Mon., Nov. 18, 7 pm, Obama Administration National Security Advisor and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice will speak at Grace Church Cathedral, 98 Wentworth St., downtown Charleston. A collaboration between Grace Church and Mt. Zion AME, this event is an offshoot of their monthly Okra Soup meetings.
Ambassador Rice will be in conversation with former Charleston Mayor Joseph P. Riley, Jr., about her new memoir, Tough Love: My Story of the Things Worth Fighting For (Simon and Schuster, hb., 544 pp., $30). Booksigning to follow.
This event is free and open to the public. For more information please call Blue Bicycle Books, 843-722-2666.
Tough Love is a remarkable, and remarkably candid, story: of the ancestral legacies of Susan Rice’s elders—immigrants on one side and descendants of slaves on the other—and their formidable work as educators, community leaders, and public servants; of the family struggles that shaped her early life in Washington, D.C.; and of the pivotal moments from her dynamic career on the front lines of American diplomacy and foreign policy.
Ambassador Rice provides an insider’s account of some of the most complex issues confronting the United States over three decades, ranging from “Black Hawk Down” in Somalia to the genocide in Rwanda and the East Africa embassy bombings in the late 1990s, to Libya, Syria, a secret channel to Iran, the Ebola epidemic, and the opening to Cuba during the Obama years. With unmatched insight and characteristic bluntness, she reveals previously untold stories behind recent national security challenges, including confrontations with Russia and China, the war against ISIS, the struggle to contain the fallout from Edward Snowden’s NSA leaks, the U.S. response to Russian interference in the 2016 election, and the transition to the Trump administration.
“Reading Tough Love is like taking a master class in how to be a powerful woman. It is also a classic American tale, relatable to anyone who has ever dreamed of success. I was riveted from the first page of Tough Love to the last.” —Shonda Rhimes
“At the core of Rice’s story, and brilliant career, is a fearless commitment to the truth and an unwavering devotion to the lessons she inherited as the descendant of Jamaican immigrants in Maine and enslaved Africans in South Carolina: to prize education as the path up to the American Dream and to have the confidence to be herself.” —Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Before the talk, the community is invited to join in the monthly “Okra Soup” meal and discussion at 5:30 pm, in Hanahan Hall at Grace, led by Rev. Kylon Middleton of Mt. Zion AME and Rev. Callie Walpole of Grace Cathedral. This monthly gathering brings individuals of diverse backgrounds around the table for meaningful conversation while enjoying the most soulful of Lowcountry dishes: Okra Soup!
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