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 …
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"The family itself is a tribe of people who are committed, who've taken the name out of a loyalty, out of faith, out of unity. And they are all coming together as a family... Just because we're not all blood doesn't make us any less of a family." Santi Elijah Holley “An Amerikan Family is a …
Continue reading "Santi Elijah Holley, An Amerikan Family: The Shakurs and the Nation They Created"
"I think that you'll have taught our history as our armor, that Black people are more than the sum of our traumas or tragedies. That Black history is the way, and a path to look back. I think that we will remember how to be good to each other and how to speak well of …
Continue reading "Charlayne Hunter-Gault, My People – Five Decades of Writing About Black Lives"
Left: Cover of Resmaa's NYT Bestselling book My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies; Right: Lissa and Resmaa in the studio. On this episode, Lissa sits down with Resmaa Menakem, the New York Times bestselling author of My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our …
Continue reading "Resmaa Menakem on Racialized Trauma and Somatic Abolitionism"
“How can I be unarmed when it is my blackness you fear," writes Carol Anderson in her latest work, The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America (Bloomsbury, 2021). This episode was recorded as part of a live event in anticipation of the release of Carol Anderson’s latest Book The Second: hosted by …
“As you read these pages, please consider these words to be an open invitation—an extended hand and an opportunity to learn, to grow, to get comfortable with being uncomfortable,” writes Ford Foundation President Darren Walker in his new book, From Generosity to Justice: A New Gospel of Wealth. According to Walker, embracing discomfort is a …
On May 21st Black Market Reads launched our first all virtual livestream event. In partnership with the Walker Art Center, The Givens Foundation for African American Literature, Platform Arts and iDream.tv, Lissa spoke with Dr. Seph Rodney about the changing role of museums. Together, they discuss Rodney’s 2019 book The Personalization of the Museum Visit, …
In the Season 5 premier, Lissa sits down with author Kalisha Buckhanon to discuss her new novel Speaking of Summer (COUNTERPOINT, 2019). This episode was recorded live at an event hosted by Magers & Quinn Booksellers in Minneapolis. Kalisha Buckhanon is the author of the novels Solemn, Conception, and Upstate, which was selected as an inaugural National Book Foundation …
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On this episode, Lissa sits down with DeRay Mckesson – civil rights activist, community organizer, and now author of the book On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope. In 2014 he left his job with the Minneapolis Public Schools to join and document the protests in Ferguson Missouri, and has since …
"We have to figure out, not only some way to write the story, but how to draw people to the story and keep them in it," says poet and spoken word artist Patricia Smith of the work of poets in the fourth season premier of Black Market Reads - her most recent poetry collection, Incendiary …