Journalist and author Margaret Edds will discuss her book, “What The Eyes Can’t See,” at a program at Mathews Memorial Library on Thursday, Feb. 29, beginning at 7 p.m.
Her book received the 2023 Virginia Literary Nonfiction Award presented by the Library of Virginia.
The title is a reference to the phrase “The eyes can’t see what the brain doesn’t know”—a statement Edds said she learned in her research that was frequently uttered by former Gov. Ralph Northam as he “navigated his path from near disgrace to the culmination of his goal to create a new chapter in a centuries-old saga of racial discrimination,” according to a release from the library.
Subtitled “Ralph Northam, Black Resolve, and a Racial Reckoning in Virginia,” the book traces the evolution of the former governor after a blackface photograph was uncovered in his medical school yearbook in February 2019. Called on by national Democratic Party leaders to resign, he resolved to learn and grow. “He left office in January 2022,...