Sylly

Welcome back to Sylly, a podcast for the curious and critical. We’re your hosts, Mbiye Kasonga and Tembe Denton-Hurst. In episode 21, we’re sharing our Fall/Winter 2026 reading plans, the books we’re pre-ordering and hoping to get to before the end of 2026. We talk about why curiosity and criticism are two sides of the same coin, Mbiye’s “Oprah theory of the internet,” and why pre-orders matter more to publishers (and the bestseller list) than you might think. We also trade notes on what we’re reading right now, from Kindred to Butter to East of Eden, and make the case for an Irish writing visa for Hollywood.

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For the full list of books we discussed, subscribe to Sylly on Substack

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Welcome back to Sylly, a podcast for the curious and critical. We’re your hosts, Mbiye Kasonga and Tembe Denton-Hurst. In episode 20, we dig into criticism as a practice and what actually separates a critique from a review, a hot take, or a close reading, using Tembe’s review of Marlon James’s The Disappearers for Vulture as our jumping-off point. We talk about Saidiya Hartman’s concept of critical fabulation, why Toni Morrison’s work gets read as “horror,” and why we think fiction needs more unapologetically racist characters. We also get into the growing panopticon around what we read in public, the literary world’s collision with celebrity culture, and close out with Octavia Butler, Lucille Clifton, and a few thoughts on what freedom actually requires.

If you love Sylly, tell us! Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome back to Sylly, a podcast for the curious and critical. We’re your hosts, Mbiye Kasonga and Tembe Denton-Hurst.

Today’s episode looks back at a conversation that I (Mbiye) had with Sierra Greer, the author of Annie Bot. Annie Bot is a book that has haunted me since I read it. It tells the story of Annie, a robot companion purchased by Doug, a human male. The book explores several themes, but the one I’m most interested in is the idea of the female cyborg and the intersection of gender and technology. While reading Annie Bot, I was reminded of Anne Balsamo’s book, Technologies of the Gendered Body, which centers on the ways that women’s bodies are increasingly mediated by technology. 

If you love Sylly, tell us! Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts.

Check out the full list of books we discussed on our Substack

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome back to Sylly, a podcast for the curious and critical. We’re your hosts, Mbiye Kasonga and Tembe Denton-Hurst. In episode 18, we’re talking about the books that have actually captured our attention this summer, and what we’re hoping to finish before summer ends. We talk about why we’ve both sworn off reading blurbs and watching trailers, what it means to read outside your own identity without losing sight of whose stories you’re prioritizing, and why Tembe thinks we’ve entered a second Romantic period in fiction.

If you love Sylly, tell us! Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts.

Books We Talked About

• Good Morning Means I Love You by Kendra Allen
• The Disappearers by Marlon James
• The Wedding by Dorothy West
• Butter by Asako Yuzuki
• Hooked by Asako Yuzuki
• Kitten by Stacy Yu
• Pool House by Mary H.K. Choi
• Pure Men by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr
• The Most Secret Memory of Men by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr
• Transcription by Ben Lerner
• East of Eden by John Steinbeck
• Goliath by Ronald Lee Robertson (mentioned as a companion read to East of Eden)
• Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
• Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination by Toni Morrison
• Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
• On Eating: The Making and Unmaking of My Appetites by Alicia Kennedy
• The Book of Chuck by Latoya Watkins
• The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman by Deesha Philyaw
• The Veiled Prophet: Secret Societies, White Supremacy, and the Struggle for St. Louis by Devin Thomas O’Shea
• Take What You Can by Naema Costa
• Soft Spots by Layla Renee
• Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
• Krik? Krak! by Edwidge Danticat
• Performances of Spiral Time by Leda Maria Martins
• Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World by Malcolm Harris

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Welcome back to Sylly, a podcast for the curious and critical. We’re your hosts, Mbiye Kasonga and Tembe Denton-Hurst. In episode 17, we’re thinking about freedom using Gathering Blossoms Under Fire as a primary text. The journals of Alice Walk offer us insight into what it means to be a free woman, and a free Black woman at that. Tembe and I discuss how people misinterpret freedom, confusing it with power and domination. We round out the conversation by discussing books that center liberated women.

Books We Talked About

Gathering Blossoms Under Fire by Alice Walker

On Eating by Alicia Kennedy

New Skin by Sarah Wang

Permanence by Sophie Mackintosh

The Pearl by John Steinbeck

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

The Neapolitan Novels Boxed Set by Elena Ferrante

They All Fall in Love at the End by Haili Blassingame

Parable of the Sower & Parable of the Talents Boxed Set by Octavia Butler

Matilda by Roald Dahl

Heavy by Kiese Laymon

Sugar by Bernice McFadden

Sula by Toni Morrison

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Fat Swim by Emma Copley Eisenberg

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Welcome back to Sylly, a podcast for the curious and critical. We’re your hosts, Mbiye Kasonga and Tembe Denton-Hurst. In this episode, I (Mbiye) sat down with acclaimed writer Kiese Laymon to talk about his novel Long Division, among other things.

Kiese and I had a wide-ranging conversation, using Long Division as our primary text, alongside the fable of the City Mouse and the Country Mouse, to think through questions of origin, ambition, and self-love. We also get into the mechanics of Kiese’s process: how sound and rhythm came before sentences for him, how hip-hop taught him more about craft than his classrooms did, and why he believes in revision as an ethos.

Books & authors mentioned:

• Long Division and Heavy by Kiese Laymon
• Homebodies by Tembe Denton-Hurst
• Free Girls by Kristen McCallum
• Frindle by Andrew Clements
• The Catcher in the Rye and Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
• Pimp by Iceberg Slim
• The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw
• We Are A Haunting by Tariq White
• The Prophets by Robert Jones Jr.
• Goliath by Ronald Lee Robertson
• Dominion by Addie Citchens

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Welcome back to Sylly, a podcast for the curious and critical. Today’s episode is a solo with just me, Mbiye, and I come bearing a gift: a summer playlist. Tune in to the episode to hear me chat about the highlights of my summer so far, which include watching DRC’s national team play in the World Cup soccer and reading as widely and voraciously as I can while still being as outside as possible. 

Check out the playlist on Spotify: The Sylly Summer Soundtrack

As always, if there’s anything you want us to talk about on the pod during our office hours, email us at: [email protected].

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome back to Sylly, a podcast for the curious and critical. We’re your hosts, Mbiye Kasonga and Tembe Denton-Hurst. In episode 14, we’re coming to you with our annual summer reading special. Before we get to the books, we take stock of summer as a season and a feeling: the joy, the pressure, the ennui, and why August is, as Tembe puts it, “the Sunday of the year.” We also get into the song of the summer debate (is it Drake’s? Is it ever anyone’s anymore?), the lineage of Corinne Bailey Rae, Denise Williams, and Minnie Riperton, and why the Congolese national team’s airport fits deserve their own conversation.

Then we get to the actual reading matrix: sexy vs. banal, short story vs. epic, and share our picks for the season, which range from a gorgeous Rastafari memoir to a 727-page Argentine horror novel, with stops at Zadie Smith, James Baldwin, and a very surprising debut. We also make a case for summer as the right time to read something devastating, something transportive, and yes, something sexy.

We round things out with some relationship advice nobody asked for, and a reminder from Tembe that we owe each other everything.

As always, if there’s anything you want us to talk about on the pod during our office hours, email us at: [email protected].

• How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair
• Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez
• On Beauty by Zadie Smith
• If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English by Noor Naga
• Leave Your Mess at Home by Tolani Akinnola
• Another Country by James Baldwin
• 
  

• The Sisters by Jonas Hassen Khemiri
• Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
• Seven Days in June by Tia Williams
• The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi
• Homebodies by Tembe Denton-Hurst
• Pool House by Mary H.K. Choi

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Welcome back to Sylly, a podcast for the curious and critical. We’re your hosts, Mbiye Kasonga and Tembe Denton-Hurst. In episode 13, we’re making the case for contemporary fiction and engaging with the present. Our culture is obsessed with nostalgia, and it often feels like we’re stuck in a loop of reboots and sequels. In the literary world, that nostalgia manifests in a reflexive distrust of contemporary novels or an insistent belief that books are getting worse.

To counter that narrative, we created a list of 10 excellent contemporary novel recommendations, just in time for summer reading. You’re welcome.

Listen to the full episode on Spotify or Apple.

Subscribe to Sylly on Substack

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

Office of Historical Corrections by Danielle Evans

The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw

Heads of the Colored People by Nafissa Thompson-Spires

Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue

Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

Patsy by Nicole Dennis-Benn

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

Necessary Fiction by Eloghosa Osunde

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Welcome back to Sylly, a podcast for the curious and critical. We’re your hosts, Mbiye Kasonga and Tembe Denton-Hurst. In episode 12, we’re taking stock of 2026 so far, and it’s been a disrespectful ass year, to say the least. Jerome Powell revised jobs numbers and told us what we already knew: there are no jobs. White ladies are playing majhong (again) and celebrating the Lunar New Year. Watching the movie Her feels like watching a documentary (what did Spike Jonze know?!). Watching Ex Machina feels like watching Melania. And through it all, someone online is telling you that your nervous system needs to be reset.

We don’t really have any answers in this episode, but we do have a lot of jokes. 

Subscribe to Sylly on Substack

As always, if there’s anything you want us to talk about on the pod during our office hours, email us at: [email protected]. Thanks for listening, and we’ll be back with a new episode in a couple of weeks!

• Seduction Theory by Emily Adrian
• Loved One by Aisha Muharrar
• The Wedding by Dorothy West
• Sugar by Bernice McFadden
• Best Woman by Rose Dommu
• What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.