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The Unsettled by Ayana Mathis follows a family through generations from small town Alabama to Philadelphia in the 80s as they struggle, succeed and learn to care for each other. Mathis joins us to talk about how long it took her to write this book, keeping joy in hard stories, how real events and culture shape her characters and more with Miwa Messer, host of Poured Over. This episode of Poured Over was hosted by Executive Producer Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. New episodes land Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays) here and on your favorite podcast app. Featured Books (Episode): The Unsettled by Ayana Mathis The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis Gilead by Marilynne Robinson Philadelphia Fire by John Edgar Wideman A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel
It's summertime! Which means the Ear Hustle team is off cooking up a new batch of stories for our next season — Season 12 — launching September 6. In the meantime, we're bringing you an episode from one of our favorite new podcasts, Violation. The series revisits a 1986 murder case, in which 16-year-old Jacob Wideman — son of award-winning author John Edgar Wideman — fatally stabbed his summer camp roommate. Violation explores the parole process, examining who pulls the levers of power in our criminal system. Violation is a production of WBUR, Boston's NPR, and The Marshall Project. Ear Hustle is a proud member of Radiotopia, from PRX.
Was Jacob Wideman a "bad seed"? The question emerged not long after Jake murdered his summer camp roommate, Eric Kane, in 1986 seemingly with no motive. In this latest episode of "Violation," a podcast series from The Marshall Project and WBUR, author John Edgar Wideman tells the story of his brother Robby, who received a life sentence for his role in a robbery where a man died, and how his son related to Robby. Subscribe to Here & Now Anytime for new episodes each Friday. Find a transcript and photos here.
Not long after Jacob Wideman murdered his summer camp roommate, Eric Kane, in 1986 — seemingly with no motive — a question emerged in the breathless news coverage of the tragedy: Was Jake a “bad seed”? It was no accident that some reporters latched onto the phrase. After all, it was plucked straight from perhaps the most famous book written by Jake's own father, acclaimed author John Edgar Wideman, about his family's experience with violence, trauma and incarceration. But John Wideman wasn't writing about his son Jake when he used the phrase “bad seed” in his seminal memoir, “Brothers and Keepers.” The book was published in 1984, two years before Jake murdered Eric. Instead, John was writing about his own younger brother Robby, Jake's uncle, who years earlier had participated in a robbery that went very wrong. A man died, and although Robby didn't pull the trigger, he was sentenced to life in prison. “The bad seed. The good seed. Mommy's been saying for as long as I can remember: ‘That Robby, he wakes up in the morning looking for the party,'” John Edgar Wideman writes in “Brothers and Keepers” — and reads aloud in this latest episode of “Violation,” a podcast series from The Marshall Project and WBUR. This idea from John's book, of going “bad,” would be applied to Jake, too, although John was disdainful of the concept. “Bad Seed,” Part Two of “Violation,” tells the story of Jake's Uncle Robby through interviews with John as well as with Jake, who remembers having epiphanies as a boy that he would somehow follow his uncle's path. The episode also brings listeners through the harrowing weeks and months after the murder of Eric Kane, when Jake Wideman turned himself into authorities and began his long journey through the criminal justice system. Ultimately, this episode asks: What should happen to kids like Jake?
Why did Jacob Wideman murder Eric Kane? In 1986, the two 16-year-olds were rooming together on a summer camp trip to the Grand Canyon when Jacob fatally — and inexplicably — stabbed Eric. That night, Jacob went on the run, absconding with the camp's rented Oldsmobile and thousands of dollars in traveler's checks. Before long, he turned himself in and eventually confessed to the killing — although he couldn't explain what drove him to do it. It would take years of therapy and medical treatment behind bars before Jacob could begin to understand what was going through his mind that night. It would take even longer to try to explain it to his family, to his victim's family and to parole board members, who would decide whether he deserved to be free ever again. This debut episode of “Violation,” a podcast from WBUR and The Marshall Project, introduces the story of the crime that has bound two families together for decades. Jacob's father, John Edgar Wideman, is an acclaimed author of many books on race, violence and criminal justice. He spoke with Violation host Beth Schwartzapfel in a rare, in-depth interview about his son's case that listeners will hear throughout the series, including this premiere.
Why did Jacob Wideman murder Eric Kane? In 1986, the two 16-year-olds were rooming together on a summer camp trip to the Grand Canyon when Jacob fatally — and inexplicably — stabbed Eric. That night, Jacob went on the run, absconding with the camp's rented Oldsmobile and thousands of dollars in traveler's checks. Before long, he turned himself in and eventually confessed to the killing — although he couldn't explain what drove him to do it. It would take years of therapy and medical treatment behind bars before Jacob could begin to understand what was going through his mind that night. It would take even longer to try to explain it to his family, to his victim's family and to parole board members, who would decide whether he deserved to be free ever again. This debut episode of “Violation,” a podcast from WBUR and The Marshall Project, introduces the story of the crime that has bound two families together for decades. Jacob's father, John Edgar Wideman, is an acclaimed author of many books on race, violence and criminal justice. He spoke with Violation host Beth Schwartzapfel in a rare, in-depth interview about his son's case that listeners will hear throughout the series, including this premiere. Tell us what you think of Last Seen! Please fill out our short survey.
Why did Jacob Wideman murder Eric Kane? In 1986, the two 16-year-olds were rooming together on a summer camp trip to the Grand Canyon when Jacob fatally — and inexplicably — stabbed Eric. That night, Jacob went on the run, absconding with the camp's rented Oldsmobile and thousands of dollars in traveler's checks. Before long, he turned himself in and eventually confessed to the killing — although he couldn't explain what drove him to do it. It would take years of therapy and medical treatment behind bars before Jacob could begin to understand what was going through his mind that night. It would take even longer to try to explain it to his family, to his victim's family and to parole board members, who would decide whether he deserved to be free ever again. This debut episode of “Violation,” a podcast from WBUR and The Marshall Project, introduces the story of the crime that has bound two families together for decades. Jacob's father, John Edgar Wideman, is an acclaimed author of many books on race, violence and criminal justice. He spoke with Violation host Beth Schwartzapfel in a rare, in-depth interview about his son's case that listeners will hear throughout the series, including this premiere.
Why did Jacob Wideman murder Eric Kane? In 1986, the two 16-year-olds were rooming together on a summer camp trip to the Grand Canyon when Jacob fatally — and inexplicably — stabbed Eric. That night, Jacob went on the run, absconding with the camp's rented Oldsmobile and thousands of dollars in traveler's checks. Before long, he turned himself in and eventually confessed to the killing — although he couldn't explain what drove him to do it. It would take years of therapy and medical treatment behind bars before Jacob could begin to understand what was going through his mind that night. It would take even longer to try to explain it to his family, to his victim's family and to parole board members, who would decide whether he deserved to be free ever again. This debut episode of “Violation,” a podcast from WBUR and The Marshall Project, introduces the story of the crime that has bound two families together for decades. Jacob's father, John Edgar Wideman, is an acclaimed author of many books on race, violence and criminal justice. He spoke with Violation host Beth Schwartzapfel in a rare, in-depth interview about his son's case that listeners will hear throughout the series, including this premiere.
In 1986, while on a summer camp trip to the Grand Canyon, 16-year-old Jacob Wideman fatally stabbed his roommate, Eric Kane. Jacob confessed to the murder, but couldn't explain why he did it. The crime devastated both boys' families. For the Widemans, it was also a haunting echo from their family history. Just two years earlier, Jacob's father, acclaimed author John Edgar Wideman, had published "Brothers and Keepers," a memoir that grappled with how his brother, Jacob's uncle Robby Wideman, was sentenced to life in prison for his role in a fatal robbery. How could another inexplicable crime happen twice in two generations? Jacob served decades behind bars for killing Eric Kane. Then in 2016, an Arizona parole board granted him house arrest. Jacob's release outraged his victim's family. It wasn't long before Jacob was back before the board, fighting again for his freedom. Violation, a new podcast from The Marshall Project and WBUR, tells the story of how this horrible crime has connected two families for decades. It explores suffering and retribution, as well as power and privilege. It also pulls back the curtain on parole boards — powerful, secretive, largely political bodies that control the fates of thousands of people every year. Hosted and reported by The Marshall Project's Beth Schwartzapfel, Violation debuts on March 22, with new episodes every Wednesday.
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Narrator Dion Graham delivers John Edgar Wideman's discursive stream-of-consciousness stories in a powerful, resonant style. Host Jo Reed and AudioFile's Alan Minskoff discuss Wideman's compelling combination of memoir, fiction, and essays, told sometimes in a stream-of-consciousness style that gives listeners insights into life as a Black American. Janina Edwards contributes to the narration as well, helping to bring these semi-autobiographical fictions luminously to life. Read the full review of the audiobook on AudioFile's website. Published by Simon & Schuster Audio. Find more audiobook recommendations at audiofilemagazine.com Support for Behind the Mic comes from Oasis Audio, publisher of Heavenly Mortal, a suspenseful story of the battle between light and darkness by Jack Cavanaugh. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This episode talks about Vell's challenges with love and support from family & friends. The Good Read for this episode is Black Boy [Seventy-fifth Anniversary Edition] by Richard Wright, John Edgar Wideman (Foreword by), Malcolm Wright (Afterword). Wright's once controversial, now celebrated autobiography measures the raw brutality of the Jim Crow South against the sheer desperate will it took to survive as a Black boy. Enduring poverty, hunger, fear, abuse, and hatred while growing up in the woods of Mississippi, Wright lied, stole, and raged at those around him—whites indifferent, pitying, or cruel and Blacks resentful of anyone trying to rise above their circumstances. Desperate for a different way of life, he headed north, eventually arriving in Chicago, where he forged a new path and began his career as a writer. At the end of Black Boy, Wright sits poised with pencil in hand, determined to “hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo.” Seventy-five years later, his words continue to reverberate. “To read Black Boy is to stare into the heart of darkness,” John Edgar Wideman writes in his foreword. “Not the dark heart Conrad searched for in Congo jungles but the beating heart I bear.” What's Popping in Vell's World consist of Kyle Rittenhouse & Ahmaud Arbery verdict, BMF season finale, Power Book Season 2 premiere, RIP Luh Rob, and more. Follow on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @VellsWorldPodcast Email vellsworldpodcast@ldmonger.com with any comments, questions, or concerns you would like mentioned in our upcoming episodes. To sponsor an episode send us an email. Don't forget to subscribe, tell a friend, and follow on all social media platforms. You can leave a voice message and become a monetary supporter for as little as .99 cent on the anchor.fm. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/vellsworldpodcast/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/vellsworldpodcast/support
John Edgar Wideman has published some 20 books. His latest, "You Made Me Love You," is a collection of 57 stories selected from previously published collections.
This week we discuss a 2018 John Edgar Wideman story from The New Yorker, about a writing teacher trying to decide how to talk to a white student about a well-meaning story she's writing about the travails of a person of color. You can read that story here. Then we learn what books Val Kilmer thinks we should be reading this summer. If you like the show, and would like more Book Fight in your life, please consider joining our Patreon. For $5, you'll get access to three bonus episodes a month, including Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest--and steamiest!--novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations. How do you talk to a writer whose work you like after a reading? How do you promote your own writing without annoying people? Should you force your spouse or significant other to read your work? We've got the answers to these and many other pressing questions.
Questa settimana parliamo di quanto i rapporti tra fratelli possano essere bellissimi e complessi. Perché Natale si avvicina e con esso le cene di famiglia, gli scheletri nell'armadio e i confronti a tavola con chi condivide il sangue, i rituali e i cognomi. Buone letture e buon ascolto!
This week we time-travel back to 1993 to see what was going on in literature, technology, and pop culture. For our reading, we're diving into the John Edgar Wideman short story, "Newborn Thrown in Trash and Dies," part of his prize-winning collection All Stories Are True. The story was inspired by a 1991 news report about a baby who had been discarded down the trash chute of an apartment building. In publishing news this week, Mike looks at the state of "electronic books" on CD-ROM, which in 1993 were beginning to be sold in some book stores, and Tom has details of a crime novel published on floppy disc (and the surprising outrage that caused). Also: a major San Francisco publisher gets desktop computers in its offices, and a computer programmer teaches his Macintosh to "write" a romance novel. If you like the show, please consider subscribing to our Patreon, which helps us make a bit of money each month and keep the show going. For just $5 a month, you'll get access to a monthly bonus episode, Book Fight After Dark, in which we visit some of the weirder corners of the literary world. Recently, that's involved reading a paranormal romance, the debut novel of Jersey Shore's Snookie, and the novelization of the movie Battleship (yes, based on the popular board game).
Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh with rather a lot of short stories, and the reader reviewers Roanna Gonsalves, Brett Evans and Michael Dulaney
Jesmyn Ward - author of Sing, Unburied Sing talks to Christopher Harding about editing a collection of essays called The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race and about the depictions of family life and poverty and the influence of Greek drama on her prize winning novels. Sarah Churchwell traces the history of the use and meaning of the phrases 'the American Dream' and 'America First'. John Edgar Wideman explains what he was seeking to do by blurring fact and fiction in his new short story collection American Histories. Jesmyn Ward's novels include Salvage the Bones, Where the Line Bleeds and Sing, Unburied Sing - and a memoir called Men We Reaped. She has received a MacArthur Genius Grant and won two National Book Awards for Fiction. She has edited a collection of Essays called The Fire This Time which takes its inspiration from James Baldwin's 1963 examination of race in America, The Fire Next Time.Professor Sarah Churchwell is the author of books including Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby and Behold America: A History of America First and the American DreamJohn Edgar Wideman's work includes the novels The Cattle Killing and Philadelphia Fire and the memoir Brothers and Keepers. His new collection of short stories - American Histories - weaves real characters including Frederick Douglass and Jean-Michel Basquiat into imaginary narratives.Producer: Torquil MacLeod
From an author of rare, haunting power, a stunning novel about a young African-American woman coming of age--a deeply felt meditation on race, sex, family, and country. Raised in Pennsylvania, Thandi views the world of her mother's childhood in Johannesburg as both impossibly distant and ever present. She is an outsider wherever she goes, caught between being black and white, American and not. She tries to connect these dislocated pieces of her life, and as her mother succumbs to cancer, Thandi searches for an anchor--someone, or something, to love. In arresting and unsettling prose, we watch Thandi's life unfold, from losing her mother and learning to live without the person who has most profoundly shaped her existence, to her own encounters with romance and unexpected motherhood. Through exquisite and emotional vignettes, Clemmons creates a stunning portrayal of what it means to choose to live, after loss. An elegiac distillation, at once intellectual and visceral, of a young woman's understanding of absence and identity that spans continents and decades, What We Lose heralds the arrival of a virtuosic new voice in fiction. Praise for What We Lose "Penetratingly good and written in vivid still life, What We Lose reads like a guided tour through a melancholic Van Gogh exhibit--wonderfully chromatic, transfixing and bursting with emotion. Zinzi Clemmons's debut novel signals the emergence of a voice that refuses to be ignored." --Paul Beatty, author of The Sellout "An intimate narrative that often makes another life as believable as your own." --John Edgar Wideman, author of Writing to Save a Life "The narrator of What We Lose navigates the many registers of grief, love and injustice, moving between the death of her mother and the birth of her son, as well as an America of blacks and whites and a South Africa of Coloreds. What an intricate mapping of inner and outer geographies! Clemmons's prose is rhythmically exact and acutely moving. No experience is left unexamined or unimagined." --Margo Jefferson, author of Negroland "Zinzi Clemmons' first book heralds the work of a new writer with a true and lasting voice--one that is just right for our complicated millennium. Bright and filled with shadows, humor, and trenchant insights into what it means to have a heart divided by different cultures, What We Lose is a win, just right for the ages." --Hilton Als, author of White Girls "I love how Zinzi Clemmons complicates identity in What We Lose. Her main character is both South African and American, privileged and outsider, driven by desire and gutted by grief. This is a piercingly beautiful first novel." --Danzy Senna, author of New People "It takes a rare, gifted writer to make her readers look at day-to-day aspects of the world around them anew. Zinzi Clemmons is one such writer.What We Lose immerses us in a world of complex ideas and issues with ease. Clemmons imbues each aspect of this novel with clear, nuanced thinking and emotional heft. Part meditation on loss, part examination of identity as it relates to ethnicity, nationality, gender and class, and part intimate look at one woman's coming of age, What We Lose announces a talented new voice in fiction." --Angela Flournoy, author of The Turner House "Wise and tender and possessed of a fiercely insightful intimacy, What We Lose is a lyrical ode to the complexities of race, love, illness, parenthood, and the hairline fractures they leave behind. Zinzi Clemmons has gifted the reader a rare and thoughtful emotional topography, a map to the mirror regions of their own heart." --Alexandra Kleeman, author of You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine Zinzi Clemmons was raised in Philadelphia by a South African mother and an American father. She is a cofounder and former publisher of Apogee Journal, a contributing editor to Literary Hub, and deputy editor for Phoneme Media. Her writing has appeared in Zoetrope, The Paris Review Daily, Transition, and the Common. She has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Bread Loaf, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the Kimbilio Center for African American Fiction. Clemmons lives in Los Angeles with her husband. Event date: Wednesday, July 12, 2017 - 7:30pm
An interview with author John Edgar Wideman. The interview focuses on Wideman's life and career, particularly connections between his writing and the various communities of which he has been a part. The conversation also features Leon Ford, a social activist in Pittsburgh. Ford was shot by police in 2012 and is paralyzed as a result. He currently works for social justice in Pittsburgh, and has developed a relationship with Wideman based on their mutual investment in writing. For more on Leon's story see here: http://www.leonfordspeaks.com/.
À propos du livre : " Vera " éditions Rivages Sonny est un jeune Irlandais de seize ans. Bien sûr, il veut échapper au destin sans horizon qui l'attend. Lorsqu'il croise le regard de Vera, sa beauté lui donne immédiatement le vertige. Elle vit dans les quartiers chics de Dublin, dans un monde étranger à Sonny. Elle ne dit jamais son âge. Elle parle peu. Mais elle sait l'écouter comme personne ne l'a jamais fait. Vera et Sonny vont vivre une histoire. Intense, dévastatrice et sublime. On sait dès les premiers gestes de tendresse que l'état de grâce ne peut durer, mais on est emporté par la puissance émotionnelle de ce roman, magnifique chant d'amour. Biographie de l'auteur Né à Dublin en 1972, Karl Geary quitte très jeune l'Irlande pour l'Amérique. Repéré par un agent, il devient acteur, jouant dans de nombreux films et séries. Aujourd'hui scénariste, il vit entre Brooklyn et l'Ecosse. Publié il y a quelques mois au Royaume-Uni, Vera, son premier roman, a été un triomphe. Le livre est en cours de traduction dans une dizaine de pays. À propos du livre : "Écrire pour sauver une vie: Le dossier Louis Till" éditions Gallimard A l'âge de quatorze ans, John Edgar Wideman découvre dans la presse américaine une photo du visage mutilé d'Emmett Till. Tout comme Wideman, ce dernier est âgé de quatorze ans, et tout comme Wideman, c'est un Noir américain. Cette image ne cessera de le hanter. En 1955, Emmett Till prend le train à Chicago pour rendre visite à sa famille dans le Mississippi. Accusé d'avoir sifflé une femme blanche, l'adolescent noir est kidnappé et assassiné. Ses meurtriers, blancs, seront acquittés. Resurgit en effet durant leur procès le fantôme du père d'Emmett, Louis Till, enrôlé dans l'armée américaine à la fin de la Seconde Guerre mondiale et jugé puis exécuté pour viol en 1945. Tel père tel fils, considère le jury, aussi blanc que les accusés. Habité par ce fait divers qui a marqué l'Amérique, l'auteur décide d'enquêter sur les circonstances douteuses de cette exécution. Il en fait ressortir les zones d'ombre et tente de combler le silence de Louis Till. Faits historiques, éléments autobiographiques et fictifs s'entrelacent pour former un récit aussi personnel qu'actuel, auscultant une société américaine rongée par l'injustice et la violence. Biographie de l'auteur Né à Washington en 1941, John Edgar Wideman a passé sa jeunesse à Homewood, le quartier noir de Pittsburgh. Diplômé de l'Université de Pennsylvanie, il a également étudié à Oxford. Il a obtenu à deux reprises le PEN/Faulkner Award et est aujourd'hui considéré comme l'un des plus grands écrivains contemporains. À propos du livre : "Et soudain, la liberté" éditions Les Escales Une incroyable traversée du XXe siècle : l'histoire romancée d'Evelyne Pisier et de sa mère, deux femmes puissantes en quête de liberté. "L'OVNI" littéraire de la rentrée !Mona Desforêt a pour elle la grâce et la jeunesse des fées. En Indochine, elle attire tous les regards. Mais entre les camps japonais, les infamies, la montée du Viet Minh, le pays brûle. Avec sa fille Lucie et son haut-fonctionnaire de mari, un maurrassien marqué par son engagement pétainiste, elle fuit en Nouvelle-Calédonie. À Nouméa, les journées sont rythmées par la monotonie, le racisme ordinaire et les baignades dans le lagon. Lucie grandit ; Mona bovaryse. Jusqu'au jour où elle lit Le Deuxième Sexe de Simone de Beauvoir. C'est la naissance d'une conscience, le début de la liberté. De retour en France, divorcée et indépendante, Mona entraîne sa fille dans ses combats féministes : droit à l'avortement et à la libération sexuelle, égalité entre les hommes et les femmes. À cela s'ajoute la lutte pour la libération nationale des peuples. Dès lors, Lucie n'a qu'un rêve : partir à Cuba. Elle ne sait pas encore qu'elle y fera la rencontre d'un certain Fidel Castro... Et soudain, la liberté, c'est aussi l'histoire d'un roman qui s'écrit dans le silence, tâtonne parfois, affronte le vide. Le portrait d'une rencontre entre Evelyne Pisier et son éditrice, Caroline Laurent – un coup de foudre amical, plus fou que la fiction. Tout aurait pu s'arrêter en février 2017, au décès d'Evelyne. Rien ne s'arrêtera : par-delà la mort, une promesse les unit. Biographie de l'auteur Evelyne Pisier est née en 1941 en Indochine. Sœur de l'actrice Marie-France Pisier, sa vie résume tous les grands combats de la seconde moitié du XXe siècle : le féminisme, la décolonisation, la révolution cubaine, la lutte contre le racisme, la défense des homosexuels, la critique du totalitarisme... Elle a été l'une des premières femmes agrégées de droit public en France, discipline qu'elle enseigna à l'université Paris-I-Panthéon-Sorbonne. Directrice du Livre et de la Lecture de 1989 à 1993, au ministère de la Culture dirigé par Jack Lang, elle fut également écrivain et scénariste. Elle est décédée en février 2017. Caroline Laurent est née en 1988. Éditrice et amie d'Evelyne Pisier, elle co-signe son dernier roman.
What’s missing from contemporary discussions of aesthetics and representation within the natural hair movement? Bert Ashe generously offers a response in Twisted: My Dreadlock Chronicles, an unprecedented account of black male identity as seen through our culture’s perceptions of hair. In this personal story that weaves together the cultural and political history of dreadlocks with the authors own mid-life journey to lock his hair, Ashe addresses the significance of black hair in the 20th and 21st centuries through an engaging and humorous literary style. Professor Ashe’s research focuses on late twentieth-century and early twenty-first century literature and culture. He teaches and writes about contemporary American culture, primarily post-Civil Rights Movement African American literature and culture (often referred to as post-blackness or the post-soul aesthetic), as well as the black vernacular triumvirate of black hair, basketball, and jazz. His first book, From Within the Frame: Storytelling in African-American Fiction (Routledge, 2002) tracks the development of the African American frame text, from Charles Chesnutt’s The Conjure Woman through John Edgar Wideman’s Doc’s Story. Dr. Bert Ashe is Associate Professor of English at the University of Richmond. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
What’s missing from contemporary discussions of aesthetics and representation within the natural hair movement? Bert Ashe generously offers a response in Twisted: My Dreadlock Chronicles, an unprecedented account of black male identity as seen through our culture’s perceptions of hair. In this personal story that weaves together the cultural and political history of dreadlocks with the authors own mid-life journey to lock his hair, Ashe addresses the significance of black hair in the 20th and 21st centuries through an engaging and humorous literary style. Professor Ashe’s research focuses on late twentieth-century and early twenty-first century literature and culture. He teaches and writes about contemporary American culture, primarily post-Civil Rights Movement African American literature and culture (often referred to as post-blackness or the post-soul aesthetic), as well as the black vernacular triumvirate of black hair, basketball, and jazz. His first book, From Within the Frame: Storytelling in African-American Fiction (Routledge, 2002) tracks the development of the African American frame text, from Charles Chesnutt’s The Conjure Woman through John Edgar Wideman’s Doc’s Story. Dr. Bert Ashe is Associate Professor of English at the University of Richmond. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
What's missing from contemporary discussions of aesthetics and representation within the natural hair movement? Bert Ashe generously offers a response in Twisted: My Dreadlock Chronicles, an unprecedented account of black male identity as seen through our culture's perceptions of hair. In this personal story that weaves together the cultural and political history of dreadlocks with the authors own mid-life journey to lock his hair, Ashe addresses the significance of black hair in the 20th and 21st centuries through an engaging and humorous literary style. Professor Ashe's research focuses on late twentieth-century and early twenty-first century literature and culture. He teaches and writes about contemporary American culture, primarily post-Civil Rights Movement African American literature and culture (often referred to as post-blackness or the post-soul aesthetic), as well as the black vernacular triumvirate of black hair, basketball, and jazz. His first book, From Within the Frame: Storytelling in African-American Fiction (Routledge, 2002) tracks the development of the African American frame text, from Charles Chesnutt's The Conjure Woman through John Edgar Wideman's Doc's Story. Dr. Bert Ashe is Associate Professor of English at the University of Richmond. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies
What’s missing from contemporary discussions of aesthetics and representation within the natural hair movement? Bert Ashe generously offers a response in Twisted: My Dreadlock Chronicles, an unprecedented account of black male identity as seen through our culture’s perceptions of hair. In this personal story that weaves together the cultural and political history of dreadlocks with the authors own mid-life journey to lock his hair, Ashe addresses the significance of black hair in the 20th and 21st centuries through an engaging and humorous literary style. Professor Ashe’s research focuses on late twentieth-century and early twenty-first century literature and culture. He teaches and writes about contemporary American culture, primarily post-Civil Rights Movement African American literature and culture (often referred to as post-blackness or the post-soul aesthetic), as well as the black vernacular triumvirate of black hair, basketball, and jazz. His first book, From Within the Frame: Storytelling in African-American Fiction (Routledge, 2002) tracks the development of the African American frame text, from Charles Chesnutt’s The Conjure Woman through John Edgar Wideman’s Doc’s Story. Dr. Bert Ashe is Associate Professor of English at the University of Richmond. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
What’s missing from contemporary discussions of aesthetics and representation within the natural hair movement? Bert Ashe generously offers a response in Twisted: My Dreadlock Chronicles, an unprecedented account of black male identity as seen through our culture’s perceptions of hair. In this personal story that weaves together the cultural and political history of dreadlocks with the authors own mid-life journey to lock his hair, Ashe addresses the significance of black hair in the 20th and 21st centuries through an engaging and humorous literary style. Professor Ashe’s research focuses on late twentieth-century and early twenty-first century literature and culture. He teaches and writes about contemporary American culture, primarily post-Civil Rights Movement African American literature and culture (often referred to as post-blackness or the post-soul aesthetic), as well as the black vernacular triumvirate of black hair, basketball, and jazz. His first book, From Within the Frame: Storytelling in African-American Fiction (Routledge, 2002) tracks the development of the African American frame text, from Charles Chesnutt’s The Conjure Woman through John Edgar Wideman’s Doc’s Story. Dr. Bert Ashe is Associate Professor of English at the University of Richmond. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
What’s missing from contemporary discussions of aesthetics and representation within the natural hair movement? Bert Ashe generously offers a response in Twisted: My Dreadlock Chronicles, an unprecedented account of black male identity as seen through our culture’s perceptions of hair. In this personal story that weaves together the cultural and political history of dreadlocks with the authors own mid-life journey to lock his hair, Ashe addresses the significance of black hair in the 20th and 21st centuries through an engaging and humorous literary style. Professor Ashe’s research focuses on late twentieth-century and early twenty-first century literature and culture. He teaches and writes about contemporary American culture, primarily post-Civil Rights Movement African American literature and culture (often referred to as post-blackness or the post-soul aesthetic), as well as the black vernacular triumvirate of black hair, basketball, and jazz. His first book, From Within the Frame: Storytelling in African-American Fiction (Routledge, 2002) tracks the development of the African American frame text, from Charles Chesnutt’s The Conjure Woman through John Edgar Wideman’s Doc’s Story. Dr. Bert Ashe is Associate Professor of English at the University of Richmond. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
John Edgar Wideman and Terry McMillan discuss their upcoming work, their sources of inspiration, and how empathy is a writer's most profound tool.
The Cattle Killings (Houghton Mifflin) As a writer, John Edgar Wideman finds himself at the intersection of African-American experience and High Modernist experimentation. A talk about ethnicity and the avant-garde.
Fatheralong The author on memory, paternity and ethnicity.