Presented by 192 Books, David Levering Lewis reads from his new book The Stained Glass Window: A Family History as the American Story, 1790–1958 (Penguin Press, 2025). Sitting beneath a stained glass window dedicated to his grandmother in the Atlanta church where his family had prayed for generations, preeminent American historian David Levering Lewis was struck by the great lacunae in what he could know about his own ancestors. He vowed to excavate their past and tell their story. David Levering Lewis’s lineage led him to the Kings and Belvinses, two white slaveholding families in Georgia; to the Bells, a free persons of color slaveholding family in South Carolina; and to the Lewises, an up-from-slavery Black family in Georgia. In The Stained Glass Window, Lewis reckons with his legacy in full, facing his ancestors and all that was lost, all the doors that were closed to them.
A livestream and archived recording will be available at https://paulacoopergallery-studio.com/posts.