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.
“It is not your environment, it is you – the quality of your minds, the integrity of your souls, and the determination of your wills – that will decide your future and shape your lives”. Dr. Benjamin E. Mays In this special episode of Black Market Reads, Lissa Jones turns the conversation from the authors …
Continue reading "Literacy as Liberation: Voices from Benjamin E. Mays School"
"The letters became words, the words became thoughts, and those thoughts became my voice. I may not remember the name I was given when I was born, but I found my voice, one that no one could take away." - Phillis Wheatley To mark the 100th Anniversary of Carter G. Woodson's Black History Month (previously known …
Continue reading "Episode 109 – 100 Years of Black Freedom with performance by Phillis Wheatley"
There is nothing that is new in The house on Rondo because it's happening around us all the time. Black neighborhoods are being gentrified, they're being destroyed, in the name of progress again. And who loses out ...?Debra Stone When thirteen-year-old Zenobia has to leave her friends and spend the summer at Grandma’s while Mama …
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."
"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 …
"This has to be an all hands on deck situation where we say, we are going to, together, as a country, solve this problem. I think that might be magical thinking in this world we're in right now, but I do see some steps ahead.." Linda Villarosa In this inaugural episode of Black Market Reads: …
Continue reading "Linda Villarosa, UNDER THE SKIN – The Hidden Toll of Racism on Health in America"
"Repositioning ourselves to storiesprovides encouragement, it fortifies us, it edifies us, and it compels us to live out the resilience, the excellence of a people."Bukata Hayes In this episode Lissa welcomes co-host Bukata Hayes as they explore the power of storytelling and the nourishment of soulful food with author Rose McGee. ROSE MCGEE, founder of …