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.
African American literature is more than stories, poems, and novels. It's a living testament of our ability to endure, to resist, and to thrive in environments that weren't designed for us. From the narratives of enslaved people to the bold voices of the Black Arts movement, our literature has been a mirror of pain, a map of how to navigate the challenges that we face. and a megaphone of our power."
”The devil said, I'm not evil. Not really. How could I be? Ain't nothing in me God ain't put there. Ain't a thing in my heart God didn't smile upon. All I want is to get back home.”Rickey Fayne -The Devil Three Times An audacious debut spanning eight generations of a Black family in West …
Continue reading "Rickey Fayne’s The Devil Three Times: A Tale of Redemption"
"People don't tend to just talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, with no one receiving it. I mean, sometimes they do, but you know, they're obnoxious. They don't get invited back to the party." - Pearl Cleage The Nacirema Society Requests the Honor of Your Presence at a Celebration of Their First One Hundred Years by …
Continue reading "Discovering Pearl Cleage Through The Nacirema Society"
“We must remember that racism is not just an ideology; it is a disease. And racial healing is the medicine.” -Gail C. Christopher Framed by a personal narrative detailing Dr. Gail C. Christopher's commitment to help our nation to jettison the false belief in a racial hierarchy, Rx Racial Healing: A Guide to Embracing Our Humanity, …
Continue reading "Dr. Gail C. Christopher’s Guide to Racial Healing"
“Mirror Me is an exquisitely rendered meditation on race, family, and memory. With stylish prose and tender storytelling, Williamson Rosenberg explores what it means to have your identity divided at the root and ultimately answers the question we all have about where we truly belong.” Nancy Johnson, author of The Kindest Lie Lisa Williamson Rosenberg is the author of Mirror Me …
Continue reading "Lisa Williamson Rosenberg Explores Race and Family in Mirror Me"
"Papyrus came out of a conscious community trying to transform themselves with the new knowledge of history and culture that has been hidden, or discredited, or just plain old missing from our experience here in the United States. We wanted to make sure our children had the knowledge of where we come from, and our …
“LaBrie’s spellbinding prose is a metaphysical experience: cinematic, poetic, philosophical, and wholly stunning,” says Alissa Nutting, author of Made for Love and Tampa. “If psychiatric disability has impacted your life, or if you’ve ever been lonely, or if you enjoy having exceptional writing light up your brain, this book is an essential gift. This memoir will never leave …
"What I want people, maybe beyond anything, to understand is that we, like poems, are capable of such complex juxtaposition and complication in our feelings towards things... And I know in an anti-Black world that is so good at hating us that there is a Black-loving world out there ... and in that Black-loving world …
Continue reading "Exploring Hope and Identity in Danez Smith’s _BLUFF_"
“Change is going to happen whether we like it or not. You can either be dragging, kicking and screaming, or you can be part of the change.“ -Taiyon J. Coleman LISTEN https://givensbmr.libsyn.com/tai-coleman In this episode Lissa and Bukata talk with author Taiyon J. Coleman author of Traveling Without Moving: Essays from a Black Woman Trying …
"What I want readers to think of when they see grown women is a process of achieving, it's never really achieved." -Sarai Johnson Tracing four generations of remarkable Black women, Sarai Johnson follows the family across the decades as they grapple with motherhood and daughterhood, inherited trauma, and the deeply ingrained wounds that divide them while they …
Continue reading "Generational Trauma and Healing in Grown Women: A Conversation with Sarai Johnson"