After devastating floods, a painstaking process of searching for loved ones and coming together, we are on the ground in Texas and a growing challenge for public health, rising skepticism in vaccines, and Trump administration changes to vaccine policy. How do pediatricians talk to parents? Listen to consider this on this on the NPR app, or wherever you get your

podcasts. This is Fresh Air. I'm David B. and Cooley. The satirical novel Colored Television was on a number

of best book lists of 2024, including Vulture, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles

Times, Vogue, and the list of our book critic

Maureen. It's out in paperback next week. The book, written by Dan Z. Senna, is about being biracial.

That's also the theme of her other novels and her memoir. Her mother, who is white, is from a

prominent Boston family. Her father, who is white, is from a prominent Boston family. Her father, who is

black, grew up in an orphanage in a small Alabama town. SENA was born in 1968, the year the

Supreme Court overturned all existing state laws banning interracial marriage. She grew up during

the Black Power Movement. We're going to listen to Terry's

interview with Dan Zena from last September. We begin with Terry's description of her book.

Her new novel, Colored Television, is both heartfelt and satirical. It's about a writer who's devastated

when the novel she's been working on for 10 years,

a novel about how the meaning of being biracial has changed over generations, is rejected by her

publisher. If she can't publish that, she can't get tenure at the university where she teaches,

which means not having enough money to get by. Her husband is an artist whose work doesn't sell.

They have two children. She's discovering that some of her son's traits that she thought made him

unique and interesting may be signs that he's on the autism spectrum. The family lives in L.A.,

which they can't afford. So they've been living in an expensive home of a friend, a screenwriter, while he's working

abroad.

Some of the tension in her marriage is caused by financial problems, and the only solution she

sees is to pitch an idea for a TV series, a TV series with a biracial main character.

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