Slavery Stories
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 598 Ratings
🗓️ 28 November 2018
⏱️ 59 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A long lost classic by William Melvin Kelley, who coined the term "woke" back in 1962 in a New York Times article, Esi Edugyan's Booker shortlisted novel, and new research on slavery with historians Christienna Fryar, Kevin Waite, and Andrea Livesey. Laurence Scott presents.
A Different Drummer was the debut novel of Kelley - first published when he was 24. Compared to William Faulkner and James Baldwin, it was forgotten until an article about it earlier this year. Kelley died aged 79 in 2017. His story imagines the day the black population of a Southern US town decide to get up and all go. Canadian writer Esi Edugyan has imagined a black slave becoming a scientist in her novel Washington Black.
You can hear more Free Thinking discussion on American culture and history here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06jzmf6
Producer: Luke Mulhall
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? |
| 0:23.3 | It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream. |
| 0:28.8 | Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:32.3 | This is the BBC. |
| 0:36.2 | Nothing keeps you company like a good idea. |
| 0:38.9 | I'm Lauren Scott, and thanks for downloading this Arts and Ideas podcast from BBC Radio 3. |
| 0:44.4 | That good company is parking the car, and it'll be right with you after this message. |
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| 1:30.8 | Hello there. On today's program, remembering and forgetting in stories of the slave trade and its |
| 1:36.5 | legacies, we'll remember a forgotten masterpiece of American literature from William Melvin Kelly, |
| 1:42.3 | the man credited with coining the term, |
| 1:44.3 | Woke, a word that's having its own revival. His debut novel has just been reissued |
| 1:49.3 | after a clue to its existence was found in a second-hand bookshop. I'll also be |
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