Dylan C. Penningroth is a professor of law and history at the University of California, Berkeley. Recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and author of the award-winning THE CLAIMS OF KINFOLK, he lives in Kensington, California.
Dylan C. Penningroth will be in conversation with Richard Thompson Ford to celebrate the publication of BEFORE THE MOVEMENT: THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF BLACK CIVIL RIGHTS, published by Liveright Books, on Wednesday, October 11, 2023 at 6:00pm PT/9:00pm ET. Register here!
Where are you writing to us from?
From Kensington, California, just north of Berkeley.
What is bringing you joy right now, personally/artistically/habitually?
Personally, my kids bring me joy. They are my heart. Every other expression that springs to mind sounds trite as soon as I write it. So I’ll just leave it at that.
Habitually, running. It’s not always joyful. These hills are pretty gnarly for a Jersey guy like me. But once in awhile you get in a groove and just float and for a few minutes it seems like you’ve never been tired and never will be.
Which writers, artists, and others influence your work in general, and this book, specifically?
Music meant so much to me during the years I was writing this book. (Although I actually can’t write with music on.) Chopin’s Nocturnes. Donuts by J Dilla. Aretha Franklin’s Amazing Grace, recorded live at a pair of church services in 1972. Writing is such a personal, emotional process that sometimes I think you need to hear someone else expressing that feeling before you can pick up a pencil.
What books are you reading right now and would you recommend any to others?
Go Ahead In the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest by Hanif Abdurraqib. If I were any good at writing love letters, I probably would have written one to Q-Tip and Phife. Tribe was literally my everything in the 90s. Now I don’t have to.
The Wolf Hall trilogy. Hilary Mantel’s pared-down, yet somehow lush prose is just plain transporting. Plus, I’m the chair of my department, answerable to a dozen faculty, several dozen graduate students, two deans, and a host of administrators. Whenever the university’s rules and complex politics start feeling overwhelming, I read a few pages of Thomas Cromwell’s life and I think, “That guy had it worse!”
