Ask a Bookseller

Ask a Bookseller: ‘Is God Is’


Listen Later

How often do you settle down to read a play? Blake Worthey of Two Friends Bookstore in Bentonville, Ark., recommends the genre. Specifically, he suggests Aleshea Harris’s play “Is God Is,” which he says is so vividly written, with characters that leap off the page, that he definitely felt like he “went somewhere” in the reading.



It’s a revenge play, complete with body count, and as with the best revenge plays, the tale has a “deeply defensible” protagonist, Worthey says.


The play follows twin sisters, survivors of a fire that left one of them burnt from the neck down and the other from the neck up.


Now grown, they hear from their mother, whom they thought had died in the fire. She sends them on a mission to kill their father, whom she says is the arsonist. The girls call the mother “God.”


For Worthey, a key takeaway from the play was “Where does feminine anger go? Being angry as a man has some productive value. But given how society is set up, a woman being angry and then acting on that anger is necessarily anti-establishment, it’s necessarily anti patriarchy."


Without spoilers, he adds, “the ending creates the best possible story, even though it doesn’t maybe go in a way that it was set up to ... You don’t feel good in the way that you expect to.”

...more
View all episodesView all episodes
Download on the App Store

Ask a BooksellerBy Minnesota Public Radio

  • 4
  • 4
  • 4
  • 4
  • 4

4

4 ratings


More shows like Ask a Bookseller

View all
Hidden Brain by Hidden Brain, Shankar Vedantam

Hidden Brain

43,513 Listeners

Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! by NPR

Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!

38,786 Listeners

The Rachel Maddow Show by Rachel Maddow, MS NOW

The Rachel Maddow Show

37,321 Listeners

Code Switch by NPR

Code Switch

14,674 Listeners

The Daily by The New York Times

The Daily

113,049 Listeners

Up First from NPR by NPR

Up First from NPR

56,906 Listeners

It's Been a Minute by NPR

It's Been a Minute

9,104 Listeners

All In with Chris Hayes by MS NOW, Chris Hayes

All In with Chris Hayes

5,861 Listeners

Life Kit by NPR

Life Kit

4,852 Listeners

Consider This from NPR by NPR

Consider This from NPR

6,446 Listeners

Minnesota Now by Minnesota Public Radio

Minnesota Now

49 Listeners

The PoliticsGirl Podcast by Meidas Media Network, Leigh McGowan

The PoliticsGirl Podcast

4,514 Listeners

Letters from an American by Heather Cox Richardson

Letters from an American

6,290 Listeners