WPKN Community Radio

This month on Live Culture Martha is pleased to talk with Catherine E. McKinley, author of four critically acclaimed books, about her most recent project The African Lookbook: A Visual History of 100 Years of African Women published by Bloomsbury in 2021. This lavishly illustrated book is an exploration of Africa's photographic history, fashion, trade history, and African women's selfhood. The book features works from The McKinley Collection, a personal archive representing African photography from 1870 to the present. This unique project features an introduction by Edwidge Danticat, a foreword by Jacqueline Woodson and original collages, sourced with images from the collection, by Frida Orupabo.

The African Lookbook creates a powerful locus where where history and personal narrative blend to construct a sweeping, unprecedented visual history of African women. Join us for a conversation about collecting, identities, shifting technologies, fashion and the fascinating global history of textiles, trade, and migration.

A Fulbright scholar, McKinley has also published The Book of Sarahs, a memoir, which chronicles growing up in the 1970s and 80s as one of the less than 15,000 Black and "Bi-racial" children adopted into white homes, and McKinley's search for self in the Jewish, Choctaw, and Black family spread from Ghana to Cape Verde, Las Vegas to Boston. She is also the author of Indigo: In Search of the Color that Seduced the World, which recounts a journey along ancient trade routes in eleven West African countries in search of "blue gold" with its connections to spirituality, art, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and the deepest human desires. Her other writings include explorations of Black lesbian identity, African textiles and material culture, the birth in 1957 of African's first industrial doll alongside Independence, the fashions of Namibian Herero women and the legacy of the first genocide of the 20th century. McKinley has taught creative nonfiction writing at Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University. She lives in New York City.

More about Catherine E. McKinley can be found here: https://catherinemckinley.net/

More about the African Lookbook can be found here: https://www.bloomsbury.com/in/the-african-lookbook-9781620403532/

More about The McKinley Collection can be found here: https://themckinleycollection.com/

This episode also includes music clips by Rokia Traoré & Fats Waller.

Now in it's 5th Year, Live Culture is a monthly radio program

about art, ideas and visual culture,

hosted by artist Martha Willette Lewis

& airing on WPKN radio, Bridgeport Ct.

Host: Kathy Connor

Kathy speaks with Ayurvedic expert and physician, Dr. Stuart Rothenberg, national medical director of the TM Health Professionals Association and Maharishi AyurVeda Association of America. Dr. Rothenberg explains that at the basis of AyurVeda, an ancient health care system, is the concept of creating balance for the mind/body by reawakening the intelligence of the physiology. By following a few life style suggestions, health can be improved.

For more information visit www.miu.edu for courses on Maharishi AyurVeda.

This month on Live Culture Martha is pleased to talk with Catherine E. McKinley, author of four critically acclaimed books, about her most recent project The African Lookbook: A Visual History of 100 Years of African Women published by Bloomsbury in 2021. This lavishly illustrated book is an exploration of Africa's photographic history, fashion, trade history, and African women's selfhood. The book features works from The McKinley Collection, a personal archive representing African photography from 1870 to the present. This unique project features an introduction by Edwidge Danticat, a foreword by Jacqueline Woodson and original collages, sourced with images from the collection, by Frida Orupabo.

The African Lookbook creates a powerful locus where where history and personal narrative blend to construct a sweeping, unprecedented visual history of African women. Join us for a conversation about collecting, identities, shifting technologies, fashion and the fascinating global history of textiles, trade, and migration.

A Fulbright scholar, McKinley has also published The Book of Sarahs, a memoir, which chronicles growing up in the 1970s and 80s as one of the less than 15,000 Black and "Bi-racial" children adopted into white homes, and McKinley's search for self in the Jewish, Choctaw, and Black family spread from Ghana to Cape Verde, Las Vegas to Boston. She is also the author of Indigo: In Search of the Color that Seduced the World, which recounts a journey along ancient trade routes in eleven West African countries in search of "blue gold" with its connections to spirituality, art, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and the deepest human desires. Her other writings include explorations of Black lesbian identity, African textiles and material culture, the birth in 1957 of African's first industrial doll alongside Independence, the fashions of Namibian Herero women and the legacy of the first genocide of the 20th century. McKinley has taught creative nonfiction writing at Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University. She lives in New York City.

More about Catherine E. McKinley can be found here: https://catherinemckinley.net/

More about the African Lookbook can be found here: https://www.bloomsbury.com/in/the-african-lookbook-9781620403532/

More about The McKinley Collection can be found here: https://themckinleycollection.com/

This episode also includes music clips by Rokia Traoré & Fats Waller.

*Biden Hardline Policy Toward Russia, China Sacrifices Common Interests Mel Goodman, Senior Fellow at the Center for International Policy Producer: Scott Harris

*'Border Industrial Complex' Persecutes Immigrants While Enriching Corporations Todd Miller, Journalist, and Author Producer: Scott Harris

*Police Arrest Mountain Valley Pipeline Tree-Sit Activists Ending 932-Day Direct Action Protest Crystal Mello, Tree-Sit Protester Mountain Valley Pipeline Producer: Melinda Tuhus

-Tax increase for North Carolina Coastal homes.

-Much of U.S experiencing drought conditions

-Federal flood insurance increase?

-WHO reports Coronavirus hopped from bats to humans likely

-Australian plague of rats and mice

-Environmental Voter Project is expanding

We are currently celebrating Women's History Month. On today's show the focus is on Black women in the United States Since Slavery.

Host Garnett Ankle speaks with Kenyatta Thompson, Director of Organizing at the Katal Center. The Katal Center works to strengthen the people, policies, institutions, and movements that advance equity, health, and justice for everyone.

The general topic for discussion surrounds "The Struggles of Black Women In The United States Since Slavery."

Guest Kenyatta Thompson fields questions on:

1. Women's Suffrage and Its Impact on Black Women today

2. The Lack of Equal Pay For Equal Work Done By Black Women

3. Black Women in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender & Queer, LGBTQ Community

4. The Me Too Movement and Its Impact on Black Women.

Thursday, March 25, 2021, 12 noon WPKN 89.5 FM www.wpkn.org

Host: Duo Dickinson

We are having a moment. The freak of plague is, bit by bit, abating. The drudge of Winter in Sequestration is lifting, A year cast in fear may be ending. Many are still fully house bound. Many are getting sprung – emotionally as well as physically.

We have always had our homes, but this year, like a marriage, our homes had us (for good or for ill). We have seen some become ill, some die, leaving everyone changed – either becoming the screeching harpies of guilting the offending thoughtless, or the desolate hopeless hermits, or just plain angry.

All this weirdness has has happened where we live. What do we do with this year of intimacy? Three fully engaged humans, a writer, a poet and a designer give HOME PAGE their take on this fully flipped season, now flipping again. In our homes.

Christine Woodside is a remarkable writer who has looked at the beauties of where and who we are, especially here in this part of creation. Sheila Bonenberger is an amazing poet, who has channeled the realities of who we are in this place that we do not always know. Roz Cama designs places, and sees the biosphere that we experience in and through them.

We have all been in this Year. But some have thought differently about it than we might have. Before we just snap to normal, let’s think about what we value, especially in the homes that we may know very differently than we did a year ago.

Host: Rob Fried

originally aired on Community Radio WPKN 89.5-FM in Bridgeport, CT

Host: Rob Fried

Deb Greenwood, President and CEO of the nonprofit, Center for Family Justice.

*Atlanta & Boulder Mass Shootings Underscore Urgent Need to Pass Gun Violence Prevention Legislation Po Murray, Chairwoman of Newtown Action Alliance and Newtown Action Alliance Foundation Producer: Scott Harris

*Campaign to End Solitary Confinement in Connecticut Prisons Moves Forward Sean Sellars previously incarcerated at CT’s supermax prison and Kebra Smith a former DOC Nurse Producer: Melinda Tuhus

*With Charges Dropped, Popular Former President Lula da Silva May Run Against Bolsonaro in 2022 Alexander Main, Director of International Policy with the Center for Economic and Policy Research Producer: Scott Harris