Poet Laureate, Pulitzer Prize winner, author of the celebrated memoir Memorial Drive. As a child, she received three books from her father, meant to cultivate her literary sensibility and deepen her understanding of the world, particularly about race and class: Wuthering Heights, The Great Gatsby, Light in August. If you were to pick three, what would they be? Continue reading »
Monthly Archives: February 2021
339: Robert Reich
After serving as Secretary of Labor, he resumed teaching at UC Berkeley, gracefully relinquishing power, like Cincinnatus returning to the plow. Or not. “Actually,“ he says, “I have much more power as a professor than I did as a cabinet secretary.” Training a student cadre in the Oakland hills? Encouraging rigorous thought? One of those. Continue reading »
Movies / Television / Theater
338: Kamilah Forbes
I expected this writer-director, executive producer of the Apollo Theater, to be insightful about theater and film, and she is. I did not expect her to mount a staunch defense of comic books. If she’s not entirely persuasive on this topic (to geezerly me), she’s thoroughly intriguing. Continue reading »
337: Tommy Oliver
He double-majored in economics and digital media, and, unlike those in show business who enjoy the show but decry the business, “I love the business as much as I love the creative, as much as I love the technical.” The result? Black Love, the TV series he and his wife, Codie Elaine Oliver, created, is in its … Continue reading »