Friday, September 20 | 5p - 7p | Free to attend
Event held at Engage Winona
119 E Third St, Winona, MN 55987
Author Talk & Discussion
When Mark Twain published Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1885, he turned Hannibal, Missouri, located on the Mississippi River, into one of the most famous towns in the American imagination. But like Twain’s novel, Hannibal’s idyllic façade often elided the darker racial violence that had marked its past, and it overlooked the history and humanity of the Black residents who have called Hannibal home for generations. Without them, there would be no “America’s Hometown.”
Meet author G. Faye Dant, of Hannibal’s Invisibles (published by Arcadia Publishing), G. Faye Dant, a Hannibal resident and the Executive Director of Jim’s Journey: The Huck Finn Freedom Center, as she tells the incredible story of the Black community in this small Missouri town on the Mississippi River, giving voice to a history that has been marginalized far too long. Faye will share the people’s histories and life stories from Hannibal’s residents, centering the stories of Black lives and the people whose resilience made Sameul Clemens' story possible.
Artist G. Faye Dant & Jim’s Journey are supported by the Spillway initiative of Art of the Rural. Through support for artists, culture bearers, artisans and storytellers, Spillway works to create the conditions for engaged projects that honor diverse lived experience, deepen regional relationships and build rural-urban networks of knowledge-sharing and exchange that will create opportunities for artists, cultural bearers, and and artisans to thrive and connect with new colleagues and audiences.
G. Faye’s Dant visit to Winona is supported in part by the Minnestoa Marine Art Museum (MMAM), a visual arts museum committed to sparking wonder and creating a more compassionate and connected world, for all, by creating meaningful art experiences that explore our relationship with water. With support from the Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment For the Arts, the Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts and the Terra Foundation of American Art, MMAM presents A Nation Takes Place, a timely and groundbreaking exhibition project, co-curated by Tia-Simone Gardner and Shana M. griffin that draws critical attention to the intersections of race, water, geography, sovereignty, resistance, and reimagined Black ecologies by more than 40 contemporary artists, writers and creatives of our time. Jim’s Journey: Huck Finn Freedom Center (Hannibal, MO) is the location for a national convening and conversation about ways that water, and the artists who engage with it, become the material and the place of resistance, to hear, feel, and sing new narratives. And given the symbolic power of the Mississippi River, a place of many endings but also infinite beginnings, how are artists, historians, cultural bearers, ecologists and writers activating the past into new forms of cultural power, Winter 2025.
Hannibal's Invisibles
Published by Belt Publishing, Hannibal's Invisibles brims with vintage photographs collected by Dant and interviews of previous and current residents of Hannibal, MO. It tells the incredible story of the Black community in this small Missouri town, albeit a universal story of resilience and accomplishments. Looking for a copy? Purchase through the publisher, major booksellers, or indie bookstores via Bookshop.org. All proceeds from the sale of Hannibal's Invisibles will support the vital work of Jim's Journey: The Huck Finn Freedom Center.
