This season on Black & Published we're meeting the moment. According to Pen America’s 2023 report, Banned in the USA, 138 school districts in 32 states banned books. The majority of those books featured queer themes and characters, protagonists of color, or addressed racism and activism. So this season we're talking about it all: book bans, mass incarceration, reproductive freedom, homophobia and transphobia, rape culture, racism and white supremacy and so much more.
Look for new episodes starting next week featuring authors: Terah Shelton Harris, Jennifer Baker, Dolen Perkins Valdez, jarrett hill, Tre’Vell Anderson, Minda Honey, Lamya H and many many more.
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[00:00:00] What's good? I'm Nikesha Elise Williams and this is Black and Published. Bringing you the journeys of writers, poets, playwrights and storytellers of all kinds. We are back for Season 4. And this season, we're meeting the moment when writers from marginalized groups are being strategically targeted, silenced and erased.
[00:00:25] According to Penn America's 2023 report, Band in the USA, 138 school districts and 32 states banned books. And the majority of those books featured queer themes and characters, protagonists of color or address racism and activism.
[00:00:44] I live in Jacksonville, Florida and Duvall County, just 20 minutes away from Clay County, which leaves the nation in bookbands. This issue is personal. So this season on Black and Published, we're going to talk about it. Bookbands.
[00:01:01] When you politicize the books in a library, funding is tied to that. And when a city or a county, when they withhold funding from a library, the people suffer from that. Mass incarceration. I believe in accountability, but I don't know that the carceral system is accountability.
[00:01:21] It is caging. It is mistreatment. Reproductive justice. I started writing this book three Supreme Court justices ago. I didn't anticipate at all having this conversation that we're having right now. But here we are because the right to terminate a pregnancy is connected to these other issues.
[00:01:42] Homophobia and transphobia. Everybody, including Black people, need to put some respect on the contributions specifically of Black queer and trans people. Not only linguistically, but also in culture at large. Rape culture and consent.
[00:01:57] When I was raped as a teenager completely sober, wearing pants, I had not done anything to quote unquote deserve being raped. And so here I am drunk in miniskirts with men I don't know. And those men didn't rape me either. Racism and white supremacy?
[00:02:13] If you sort of like really are attuned to and listen to the way that racism shows up in your body, it can kill you. And so much more. New episodes will drop starting Tuesday, January 16th, 2024.
[00:02:31] Featuring authors Tara Shelton Harris, Jennifer Baker, Dolan Perkins Valdez, Jarrod Hill, Travelle Anderson, Minda Honey, Lamya H, and many, many more. So if this is your first time tuning into Black and Published, subscribe to the show in your favorite podcast platform.
[00:02:53] And follow us on Instagram and Twitter at Black and Published. And that's BLK and Published. I'll holler at y'all next week when our guests will be Deneen Milner, New York Times bestselling author of the novel One Blood.
[00:03:11] We as adaptive children are required to clap and celebrate that somebody took us in. And I am grateful to my parents, but there was somebody that I was connected to before them.
[00:03:24] And that is my birth mother. She carried me in her womb and I choose to look at her in a way that gives her the grace of birthing a baby and having to wear with all to love that child beyond measure.
[00:03:41] That's next week on Black and Published. I'll talk to you then. Peace.