All Of It with Alison Stewart

[REBROADCAST FROM November 19, 2021] Fresh off her Pulitzer Prize win for her last novel and 2020 Get Lit with All Of It Book Club selection, The Night Watchman, author Louise Erdrich joins us to discuss her new novel, The Sentence, which tells the story of a haunting at a book store. NPR says The Sentence is “an absorbing and unquiet novel.”

Louise Erdrich's writing will be featured as part of the Selected Shorts program at Symphony Space, hosted by Alison Stewart, on February 16, 2022. 

The documentary, "Owned: A Tale of Two Americas," tells the story of the racist housing policies enacted by the federal government in post-World War II America, and how those decisions set the country on a path to the inequitable and segregated neighborhoods that exist in many of our cities today. Emmy-award winning director Giorgio Angelini is with us to speak about the film and the state of housing inequity in the United States. "Owned: A Tale of Two Americas," debuts on PBS today, February 7, 2022. It will also be available to stream on the PBS Video App.

The Lumineers recorded their most recent album, BRIGHTSIDE, in the Hudson Valley. They joined us for our January Get Lit with All Of It virtual book club event, providing two special performances, and an interview with bandmember Wesley Schultz.

The subject of book banning has been in the news after a Tennessee school board voted to remove the graphic book Maus from the curriculum. The discussion has shed new light on the kinds of books being banned from schools around the country. One of the novels that has often been cited on the American Library Associations list of Top 10 Most Challenged books is Laurie Halse Anderson's 1999 novel Speak, which tells the story of a high school girl dealing with trauma after she is sexually assaulted. Halse Anderson has been an outspoken advocate for intellectual freedom, and has been honored for her work by the National Coalition Against Censorship and the National Council of Teachers of English. She joins us to discuss this new wave of book banning.

Few Good Things is Chicago rapper and producer Saba's follow-up to 2018's widely acclaimed CARE FOR ME. In between, he's worked on projects with his collective Pivot Gang, J Cole's Dreamville, and the supergroup Ghetto Sage. On the new album, he's joined by heavy hitters like Black Thought, Krayzie Bone, and G Herbo. Saba stops by for a release day Listening Party.

A new debut novel tells a story of lust and obsession on a college campus... among the professors. When a popular English professor finds out her husband is under investigation for his behavior with former students, she turns her attention to a man named Vladimir, a young, married, novelist who has just come to campus. Her infatuation quickly turns to potentially dangerous obsession. Author Julia May Jonas joins us to discuss her novel, Vladimir, as part of our series '2022 Debuts.'

We air our conversation with author Gary Shteyngart from our January Get Lit with All Of It virtual book club event. We spent the month reading his novel Our Country Friends, which tells the story of a group of friends in lockdown together in the Hudson Valley... quarantined with a famous actor. The novel was named one of the best of 2021 by The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, and Kirkus, among many more.

Two New York City galleries are featuring the work of contemporary Ethiopian painter Hana Yilma Godine, who works with layers of oil and acrylic paint, as well as collage and fabric. For these shows, Godine, who's work has been featured in the National Museum of Ethiopia, focused her attention on the social settings of her home city of Addis Ababa, with a particular eye towards Ethiopian women within those spaces. The show, Hair Salon in Addis Ababa, is on view at Fridman Gallery and Rachel Uffner until March 5.

Joining us from WNYC's newsroom culture desk, editor Jennifer Vanasco comes on All Of It for a final installment of her ongoing series The Get Out, where she discusses what to do in the city this weekend. For this special edition Vanasco shares her all-time picks for what to do in NYC, plus special events this weekend.

The new documentary "Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché" tells the story of the frontwoman of the short-lived but influential 1970s British punk rock band X-Ray Spex. The film is co-directed by Paul Sng and Celeste Bell, the only daughter of Poly Styrene. In addition to documenting the life and career of the singer, a woman of color who stood out from the rest of the punk scene at the time, the film also explores the complicated relationship between mother and daughter. Bell and Sng join us.