Charmaine Wilkerson, BLACK CAKE: A Novel

Totally Booked with Zibby

Zibby Owens

Connection, Inspiration, Moms, Entertainment, Arts, Reading, Books, Parenting, Literary

4.4 • 602 Ratings

🗓️ 12 June 2022

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Charmaine Wilkerson joins Zibby to discuss her debut novel, Black Cake, which was already a Read with Jenna book club pick and a New York Times Editors Choice. The two talk about the moment Charmaine knew the story she was going to write, which experiences and feelings from her own life are infused in her writing, and the roundabout way she ultimately became a novelist. Charmaine also shares her extensive and diverse reading list and what she is working on next.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, this is Vivi Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast. Moms don't have time to read books.
0:07.5	And speaking of books, I have two of my own books coming out this spring and summer.
0:12.7	Princess Charming is a picture book, which debuts on April 19th. And bookends, a memoir of love, loss, and literature.
0:20.5	Comes out on July 1st, and it is truly a labor of love.
0:23.8	I hope you'll pre-order, order, and join me on tour as I go across the country.
0:28.5	You can find out more at Zibiowens.com or bookendsmemoir.com.
0:34.3	And you can follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens because I always post about everything.
0:38.9	Enjoy the show.
0:41.7	Charmaine Wilkerson is the author of Black Cake, a novel.
0:45.1	She is an American writer who has lived in Jamaica and is based in Italy.
0:48.5	A graduate of Barnard College in Stanford University, she is a former journalist whose award-winning short fiction has appeared in various magazines and anthologies. Blackcake is her first novel. Welcome, Charmaine. Thank you so much for
0:59.4	coming on Momsdon have time to read books to discuss Blackcake. Thank you, Zibb. It's great to be here.
1:06.3	Amazing. Okay, I'm sure most people already know what your book is about, but if you wouldn't mind
1:10.7	describing it for the people who don't, that would be great.
1:13.9	Well, to give some context, it's a multi-generational story. So it goes back and forth between the past and the present. But the kernel of the story sort of revolves around Byron and Benny in the present day.
1:29.9	Byron and Benny are a brother and sister who were once inseparable, but there's been a huge
1:35.6	shift in their family. They haven't seen each other in years. And now they're forced to come
1:40.4	together because their mother has just died. And she's left them this really unusual
1:46.1	inheritance, a small black cake, a traditional Caribbean fruit cake sitting in her freezer.
1:54.1	And she's also left them this really lengthy recording on a USB pen drive, hours and hours of recording.
2:02.2	And this whole experience is going to upend their lives because they're going to learn
2:07.4	that nothing is quite the way they thought it was.
	...

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