ICYMI: The Last Week in Black Writing and Culture (1/23-1/29)

In an interview with Meredith Maran of Barnes and Noble, Edwidge Danticat spoke on her writing craft, genres of writing, and the place where fiction and memoir intersect and diverge.

Pulitzer Prize winner Alice Walker sat down with Irish writer Colm Toibin to discuss their lives, histories and how those inform their writing.

In light of the recent outrage at the Oscars due to lack of diversity, The Guardian's Nigel Smith and Lanre Bakare praised the diversity at the Sundance Film festival and the new film by Nate Parker, Birth of a Nation. Parker's film is about the slave Nat Turner who led a slave rebellion in Southampton, Virginia in 1831. Read more about Parker's film here,

Toni Morrison spoke with Dave Davies and Terry Gross of NPR. Morrison reflected on her life and read an excerpt from her newest novel, God Help the Child. 

Author Gloria Steinem listed her 10 favorite books and why. Making the list was Alice Walker's The Color Purple. Steinem says of the book, "[Walker] makes the invisible visible, and redeems people who seem irredeemable, she makes every reader feel visible and redeemable, too."

The film Race, a biopic of track athlete Jesse Owens, opens in wide release on February 19.  While Hitler attempted to use the 1936 Berlin Olympics to demonstrate Aryan racial superiority, Owens countered this by winning 4 gold medals.