Season 6: Episode 1 | Black Men Novelists and Intellectual Traditions
A short take on an interconnected thread of intellectualism in novels by black men.
Season 5: Episode 7 | Terry McMillan’s Waiting to Exhale
Terry McMillan’s novel was among a chorus of late twentieth-century books that signaled a reawakening in the African American cultural imagination and revealed a strong interest in the representation of Black love, romance, and marriage.
Season 5: Episode 6 | How Students Connect to Ralph Ellison’s “Battle Royal”
A short take on how students at a college in Georgia respond to Ralph Ellison’s “Battle Royal.”
Season 5: Episode 5 | The Mixed Results of Sutton Grigg’s Debut
Despite revieing positive reviews, why did Sutton Griggs have some unfavorable feelings about the circumstances surrounding his first book?
Season 5: Episode 3 | Angie Thomas and Literary Activism
Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give found a raw edge that audiences were keen to address.
Season 5: Episode 2 | Frances E. W. Harper’s Iola Leroy
College students are often excited to discuss the subtle radicalism of Iola Leroy by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper.
Season 5: Episode 1 | African American Novels and the 1990s
The 1990s gave way to a vibrant literary outpouring of African American novels that offered myriad representational possibilities freeing readers and writers alike.
Season 4: Episode 6 | The Story of Battle Royal
How an excerpt from an upcoming novel became a popular short story.
Season 4: Episode 3 | The Evolving Reception of The Bluest Eye
Here’s how a book can be initially misunderstood and ignored, then gain literary recognition and acclaim, become adopted by the education system and taught broadly, and then become banned.
Season 4: Episode 2 | Richard Wright’s Native Son
The story of Richard Wright’s Native Son, the first black American best-seller, a novel that is both a shocking page-turner, and a philosophical provocation stirring controversy to this day.