Remarkable Receptions

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.

Paul Beatty’s novel The Sellout became the first novel by an American to win the prestigious Man Booker Prize in 2016.
Episode by Cameron Leader-Picone 

A brief discussion of the prolific scholarship on African American novels by scholar Trudier Harris.
Episode by Howard Rambsy II
The script was read by Kassandra Timm.

The stories behind the reception to Larsen’s novel.
Episode written by Donavan Ramon 
The script was read by Kassandra Timm.