America: Inequality & Race
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 1 May 2018
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jesmyn Ward - author of Sing, Unburied Sing talks to Christopher Harding about editing a collection of essays called The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race and about the depictions of family life and poverty and the influence of Greek drama on her prize winning novels. Sarah Churchwell traces the history of the use and meaning of the phrases 'the American Dream' and 'America First'. John Edgar Wideman explains what he was seeking to do by blurring fact and fiction in his new short story collection American Histories.
Jesmyn Ward's novels include Salvage the Bones, Where the Line Bleeds and Sing, Unburied Sing - and a memoir called Men We Reaped. She has received a MacArthur Genius Grant and won two National Book Awards for Fiction. She has edited a collection of Essays called The Fire This Time which takes its inspiration from James Baldwin's 1963 examination of race in America, The Fire Next Time.
Professor Sarah Churchwell is the author of books including Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby and Behold America: A History of America First and the American Dream
John Edgar Wideman's work includes the novels The Cattle Killing and Philadelphia Fire and the memoir Brothers and Keepers. His new collection of short stories - American Histories - weaves real characters including Frederick Douglass and Jean-Michel Basquiat into imaginary narratives.
Producer: Torquil MacLeod
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right? |
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| 0:32.0 | Hello, I'm Chris Harding. |
| 0:33.4 | Welcome to BBC Radio 3's Arts and Ideas discussion program, |
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| 0:55.1 | This is the BBC. |
| 1:00.5 | Hello. |
| 1:01.5 | It's hard to believe that we're very nearly 10 years on from this. |
| 1:06.7 | If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, |
| 1:15.6 | who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, |
| 1:23.6 | who still questions the power of our democracy. |
| 1:30.0 | Tonight is your answer. |
| 1:37.3 | Barack Obama and his inauguration address in January 2009. |
| 1:42.5 | For a few magical months, a lot of people around the world wanted to believe that the story of race in America might |
| 1:45.2 | have a shape to it after all. Slavery, to civil rights, to the presidency, and to what pundits |
| 1:52.2 | started calling a post-racial society. It said something about Obama's extraordinary charisma |
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