For the smart and free-thinking, Black Market Reads is a podcast featuring conversations with today's most exciting Black literary voices. We are a podcast for any one who loves to read, write, and engage. Black Market Reads is a project of The Givens Foundation for African American Literature.
"To tell the truth is to become beautiful, to begin to love yourself, value yourself. And that's political, in its most profound way." June Jordan In this episode, Lissa talks with writer Sherrie Fernandez-Williams about her latest work, Goddess of the Whole Self (In Line Press 2023), her inspirations, and her origin story. The Remembrance …
Continue reading "Sherrie Fernandez-Williams, Goddess of the Whole Self"
"My mind ain't sprightly like it used to be and heaps of things what went on when I was young, I forget and heaps of them what I want to forget, I can't." Calline Brown from the WPA ex-slave narratives, Coahoma County, MS in the collection of Archie Givens Sr. Collection of African American Literature and Life …
" To change hearts and minds, we have to touch people's hearts and minds. Some of the most influential changes that have happened in our society come through creative processes...," says Andrea Jenkins in response to Lissa's question about the role of art in her political life. Andrea Jenkins is the author of the poetry …
Continue reading "Andrea Jenkins on The T is Not Silent and intersections of art and politics"
In this episode, Lissa speaks with Javon Johnson, about his new poetry collection, Ain't Never Not Been Black (Button Poetry, 2020). Javon Johnson, Ph.D. is a poet, performer, professor and recipient of numerous awards. According to poet Rudy Francisco, Dr. Johnson is “is one of the most brilliant writers in the world”. This conversation was recorded …
One of the defining events of the past year, in Minnesota and around the world, was the murder of George Floyd and the international protests demanding justice. Though Mr. Floyd's murder was shocking, for many people it fit a pattern of racism and violence inflicted upon Black people and BIPOC communities in this country. In …
"Hope is the thing that drives us forward," says Dr. Yusuf Salaam of naming his novel's main character Amal, which means hope. "Because without hope we wouldn't see a positive future, we wouldn't imagine the opportunity to change the criminal justice system from the criminal system of injustice to the criminal justice system." Dr. Salaam …
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 …
"Poetry is present in pretty much every culture," says Reed. "It is present across class boundaries." But, he notes, depending on those boundaries it looks and acts differently. "I think there is a way that certain kinds of poetry are rewarded as literature and therefore are given a kind of visibility that ends up reifying …
Continue reading "Poet, Essayist Justin Phillip Reed on The Malevolent Volume"
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 …
On the (naturally) cold evening of March 5th we had the pleasure of speaking with Ross Gay and hearing him read from his most recent work, a book of essays entitled The Book of Delights (Algonquin Books, 2019), at Magers & Quinn Booksellers in Minneapolis, MN. The book is the result of a challenge that …