EBOOK
About
'A must read...!!!' will.i.am
'Each encounter is framed and presented with enormous literary skill and grace' David Olusoga
WITH A FOREWORD FROM BERNARDINE EVARISTO
Conversations with some of the most extraordinary Black minds of our age, discussing race, decolonisation, systemic inequalities, and the climate crisis.
In a series of incisive and intimate encounters, Sarah Ladipo Manyika introduces some of the most distinguished Black thinkers of our times, including Nobel Laureates Toni Morrison and Wole Soyinka, and civic leaders first lady Michelle Obama and Senator Cory Booker.
She searches for truth with poet Claudia Rankine and historian Henry Louis Gates, Jr. She discusses race and gender with South African filmmaker Xoliswa Sithole and American actor and playwright Anna Deavere Smith. She interrogates the world around us with pioneering publisher Margaret Busby, parliamentarian Lord Michael Hastings and civil rights activist Pastor Evan Mawarire - who dared to take on President Robert Mugabe and has lived to tell the tale. We also meet the living embodiment of the many threads, ideas and histories in this book through the profile of her fabulous 102-year-old friend, Mrs Willard Harris.
In journeys that book-end the collection, Sarah Ladipo Manyika reflects on her own experience of being seen as 'oyinbo' in Nigeria, African in England, Arab in France, coloured in Southern Africa and Black in America, while feeling the least Black and most human among her fellow travellers, explorers all, against the sharp white relief of the South Pole. Sarah Ladipo Manyika is a British-Nigerian-American writer of novels, short stories and essays translated into several languages. She is author of the best-selling novel In Dependence (2009) and multiple shortlisted novel Like A Mule Bringing Ice Cream To The Sun (2016), and has had work published in publications including Granta, The Guardian, the Washington Post and Transfuge among others. Sarah serves as Board Chair for the women's writing residency, Hedgebrook; she was previously Board Director for the Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco; and has been a judge for the Goldsmiths Prize, California Book Awards, Aspen Words Literary Prize, and Chair of judges for the Pan-African Etisalat Prize. Conversations with the most distinguished black thinkers of our times, including Toni Morrison, Claudia Rankine, Wole Soyinka and Michelle Obama, on race, decolonisation, systemic inequalities, and the climate crisis. For readers of Toni Morrison's Mouthful of Blood, Margaret Atwood's Burning Questions, Reni Eddo-Lodge's Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race and Margaret Busby's New Daughters of Africa Timely and necessary: issues of racial reckoning, decolonisation, and structural and systemic inequalities are constantly on the news agenda Rare intimate profiles of key figures, many of whom we meet in their homes: Manyika's skill, warmth and unique friendship with each allow us to see the person behind their public profile Foreword by Bernardine Evaristo A must read...!!! Extraordinary conversations with many of the greatest minds and most inspiring figures of our age. Each encounter framed and presented with enormous literary skill and grace. Together they form a snap-shot of the where the peoples of the Black diaspora stand, today in the early 21st Century, and how much has been overcome to get here. Sarah Ladipo Manyika brings an intimate, eclectic, and delightfully startling freshness in this remarkably curated celebration of the African Diaspora. Her curiosity and ranging insights sharpens the genius, and the humanity, of her (already familiar) subjects, and our appreciation of them, and what an absolute joy to savor Between Starshine and Clay What draws me to this work is what inspired it: A desire to bring Black voices from the African diaspora to the foreground. And Sarah Ladipo Manyika has assembled her subjects very carefully; each person in this
'Each encounter is framed and presented with enormous literary skill and grace' David Olusoga
WITH A FOREWORD FROM BERNARDINE EVARISTO
Conversations with some of the most extraordinary Black minds of our age, discussing race, decolonisation, systemic inequalities, and the climate crisis.
In a series of incisive and intimate encounters, Sarah Ladipo Manyika introduces some of the most distinguished Black thinkers of our times, including Nobel Laureates Toni Morrison and Wole Soyinka, and civic leaders first lady Michelle Obama and Senator Cory Booker.
She searches for truth with poet Claudia Rankine and historian Henry Louis Gates, Jr. She discusses race and gender with South African filmmaker Xoliswa Sithole and American actor and playwright Anna Deavere Smith. She interrogates the world around us with pioneering publisher Margaret Busby, parliamentarian Lord Michael Hastings and civil rights activist Pastor Evan Mawarire - who dared to take on President Robert Mugabe and has lived to tell the tale. We also meet the living embodiment of the many threads, ideas and histories in this book through the profile of her fabulous 102-year-old friend, Mrs Willard Harris.
In journeys that book-end the collection, Sarah Ladipo Manyika reflects on her own experience of being seen as 'oyinbo' in Nigeria, African in England, Arab in France, coloured in Southern Africa and Black in America, while feeling the least Black and most human among her fellow travellers, explorers all, against the sharp white relief of the South Pole. Sarah Ladipo Manyika is a British-Nigerian-American writer of novels, short stories and essays translated into several languages. She is author of the best-selling novel In Dependence (2009) and multiple shortlisted novel Like A Mule Bringing Ice Cream To The Sun (2016), and has had work published in publications including Granta, The Guardian, the Washington Post and Transfuge among others. Sarah serves as Board Chair for the women's writing residency, Hedgebrook; she was previously Board Director for the Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco; and has been a judge for the Goldsmiths Prize, California Book Awards, Aspen Words Literary Prize, and Chair of judges for the Pan-African Etisalat Prize. Conversations with the most distinguished black thinkers of our times, including Toni Morrison, Claudia Rankine, Wole Soyinka and Michelle Obama, on race, decolonisation, systemic inequalities, and the climate crisis. For readers of Toni Morrison's Mouthful of Blood, Margaret Atwood's Burning Questions, Reni Eddo-Lodge's Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race and Margaret Busby's New Daughters of Africa Timely and necessary: issues of racial reckoning, decolonisation, and structural and systemic inequalities are constantly on the news agenda Rare intimate profiles of key figures, many of whom we meet in their homes: Manyika's skill, warmth and unique friendship with each allow us to see the person behind their public profile Foreword by Bernardine Evaristo A must read...!!! Extraordinary conversations with many of the greatest minds and most inspiring figures of our age. Each encounter framed and presented with enormous literary skill and grace. Together they form a snap-shot of the where the peoples of the Black diaspora stand, today in the early 21st Century, and how much has been overcome to get here. Sarah Ladipo Manyika brings an intimate, eclectic, and delightfully startling freshness in this remarkably curated celebration of the African Diaspora. Her curiosity and ranging insights sharpens the genius, and the humanity, of her (already familiar) subjects, and our appreciation of them, and what an absolute joy to savor Between Starshine and Clay What draws me to this work is what inspired it: A desire to bring Black voices from the African diaspora to the foreground. And Sarah Ladipo Manyika has assembled her subjects very carefully; each person in this