Queen Mother: Black Nationalism, Reparations, and the Untold Story of Audley Moore

"So this is a situation where the archival material was scattered, even lost completely, because the subject was not thought to be of important. Audley Moore was a Black woman, an incredible leader, but because archives are created—as Derrida talked about—by the people who control the story. So Moore’s archival material was scattered. She also gave things away. Things like that. So the fact that Farmer was able to reassemble all of this information is extraordinary. Such important work. It’s also a very intimate biography. You feel very close to the subject. I think that really makes an audience feel connected, which is important because a lot of people don’t know her story. They think, well, she’s a Black nationalist. But what does that mean? This book really opens up her world. Definitely. And again, it’s wonderful to see someone approaching the form a little differently. Stylistically, definitely. It takes an interesting approach. One of our books on the translation shortlist last year, Traces of Enayat by Iman Mersal, was an incredible book about the impossible process of trying to recover the story of Enayat, an amazing writer from Egypt who died in 1963, and whose story was completely eradicated. Books like Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s A Ghost in the Throat have a similar format: there’s a figure who was important at one time, and is still important, but has been erased from the culture. And so the biographer goes on the journey of finding that material, and that becomes part of the biography. So there are a lots of different ways you can push at the form as a way of bringing back stories of people who are difficult to present in traditional biographies. So it’s an exciting time."