Luise is back for part two of Separate Beds. The Living is Easy is Dorothy West at her most vivid and alive, and a mother-daughter read was exactly the right way to come at it.

We spent a good chunk of time reveling in how powerfully West conjures her world, Boston's Black middle class in the early twentieth century feels so fully realized you can practically smell the parlor.

And then there's Cleo. An absolute force of chaos, and we loved every second of it. West gives us someone genuinely difficult to love and makes you love her anyway, which is its own kind of magic.

We also got into something we've been circling for a while: what does it mean to actively make space for writers outside the traditional canon? West was writing at the height of the Harlem Renaissance and somehow still ends up on fewer syllabi than she deserves. We didn't have all the answers, but we agreed the conversation is worth having, loudly and often.

Luise, you're basically a co-host at this point. Please come back.

Get the book: Support your local bookstore or grab it through Bookshop.org link

Links from the Episode: 

Dorothy West on Harvard's Black Women Oral History Project: link

The Zora Canon: link