We talk about how women are coping with an escalation of government-sponsored violence in Haiti, and a political crisis we hear little about but which has been going on for over a year. Judith Mirkinson, president of the SF Bay Chapter of the National Lawyers’ Guild and the Comfort Women Justice Coalition and Leslie Mullin, long-time member … Continued
Acclaimed novelist Karen Joy Fowler talks about her beloved friend, Ursula K. LeGuin. We also hear clips from a few of LeGuin’s interviews and speeches. LeGuin, who has been recognized as one of the most important writers of the last century, frequently talked about fantasy and science fiction as ways of imagining deeper realities than … Continued
An in-depth conversation about parenting transgender kids, with Janna Barkin and Mere Abrams. Janna is the author of the book, He’s Always Been My Son, which traces her family’s journey in supporting and raising their transgender son, Amaya. Mere is a therapist and gender specialist in private practice and also Clinical Research Associate and Study … Continued
We speak with Reem Assil, who was a community organizer for ten years before deciding that her true passion is food. Reem started Reem’s California, an Arab street corner bakery in Oakland’s Fruitvale district, with the help of several community initiatives including the Women’s Initiative for Self-Employment, La Cocina and ICA Fund Good Jobs. And in … Continued
What lessons should and shouldn’t we take from the election debacle, and how do we seize on the strengths we have right now to turn in a new direction? Kate Raphael sits down with Uruguayan born novelist Carolina de Robertis, filmmaker Pamela Harris and acclaimed poet, performer and novelist Aya de Leon. Carolina De Robertis … Continued
Since its inception, one of the main preoccupations of the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been black rebellion. From the early days of the Harlem Renaissance until at least J. Edgar Hoover’s death in 1972, the FBI has had a fascinated fear of African American literature. William J. Maxwell discusses how the FBI extensively surveilled … Continued
Universalists like to say art transcends identity, but today’s guests insist it illuminates it. We speak with Sarah Schulman, whose new novel, The Cosmopolitans, is an updating of Balzac’s classic Cousin Bette. Schulman sets the story in the Greenwich Village of the 1950s, using the story to look at intersections of racism, sexism, homophobia and … Continued
Dr. Marcia Chatelain, author of South Side Girls: Growing Up in the Great Migration, discusses the construction of Black girlhood in Chicago in the first half of the twentieth century, and what it tells us about the intersections of race and gender. She also talks about Black Lives Matter, why it’s rewriting 2016 and … Continued
