“Black people being murdered is unfortunately a constant in this country. Murdered with impunity. It’s something that’s constantly on my mind,” Adjei-Brenyah says. “So some of these stories respond to that very specifically.” Plus, Joseph Ellis discusses his new book, “American Dialogue.”
Yesterday
Book Club: Let's Talk About 'Wuthering Heights,' by Emily Brontë
Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights” is a tale of star-crossed lovers: Catherine, the wild daughter of an aristocratic family, and Heathcliff, an orphan whom Catherine’s father brings home unexpectedly. While Catherine’s brother and mother denigrate Heathcliff, depriving him of an ... Show More
54m 11s
Feb 24
Director Clint Bentley on Adapting ‘Train Dreams’ for the Big Screen
The latest film from the writer and director Clint Bentley, “Train Dreams,” is nominated for four Oscars, including best adapted screenplay. The movie is based on Denis Johnson’s 2011 novella of the same name and tells the story of Robert Grainier, a logger in the Pacific Northwe ... Show More
38m 40s
Feb 20
Guillermo del Toro on Writing and Directing the Oscar-Nominated ‘Frankenstein’
For decades, the director Guillermo del Toro has built a career blending the grotesque and the beautiful in films like “Pan’s Labyrinth,” “The Shape of Water” and “Pinocchio.” Now he’s earned his latest Academy Award nomination for his adaptation of “Frankenstein,” Mary Shelley’s ... Show More
35m 46s
Oct 2021
In 'The Matter of Black Lives,' generations of Black thinkers probe American racism
Back in June 2020, during a summer of protests for racial justice, the New Yorker republished 'Letter from a Region in my Mind," a seminal James Baldwin essay calling out the ignorance of liberal white Americans. In the following months, writer Jelani Cobb put together a collecti ... Show More
8m 45s
Sep 2021
Melissa Daniels-Rauterkus, "Afro-Realisms and the Romances of Race: Rethinking Blackness in the African American Novel" (LSU Press, 2020)
From the 1880s to the early 1900s, a particularly turbulent period of U.S. race relations, the African American novel provided a powerful counternarrative to dominant and pejorative ideas about blackness. In Afro-Realisms and the Romances of Race: Rethinking Blackness in the Afri ... Show More
2h 28m