Borrowed & Returned

So many authors writing across languages and cultures point to Julia Alvarez’s debut novel, How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, as one of their ancestors. In this episode, we hear from Alvarez about the importance of defending all kinds of stories—and why the American cannon needs to be exploded.
Show notes:
How many books have you read? Check out BPL’s full list of 250 books that influenced America. Then check out our booklist with all the titles Julia mentioned in this episode.
Read an interview with Julia Alvarez about the banning of García Girls in Johnston County, NC.
Want more interviews with authors on BPL’s 250 for 250 list? Check out the following interviews:  Edwidge Danticat, Breath, Eyes, Memory; Jacqueline Woodson, This Is the Rope; Jose Antonio Vargas, Dear America; Maia Kobabe, Gender Queer; Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States; Art Spiegelman, Maus; N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season; George M. Johnson, All Boys Aren’t Blue.

Celebrations of the nation’s 250th anniversary can feel like a party not everyone is invited to, especially for those whose immigration status is in limbo. In this episode, Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat talks about the impact of transnational migration has had on her writing, and the kind of party she wanted to throw for America’s 250th anniversary. (Hint: it has to do with books!)
Show notes: 
How many books have you read? Check out BPL’s full list of 250 books that influenced America. Then check out our booklist with all the titles Edwidge mentioned in this episode.
Want more interviews with authors on BPL’s 250 for 250 list? Check out the following interviews: Jacqueline Woodson, This Is the Rope; Jose Antonio Vargas, Dear America; Maia Kobabe, Gender Queer; Art Spiegelman, Maus; N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season; George M. Johnson, All Boys Aren’t Blue.

When award-winning author Jacqueline Woodson sat down to write her family’s story of the Great Migration, she wanted to make it accessible to all kinds of readers. So she wrote a children’s book called This Is the Rope. In this episode, Woodson talks about the importance of preserving the stories of our ancestors, and of course… her love of Brooklyn. 
Show notes:
How many books have you read? Check out BPL’s full list of 250 books that influenced America. Then check out our booklist with all the titles Jacqueline mentioned in this episode.
Learn more about Baldwin for the Arts, and listen to the Baldwin-Emerson Elders Project.
Watch the rest of Jacqueline Woodson’s talk with Edwidge Danticat at BPL back in 2016.
Want more interviews with authors on BPL’s 250 for 250 list? Check out the following interviews: Jose Antonio Vargas, Dear America; Maia Kobabe, Gender Queer; Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States; Art Spiegelman, Maus; N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season; George M. Johnson, All Boys Aren’t Blue

Jose Antonio Vargas is a journalist, filmmaker, and author of the book Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen. He came to the US from the Philippines when he was twelve years old, and he didn’t discover he was undocumented until he was sixteen. We talk with him about his unique perspective on America and what it means to be a citizen.
Show notes:
How many books have you read? Check out BPL’s full list of 250 books that influenced America, then check out our booklist with all the titles Jose mentioned in this episode.
Read the 2011 New York Times essay in which Jose came out as undocumented and learn more about his organization, Define American.
Watch the rest of Angela Davis’s talk at BPL’s 2026 Kahn Humanities series. 
Want more interviews with authors on BPL’s 250 for 250 list? We talked to Maia Kobabe (author of Gender Queer), Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (author of An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States), Art Spiegelman (author of Maus), N.K. Jemisin (author of The Fifth Season), and George M. Johnson (author of All Boys Aren’t Blue).

Today we’re bringing you a really interesting episode from our friends at This Guy Sucked, a podcast hosted by historian and writer Claire Aubin about the worst people in history. Each episode, Claire sits down with an expert to pull back the scholarly curtain on a terrible person from their research. Because, as they say on the show, it’s never too late to have haters, and you can’t libel the dead.
This particular episode is about the early 20th century filmmaker D. W. Griffith whose 1915 film “The Birth of a Nation” led to the resurgence of the KKK among other cultural repercussions we’re still feeling today. Africana studies scholar Kellie Carter Jackson joins the episode to tell us exactly why this guy sucked.
If you like what you hear, you can listen to the rest – and dozens of other great episodes – by searching for “This Guy Sucked” wherever you find podcasts.
Guest
Our guest Dr. Kellie Carter Jackson is an Associate Professor of Africana Studies at Wellesley College and host of This Day from Radiotopia. Her book We Refuse is available here. 
Sensitive Themes & Topics
Racism and racial violence, slavery, sexual violence
Credits
- Host & Executive Producer: Claire E Aubin. 
- Editor: Julia Schifini. 
- Music: Marshall Dean Williams
- Multitude: multitude.productions