“Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history.” – Carter G. Woodson
Part social thriller, part modern love story, Who Knows You By Heart (Harper Collins) is a sly, witty, and endlessly discussable tale of Big Tech, new money, relationships, race, and discovering what’s real in an age of artificial intelligence.
LISTEN
Kicking off Season 11 of Black Market Reads and Black History Month, this conversation could not be more timely. Lissa Jones and author CJ Farley explore topics related to AI, love, creativity, racism in corporate culture, and important contributors to science and society (who are Black).
GO DEEPER
READ
A short history of AI, and what it is (and isn’t). Maybe it’s magic, maybe it’s math—nobody can decide. Read about it here.
WATCH
CJ Talks about Love after Love, a poem by Nobel prize-winning poet, Derek Wolcott, as the inspiration for the title of his book.
Listen to the voice of Derek Wolcott.
“The time will come when with elation, you’ll greet yourself arriving at your own door. In your own mirror and each will smile at the others’. Welcome and say, sit here. Eat. You’ll love again the stranger who was yourself. Give wine, give bread, give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another who knows you by heart.”
“Jerry Lawson is someone that people should know about. He helped create the first interchangeable game cartridge, which helped set the stage for the modern gaming industry. All the people playing Grand Theft Auto and other games, owe it all to Jerry Lawson” – CJ Farley
Watch here.
Dr. Ayana Howard, Dean of the College of Engineering, Ohio State University, is a leading roboticist. She worked for NASA. She helped work on some of the Mars missions.
Watch here.
Carter G. Woodson, “The Father of Black History”
Carter G. Woodson spent a lifetime researching, collecting, recording, and writing about African American History. Woodson’s tireless scholarship as well as his insistence that African Americans had a place in history led him to publish more than twenty books and articles on the historic role of African Americans.
Learn more here.
Black Market Reads is a project of The Givens Foundation for African American Literature produced in cooperation with iDream.tv. Our production team for this episode includes co-producers Lissa Jones and Edie French, technical director Paul Auguston, the voice Yo Derek, and our artist of inspiration Ta-coumba T. Aiken.