The 1990s gave way to a vibrant literary outpouring of African American novels that offered myriad representational possibilities freeing readers and writers alike.
 
Episode by Richard Schur -- Professor of English at Drury University. He is the author of Parodies of Ownership: Hip-Hop Aesthetics and Intellectual Property Law and co-editor (with Lovalerie King) of Justice Unveiled: African American Culture and the Law.
Episode read by Kassandra Timm

A graphic novel engages black history and Captain America.
Episode by Stephyn Phillips. Read by Kassandra Timm.  

How an excerpt from an upcoming novel became a popular short story. 
Episode by Kenton Rambsy.

A brief take on a photo titled "The Sisterhood, 1977," which has been a source of inspiration for countless readers and viewers. 
Episode by Courtney Thorsson. Read by Kassandra Timm. 

Courtney Thorsson, an associate professor in the English Department at the University of Oregon. She is the author of Women’s Work: Nationalism and Contemporary African American Women's Novels and The Sisterhood: Black Women's Literary Organizing, an interpretive cultural history of The Sisterhood forthcoming from Columbia University Press. Courtney is grateful to poet and scholar Harryette Mullen for her work to correctly identify the women in the photo. 

Here's why Richard Wright’s autobiography Black Boy, Margaret Walker Alexander’s novel Jubilee and John Oliver Killens’s novel ‘Sippi are held in high regard by most black folks from Mississippi.
Episode by C. Liegh McInnis -- poet, short story writer, author of eight books, former editor of Black Magnolias Literary Journal, and nationally noted Prince scholar. 

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. 

Episode by Richard Schur.  Read by Kassandra Timm. 

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. 

Episode by Joseph G. Ramsey, a professor of English and American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston.   Read by Kassandra Timm

Here's how high school students at a school in Maryland responded to Toni Morrison's the Seven Days from Song of Solomon.  
Episode by Abbey Morgan. 

College students at one university have expressed a range of feelings about the many new words that they encounter when reading Colson Whitehead’s novel The Intuitionist. 
Episode by Howard Rambsy II
The script was read by Kassandra Timm.