The Buzz Board
Picks from the Inner Circle
Tayari Jones
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Tayari Jones has written two novels The Untelling and Leaving Atlanta and is an Assistant Professor in the MFA program at Rutgers University. Assistant Professor at Rutgers University and novelist |
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 Girls Write Now, an organization that matches at-risk teen girls with writing mentors, is my new favorite charity. A little less than half of girls in New York City graduate from high school. One hundred percent of the girls in GWN do—every single one of them. Even before I knew how they worked their magic I wanted to be part of it. When I learned that they do it through writing, I was all in. Writing heals people’s hearts and can change their lives in real ways. These girls are the future of our nation. |
Tayari Jones
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Tayari Jones has written two novels The Untelling and Leaving Atlanta and is an Assistant Professor in the MFA program at Rutgers University. Assistant Professor at Rutgers University and novelist |
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Ready or Not: Shirley Chisholm For President, an art exhibition in Brooklyn, is vibrant and real, gorgeous and provocative at the same time. I have had an interest in Shirley Chisholm all my life because as a kid, I was told that we shared a birthday. This was a great source of confidence for me as a little black girl growing up in Atlanta during the 1970s. In addition of being made aware of the work of half a dozen brilliant visual artists, I got a much needed refresher course on the feminist trail blazer, anti-racist activist, and advocate for the poor—Rep. Shirley Anita Chisholm. She represents change I can believe in. American has a bad case of cultural amnesia. All during the primaries, we heard Obama and Clinton being described as “firsts.” Well, Shirley Chisholm, both black and female, beat them both to the punch. Without “Unbought and Unbossed” there would be no “Yes We Can.” |
Tayari Jones
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Tayari Jones has written two novels The Untelling and Leaving Atlanta and is an Assistant Professor in the MFA program at Rutgers University. Assistant Professor at Rutgers University and novelist |
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The NPR Book Tour Series features authors reading from their new works. Most audio books are performed by movie-of-the-week actors who often make even the most subtle work sound like, well, movies-of-the-week. The conventional wisdom in publishing is that the author is the kiss of death for an audiobook, but for me, there is nothing like hearing the way a story sounds in the author’s own head. The series has been going on for months, but it took Toni Morrison reading from her new novel, A Mercy, to reel me in. She is a gorgeous reader, but she doesn’t make many public appearances. It’s a four-part series, centering on her reading, but there is also a video conversation. NPR isn’t the first to feature high-quality author readings, but this really suggests that digital media is taking an increasingly significant role in the way that books are marketed and consumed. |
Tayari Jones
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Tayari Jones has written two novels The Untelling and Leaving Atlanta and is an Assistant Professor in the MFA program at Rutgers University. Assistant Professor at Rutgers University and novelist |
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Wig Out, a play by Tarell Alvin McCraney, has all the eye-popping costumes, sparkling energy and head-bobbing music you would expect from a play about dueling drag houses in NYC, but it covers some significant emotional territory. Sophie’s Choice, it is not; but the final scene broke my heart in the best way. I stumbled upon it randomly—I was out with a friend looking for something to do as we passed the theater. (How could I ignore that poster?) Although this is not the most intellectual reasoning, I saw the word “hilarious” in the description and I thought, I could use a little more hilarity in my life. I took away a much more nuanced understanding of the performance of gender. One terrific thing is that some “real” (whatever that means) women are cast in a couple of the roles. This is gender bending at its best. It engages real questions of sexuality, power, and loyalty in a changing American landscape. |
