Happy Land, Real Futures: A Book Salon on Black Prosperity with Dolen Perkins-Valdez
Presented by the African American Leadership Forum in partnership with Black Garnet Books
🗓️ December 11th, 4:30 PM CST 📍Virtual – FREE
About the Salon
What if the future we’re chasing has already been written—in soil, in sweat, in story?
In Happy Land, acclaimed author Dolen Perkins-Valdez resurrects the true legend of the Kingdom of the Happy Land, a 19th-century community of freed Black people who pooled resources, purchased land, and built their own self-sustaining economy along the Carolina border. It’s a story of audacious imagination—economic genius disguised as survival.
At The Forum, we see Happy Land as both a mirror and a map: a radical act of Black Futures storytelling that aligns with our impact pillars—Economic Prosperity, Generational Wealth Building, and Narrative Power. This conversation explores what it means to reclaim land, redefine wealth, and design futures rooted in shared abundance.
What to Expect
- A conversation with Dolen Perkins-Valdez, diving into the novel’s themes of ownership, collective economics, and ancestral sovereignty.
- Moderation by Dara Beevas and Terresa Hardaway, connecting fiction to real-world blueprints for community wealth—co-ops, land trusts, family enterprises, and intergenerational stewardship.
- An Afrofuturist reflection, linking the past’s self-governing Black economies to the futures we’re designing now through data, policy, and imagination.
- Collective grounding, as we name the power of story as infrastructure—and remember that legacy is a system we can rebuild.
Before the Salon
- Purchase your copy of Happy Land from our partners at Black Garnet Books at blackgarnetbooks.com and support a Black-owned literary home. Use code AALF at check-out for 15% off.
- Bring this reflection: If my ancestors built a kingdom from nothing, what form of wealth am I called to build from everything they left me?
Join Us
We’re gathering in the digital village—cameras optional, imagination required—to honor the blueprint our ancestors drafted and the futures we’re brave enough to expand.
Register now to receive your Zoom link and join a conversation that transforms history into design, memory into momentum, and story into strategy.