In this episode, meet journalist Tiffanie Drayton, author of Black American Refugee, poet Paul Tran, author of All the Flowers Kneeling, and journalist Karen Cheung, author of The Impossible City. These authors have written books in which they explore the intersection of personal experience and the broader culture—whether rethinking the American Dream, answering trauma with resilience, or delving into the meaning of memory in a shifting geopolitical landscape. Listen in to learn more; plus, find out what it was like for these authors to record their audiobooks.
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Listen to clips from the audiobooks mentioned in this episode:
An expansion of her New York Times piece of the same name, in Black American Refugee Tiffanie Drayton examines in depth the intersection of her personal experiences and the broader culture and historical ramifications of American racism. Must Black people search beyond the shores of the “land of the free” to realize emancipation? Or will the voices that propel America’s new reckoning welcome all dreamers and dreams to this land?
Visceral and astonishing, Paul Tran’s debut poetry collection All the Flowers Kneeling investigates intergenerational trauma, sexual violence, and U.S. imperialism in order to radically alter our understanding of freedom, power, and control. Tran’s poems elucidate the complex and harrowing processes of reckoning and recovery, and ultimately become an essential testament to the human capacity for resilience, endurance, and love.
Hong Kong is known as a place of extremes: a former colony of the United Kingdom that now exists at the margins of an ascendant China, and a city rocked by mass protests, where residents rally—often in vain—against threats to their fundamental freedoms. An exhilarating blend of memoir and reportage, in The Impossible City Karen Cheung charts the parallel journeys of both herself as a young woman and the city of Hong Kong as they each come into their own.
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