currently working on a scholarly monograph titled, Chasing the Sun: Staging Life, Belonging, and Displacement in the Black Bay Area which looks at the cultural and performative worlds that black migrants and their descendants staged from the Second Great Migration to the contemporary era. Her creative and research interests include black California and the Bay Area, race and the built environment, interracial families and mixed race identity, and nature and the natural world.

Aliyah Dunn-Salahuddin is a performing artist, filmmaker, and current PhD candidate of history at Stanford University. Prior to entering Stanford University, she earned both her B.A. and M.A. in history at San Francisco State University. She went on to become tenured faculty and served as Department Chair of African American Studies at City College of San Francisco. Her current research analyzes the Black freedom struggle in San Francisco from the intersection of race, infrastructure, and environment with special focus on the Bayview-Hunters Point community. She is currently a Thomas D. Dee II Graduate Fellow with the Bill Lane Center for the American West (2025-2026) and a former ACLS/Mellon Dissertation Innovation Fellow (2024-2025).