Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. There's an old James Baldwin essay

that has this line that goes, white Americans find it as difficult as white people elsewhere do

to divest themselves of the notion that they are in possession of some intrinsic value that

black people need or want. It's a brutal

line taking aim at a certain kind of condescending white liberal. The essay first appeared in

The New Yorker and is part of a new collection of New Yorker essays called The Matter of Black Lives.

Jelani Cobb co-edited the collection and talked with NPR Sarah McCammon

about putting the book together and what it took for black writers to break into the magazine.

In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life.

Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors.

On our new show, Sources and Methods, NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people,

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Here's the interview.

The Matter of Black Lives is the title of a collection of pieces published in The New Yorker.

The writers range from James Baldwin to Tony Morrison to Hilton Owls to our next guest, Jolani Cobb.

Cobb co-edited the book, and he joins us now.

Welcome to the program.

Thank you.

First of all, how did you approach this assignment? There are so many pieces you could have put in this book. How did you think about

which writers, which pieces you wanted to include? Very scrupulously. We looked at this

in the summer of last year and the aftermath of George Floyd's death while conflict was

...