Episode 34: Dr. Joshua Bennett
Rachel Zucker speaks with poet, performer, educator and scholar Dr. Joshua Bennett about writing a poem for a friend’s wedding, the relationship between performance and page, growing up in South Yonkers and attending a largely white private school, the birth of Black Studies, creating alternative gathering and learning spaces, infiltrating established institutions, the June Jordan fellowship at Columbia’s Center for Justice, the writers and thinkers who inspire Bennett, and how to write about family and living people with respect and honesty.
Books by Joshua Bennett
The Sobbing School (Penguin, 2016)
Videos of Joshua
Other Books/Writers Mentioned in the Episode
Achille Mbembe’s Critique of Black Reason (Duke University Press, 2017)
Jesmyn Ward’s “Salvage the Bones” (Bloomsbury, 2012)
Patricia Smith’s Incendiary Art (Triquarterly, 2017)
June Jordan’s Civil Wars (Touchstone, 1995)
Cornel West’s Race Matters (Vintage, 1994)
Other Relevant Links
