"In the early United States, a Black person committed an act of resistance simply by reading and writing. Yet we overlook that these activities also brought pleasure."
In this episode, Jacke talks to Dr. Tara A. Bynum about her new book, Reading Pleasures: Everyday Black Living in Early America, which finds the "joyous, if messy, humanity" in the lives and works of four canonical Black writers from the 18th and early 19th centuries.
Additional listening suggestions:
The Trials of Phillis Wheatley
358 The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature (with Farah Jasmine Griffin)
291 The Book of Firsts (with Ulrich Baer and Smaran Dayal)
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