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Writers on Writing with Dr. Brenda M. Greene

Writers on Writing Interview with Jamilya Chisholm

Original Air Date: Sunday, March 31, 2024, and Sunday, April 7, 2024

Dr. Brenda Greene interviews N. Jamilya Chisholm, journalist and author of the memoir, The Community (Little A. New York, 2022). Greene and Chisholm discuss her motivation for writing this memoir, a chronicling of her childhood experience in a sect of Islam. Chisholm also delves into other topics that include mother/daughter relationships, the importance of community, literature as healing, and the impact of growing up in a spiritual community centered on Black pride and consciousness. Greene and Chisholm also discuss the challenges and rewards of writing memoirs.

 

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Writers on Writing Interview with
Kadiatou Diallo,
Mother of Amadou Diallo 

On February 4, 1999, an unarmed 23-year-old Guinean student named Amadou Diallo was fired upon with 41 rounds.   The four officers who shot him were found not guilty.  Dr. Greene interviews Kadiatou Diallo, the mother of Amadou Diallo.  They discuss her memoir My Heart Will Cross This Ocean: My Story, My Son (One World, 2004), her son,  and the impact that the tragic killing had on her family.

Writers on Writing Interview with Emily Raboteau

Original Air Date: Sunday, March 17, 2024, and Sunday, March 24, 2024

Dr. Brenda Greene interviews Emily Raboteau, author of Lessons for Survival: Mothering Against the Apocalypse (Henry Holt, 2024). Raboteau highlights her findings on systemic structural problems in our cities and communities, her interviews with people who have been displaced as a result of environmental disaster, and suggestions for how we move forward. Her previous books include Searching for Zion, and the critically acclaimed novel, The Professor’s Daughter. A contributing editor at Orion Magazine and a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books, Raboteau’s writing has recently appeared and been anthologized in The New Yorker, the New York Times, New York Magazine, The Nation, Best American Science Writing, Best American Travel Writing, and elsewhere. She is a full professor at the City College of New York (CUNY).
www.emilyraboteau.net/bio

 

 

 

 

About the Center for Black Literature at Medgar Evers College, CUNY

For 20 years, the programs of the Center for Black Literature (CBL) have had a dynamic impact in the literary field. The highly anticipated author readings and book signings, journals, symposia, conferences, panel discussions, and writing workshops—and the Center’s intellectual and accessible approach to programming—form an integrative approach to programming that sets CBL apart from others. CBL’s events are known for the way they ensure that Black literary scholarship and conversations are valued and sustained.

Contact Us

Center for Black Literature (CBL)
at Medgar Evers College, CUNY
1534 Bedford Avenue | 2nd Floor
Brooklyn, New York 11216
(Click HERE for the Postal Mailing Address)

Main Phone: (718) 804-8884
Main Office: info@centerforblackliterature.org

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The Center for Black Literature at Medgar Evers College is supported in part by an American Rescue Plan Act grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to support general operating expenses in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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