I was thinking about, ‘What’s the best way to commemorate this 400th year?’ As a historian, I’m kind of biased. Kendi: I don’t think there was necessarily a moment as much as the coming awareness of the 400th year - the sort of symbolic birthday of Black America - and that date approaching. The conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.ī: When did the idea for the book first evolve - was there a particular moment or event that sparked the idea for it? (The audiobook edition of “Four Hundred Souls” is reportedly getting a literal chorus of “extraordinary voices” with a cast of 87 narrators, including Leslie Odom Jr., Danai Gurira, and Phylicia Rashad.)ī spoke recently with Kendi, who moved to Boston last year to launch and direct the new BU Center for Antiracist Research, to learn more about the new work and what he hopes readers will take away from the new community history. “Collectively this choir sings the chords of survival, of struggle, of success, of death, of life, of joy, of racism, of antiracism, of creation, of destruction - of America’s clearest chords, year after year, of liberty, justice, and democracy for all,” Kendi wrote. With their strikingly different but unified voices, the writers form a “choir” in telling the community history, Kendi wrote in the introduction for “Four Hundred Souls.”

Four Hundred Souls by Ibram X. Kendi