“Change comes one at a time” – author Claudia Rankine on her latest work, Just Us: An American Conversation

Launching the sixth season of BMR, Lissa sits down with poet and essayist Claudia Rankine to dive into her latest work Just Us: An American Conversation (Graywolf Press, 2020). Rankine describes the book as the result of a challenge she set to herself to talk to white men - a group she rarely talks to …

Tell Me Your Names and I Will Testify: Author Carolyn Holbrook on her new book

"For me, the title of the book is about testifying on behalf of myself, my family, my children and adding to the conversation about the beauty of our people," says Carolyn Holbrook about her newly released collection of essays, Tell Me Your Names and I Will Testify (University of Minnesota Press, 2020). In this episode, …

‘We are here in the right now and we have to be truthful and courageous’ – Author and professor Emily Bernard on finding her voice and speaking the truth

In 'Scar Tissue,' the first essay in Emily Bernard's debut collection, Black is the Body, she writes the story of a violent attack that left her critically injured as a graduate student, but which also led her consider her own voice and how she would use it to speak the truth of her own history …

‘I want to read something that tells me about about the strength of black women, the joy of black women.’ – writer Debra J. Stone

In "Grandma Essie's Vanilla Pound Cake," writer Debra J. Stone remembers an important moment in her childhood, and Minnesota history, when the adults in the family grappled with the news that her grandparents' home in St. Paul's Rondo neighborhood, along with many others, would be destroyed to make way for the I-94 corridor. This pivotal …

Dr. Mahmoud El-Kati, Professor Emeritus American Studies at Macalester College

*Originally released June 2017 Listen: http://directory.libsyn.com/episode/index/id/5486278 A frequent contributor to the opinion pages of both Twin Cities dailies as well as the local Black press, Dr. Mahmoud El-Kati has published dozens of monographs and pamphlets, and has appeared on Minnesota Public Radio, and at a host of community-based conferences and events. From 1970 to 2003, Professor …

A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota with Carolyn Holbrook and David Lawrence Grant

*Originally released June 2017 We are joined by Minnesota writers Carolyn Holbrook and David Lawrence Grant to discuss the creative process and how the past informs their work and activism. Holbrook and Grant each contributed an essay to the collection A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota which was published by Minnesota Historical Society Press …