Ep. 112 R. Eric Thomas//Here for It
The Stacks
Traci Thomas
4.8 • 1.8K Ratings
🗓️ 20 May 2020
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
R. Eric Thomas is the author of Here for It and the writer behind Elle.com's daily column "Eric Reads the News". Eric joins the show to talk about centering his identities of Black, Christian, Gay, and American in Here for It, his collection of humorous and thoughtful essays. We also discuss pop culture as a unifying force, Maxine Waters, and how dreams really do come true (and how badly we need to remember that right now).
The Stacks Book Club selection for May is The Giver by Lois Lowry, we will discuss the book with Sue Thomas on May 27th.
You can find links to everything we discuss on today's show on The Stacks' Website: https://thestackspodcast.com/2020/05/20/ep-112-r-eric-thomas
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Stacks, a podcast about books and the people who read them. |
| 0:07.8 | I'm your host Tracy Thomas. |
| 0:09.5 | Today our guest is our Eric Thomas. |
| 0:11.5 | Eric is the author of Here for It or How to Save Your Soul in America, |
| 0:15.0 | which is a collection of essays about his life as a queer black Christian in the United States. |
| 0:20.0 | Eric is also a senior staff writer at L.com where he writes a comedic column called Eric Rea. Eric reads the news. the news. |
| 0:25.0 | We talk today about empathy, pop culture, |
| 0:28.0 | and the lasting legacy of timely books. |
| 0:30.0 | As is always the case, |
| 0:32.0 | everything we talk about on today's episode can be found in the |
| 0:34.6 | link in the show notes. |
| 0:36.0 | Okay, now it's time for my conversation'm here with our Eric Thomas. Let me just start here. You go by Eric, right? I do. Okay. Great. I didn't I wasn't sure I didn't want to be like, are Eric and you know? |
| 0:54.8 | No, everybody asked. I didn't realize that it would be a thing in my life and I'm like, it's my |
| 0:59.3 | parents fault. You know, they named me a Robert Eric and then they just called me Eric and I'm like you know this is complicated every interaction I've had with my entire life. |
| 1:08.0 | I love that. Okay, Eric, welcome to the stacks.'re going to start where we always start. |
| 1:15.0 | 30 seconds or so, can you tell us just about your book, Here For It? |
| 1:19.0 | No, sure. The book's called Here For It, or How to Save Your Soul in America. |
| 1:22.0 | It's a collection of |
| 1:22.7 | humorous essays about identity and belonging. It takes different positions of |
| 1:29.4 | otherness and moves them to the center. So I didn't want to just because I have a marginalized identity, |
| 1:34.0 | didn't want to always be on the margin. And so it's about the intersections of black identity, |
| 1:39.4 | queer identity, Christian identity, American identity. And they're all funny essays. |
... |
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