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"content": "\u003cp>On a sunny day, there are few things that give me greater joy than grabbing a book, finding a spot at a San Francisco park, cracking open a cold beverage and reading the day away. Luckily for me, we’re entering the perfect season for outdoor reading in the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Whether you plan to read during your commute, on a plane, poolside or at home, here are five highly engaging books that you might have missed over the past few years, categorized to suit different needs. They’re mostly by Bay Area authors, and all are available at your local bookstore.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13957979\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1357px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/TheBoys.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13957979\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/TheBoys.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1357\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/TheBoys.jpg 1357w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/TheBoys-800x1132.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/TheBoys-1020x1443.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/TheBoys-160x226.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/TheBoys-768x1087.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/TheBoys-1086x1536.jpg 1086w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1357px) 100vw, 1357px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘The Boys,’ by Katie Hafner \u003ccite>(Spiegel & Grau)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>If you want a jaw-dropping twist with your cold drink\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>The Boys\u003c/em> by Katie Hafner (2022)\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In modern fiction, it has become increasingly more challenging for authors to come up with reveals that leave an avid reader in shock. But San Francisco author Katie Hafner managed to catch me off guard with the plot twist in \u003cem>The Boys\u003c/em>, her first published novel. I picked up a copy on a whim at the bookstore and did not want to put it down. At its core, \u003cem>The Boys\u003c/em> explores the way one couple’s relationship evolves through time, including some discussions on how the COVID-19 pandemic affected the pair (which manage to not feel forced). It’s partially set in Italy, so if traveling to Europe isn’t in the cards for you this summer, reading about the bike trip “the boys” take through small Italian villages might help fend off the wanderlust.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13957980\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1272px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/EvilEye.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-13957980 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/EvilEye.jpg\" alt=\"a light blue book cover with the text 'Evil Eye' by Etaf Rum\" width=\"1272\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/EvilEye.jpg 1272w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/EvilEye-800x1208.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/EvilEye-1020x1540.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/EvilEye-160x242.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/EvilEye-768x1159.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/EvilEye-1018x1536.jpg 1018w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1272px) 100vw, 1272px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Evil Eye,’ by Etaf Rum \u003ccite>(HarperCollins)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>If you want a book cover that doubles as a misfortune repellant\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Evil Eye\u003c/em> by Etaf Rum (2023)\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Evil Eye\u003c/em> stirred up so many emotions as I flipped through its pages. In protagonist Yara’s journey, Palestinian American author Etaf Rum packs a plethora of thoughtful reflections on mental health, intersectional feminism and a sheltered upbringing in an immigrant community. This novel felt frustrating to read at times, but I don’t think that was accidental: It merely mirrors real-life experiences of women in Yara’s position. Excerpts from Yara’s journal are a nice touch that the author uses to detangle the character’s upbringing and her relationship with her family over time. This is a powerful story told by a brilliant voice; I’ll be keeping a close eye on Rum from now on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13957978\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1245px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/paul-takes-the-form-of-a-mortal-girl-2.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13957978\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/paul-takes-the-form-of-a-mortal-girl-2.jpg\" alt=\"a dark pink book cover with the title 'Paul takes the form of a mortal girl'\" width=\"1245\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/paul-takes-the-form-of-a-mortal-girl-2.jpg 1245w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/paul-takes-the-form-of-a-mortal-girl-2-800x1234.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/paul-takes-the-form-of-a-mortal-girl-2-1020x1573.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/paul-takes-the-form-of-a-mortal-girl-2-160x247.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/paul-takes-the-form-of-a-mortal-girl-2-768x1184.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/paul-takes-the-form-of-a-mortal-girl-2-996x1536.jpg 996w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1245px) 100vw, 1245px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl,’ by Andrea Lawlor. \u003ccite>(Penguin Random House)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>If you want to get double-takes from your fellow BART riders\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl \u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003cstrong>by Andrea Lawlor (2017)\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are three quotes on the cover of this book: “Tight,” “Deep” and “Hot.” Sure, it gets steamy here and there, but it’s much more than what a quick glance at the cover might lead strangers to believe. The protagonist, Paul, has a secret superpower — the ability to control his physical appearance at will. This is an invigorating read about gender, and how Paul, who exists beyond the traditional binary, experiences it, with a journey that includes a lesbian relationship in which he becomes “Polly.” The latter part of the novel leads Paul to 1990’s San Francisco, where he continues to explore sexuality and intimacy. The author, who identifies as nonbinary, masterfully depicts both a path to self-discovery and the beauty of San Francisco in the final few pages. A must-read.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13957981\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1289px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/RealAmericans.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13957981\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/RealAmericans.jpg\" alt=\"a green and blue book cover with the title 'Real Americans Rachel Khong'\" width=\"1289\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/RealAmericans.jpg 1289w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/RealAmericans-800x1192.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/RealAmericans-1020x1519.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/RealAmericans-160x238.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/RealAmericans-768x1144.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/RealAmericans-1031x1536.jpg 1031w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1289px) 100vw, 1289px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Real Americans,’ by Rachel Khong \u003ccite>(HarperCollins)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>If you want your crush to think you’re on the cutting edge of the lit scene\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Real Americans \u003c/em>by Rachel Khong (2024)\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hot off the press, San Francisco author Rachel Khong’s sophomore novel is an ambitious undertaking. In three parts, the novel spans the duration of protagonists Lily and Matthew’s relationship and its aftermath. This followup to \u003cem>Goodbye, Vitamin\u003c/em> is a refreshing showcase of Khong’s growth as a writer and willingness to take risks, as she hooks the reader in with elements of magical realism and mystery. \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13956847/real-americans-rachel-khong-new-book-review-philsophy\">\u003cem>Real Americans\u003c/em>\u003c/a> is a page-turner, and the perfect new release to have on your radar this summer as you wander a bookstore — or your local public library.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13957982\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1271px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Afterparties.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13957982\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Afterparties.jpg\" alt=\"a book cover showing a truck parked at the beach with the title 'Afterparties,' by ANthony Veasna So\" width=\"1271\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Afterparties.jpg 1271w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Afterparties-800x1208.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Afterparties-1020x1541.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Afterparties-160x242.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Afterparties-768x1160.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Afterparties-1017x1536.jpg 1017w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1271px) 100vw, 1271px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Afterparties,’ by Anthony Veasna So. \u003ccite>(HarperCollins)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>If you can’t commit to a novel\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Afterparties\u003c/em> by Anthony Veasna So (2021)\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Born and raised in Stockton, Anthony Veasna So was a rising star in the literary world when he died tragically in 2020 at the age of 28. \u003cem>Afterparties\u003c/em>, his posthumous collection of short stories that skillfully surveys the lives of Cambodian Americans in California, was published the following year to universal acclaim. My favorite thing about this collection is the breadth of emotion it manages to squeeze into these stories and out of these characters. You won’t be sobbing the entire time — there will be laughs, cheers and some difficult truths to internalize. I recommend savoring this book slowly, letting each of the 10 stories simmer before you dive into the next.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>On a sunny day, there are few things that give me greater joy than grabbing a book, finding a spot at a San Francisco park, cracking open a cold beverage and reading the day away. Luckily for me, we’re entering the perfect season for outdoor reading in the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Whether you plan to read during your commute, on a plane, poolside or at home, here are five highly engaging books that you might have missed over the past few years, categorized to suit different needs. They’re mostly by Bay Area authors, and all are available at your local bookstore.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13957979\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1357px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/TheBoys.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13957979\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/TheBoys.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1357\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/TheBoys.jpg 1357w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/TheBoys-800x1132.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/TheBoys-1020x1443.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/TheBoys-160x226.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/TheBoys-768x1087.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/TheBoys-1086x1536.jpg 1086w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1357px) 100vw, 1357px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘The Boys,’ by Katie Hafner \u003ccite>(Spiegel & Grau)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>If you want a jaw-dropping twist with your cold drink\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>The Boys\u003c/em> by Katie Hafner (2022)\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In modern fiction, it has become increasingly more challenging for authors to come up with reveals that leave an avid reader in shock. But San Francisco author Katie Hafner managed to catch me off guard with the plot twist in \u003cem>The Boys\u003c/em>, her first published novel. I picked up a copy on a whim at the bookstore and did not want to put it down. At its core, \u003cem>The Boys\u003c/em> explores the way one couple’s relationship evolves through time, including some discussions on how the COVID-19 pandemic affected the pair (which manage to not feel forced). It’s partially set in Italy, so if traveling to Europe isn’t in the cards for you this summer, reading about the bike trip “the boys” take through small Italian villages might help fend off the wanderlust.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13957980\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1272px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/EvilEye.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-13957980 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/EvilEye.jpg\" alt=\"a light blue book cover with the text 'Evil Eye' by Etaf Rum\" width=\"1272\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/EvilEye.jpg 1272w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/EvilEye-800x1208.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/EvilEye-1020x1540.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/EvilEye-160x242.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/EvilEye-768x1159.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/EvilEye-1018x1536.jpg 1018w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1272px) 100vw, 1272px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Evil Eye,’ by Etaf Rum \u003ccite>(HarperCollins)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>If you want a book cover that doubles as a misfortune repellant\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Evil Eye\u003c/em> by Etaf Rum (2023)\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Evil Eye\u003c/em> stirred up so many emotions as I flipped through its pages. In protagonist Yara’s journey, Palestinian American author Etaf Rum packs a plethora of thoughtful reflections on mental health, intersectional feminism and a sheltered upbringing in an immigrant community. This novel felt frustrating to read at times, but I don’t think that was accidental: It merely mirrors real-life experiences of women in Yara’s position. Excerpts from Yara’s journal are a nice touch that the author uses to detangle the character’s upbringing and her relationship with her family over time. This is a powerful story told by a brilliant voice; I’ll be keeping a close eye on Rum from now on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13957978\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1245px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/paul-takes-the-form-of-a-mortal-girl-2.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13957978\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/paul-takes-the-form-of-a-mortal-girl-2.jpg\" alt=\"a dark pink book cover with the title 'Paul takes the form of a mortal girl'\" width=\"1245\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/paul-takes-the-form-of-a-mortal-girl-2.jpg 1245w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/paul-takes-the-form-of-a-mortal-girl-2-800x1234.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/paul-takes-the-form-of-a-mortal-girl-2-1020x1573.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/paul-takes-the-form-of-a-mortal-girl-2-160x247.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/paul-takes-the-form-of-a-mortal-girl-2-768x1184.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/paul-takes-the-form-of-a-mortal-girl-2-996x1536.jpg 996w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1245px) 100vw, 1245px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl,’ by Andrea Lawlor. \u003ccite>(Penguin Random House)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>If you want to get double-takes from your fellow BART riders\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl \u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003cstrong>by Andrea Lawlor (2017)\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are three quotes on the cover of this book: “Tight,” “Deep” and “Hot.” Sure, it gets steamy here and there, but it’s much more than what a quick glance at the cover might lead strangers to believe. The protagonist, Paul, has a secret superpower — the ability to control his physical appearance at will. This is an invigorating read about gender, and how Paul, who exists beyond the traditional binary, experiences it, with a journey that includes a lesbian relationship in which he becomes “Polly.” The latter part of the novel leads Paul to 1990’s San Francisco, where he continues to explore sexuality and intimacy. The author, who identifies as nonbinary, masterfully depicts both a path to self-discovery and the beauty of San Francisco in the final few pages. A must-read.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13957981\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1289px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/RealAmericans.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13957981\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/RealAmericans.jpg\" alt=\"a green and blue book cover with the title 'Real Americans Rachel Khong'\" width=\"1289\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/RealAmericans.jpg 1289w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/RealAmericans-800x1192.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/RealAmericans-1020x1519.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/RealAmericans-160x238.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/RealAmericans-768x1144.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/RealAmericans-1031x1536.jpg 1031w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1289px) 100vw, 1289px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Real Americans,’ by Rachel Khong \u003ccite>(HarperCollins)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>If you want your crush to think you’re on the cutting edge of the lit scene\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Real Americans \u003c/em>by Rachel Khong (2024)\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hot off the press, San Francisco author Rachel Khong’s sophomore novel is an ambitious undertaking. In three parts, the novel spans the duration of protagonists Lily and Matthew’s relationship and its aftermath. This followup to \u003cem>Goodbye, Vitamin\u003c/em> is a refreshing showcase of Khong’s growth as a writer and willingness to take risks, as she hooks the reader in with elements of magical realism and mystery. \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13956847/real-americans-rachel-khong-new-book-review-philsophy\">\u003cem>Real Americans\u003c/em>\u003c/a> is a page-turner, and the perfect new release to have on your radar this summer as you wander a bookstore — or your local public library.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13957982\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1271px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Afterparties.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13957982\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Afterparties.jpg\" alt=\"a book cover showing a truck parked at the beach with the title 'Afterparties,' by ANthony Veasna So\" width=\"1271\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Afterparties.jpg 1271w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Afterparties-800x1208.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Afterparties-1020x1541.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Afterparties-160x242.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Afterparties-768x1160.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Afterparties-1017x1536.jpg 1017w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1271px) 100vw, 1271px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Afterparties,’ by Anthony Veasna So. \u003ccite>(HarperCollins)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>If you can’t commit to a novel\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Afterparties\u003c/em> by Anthony Veasna So (2021)\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Born and raised in Stockton, Anthony Veasna So was a rising star in the literary world when he died tragically in 2020 at the age of 28. \u003cem>Afterparties\u003c/em>, his posthumous collection of short stories that skillfully surveys the lives of Cambodian Americans in California, was published the following year to universal acclaim. My favorite thing about this collection is the breadth of emotion it manages to squeeze into these stories and out of these characters. You won’t be sobbing the entire time — there will be laughs, cheers and some difficult truths to internalize. I recommend savoring this book slowly, letting each of the 10 stories simmer before you dive into the next.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\u003c/figure>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13957815\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 664px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13957815\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/untitled-design-65-_custom-909b15798ce00e75e98663799b30b07ff3b82b6c.jpg\" alt=\"A blue book cover with pixelated lettering like an old-fashioned computer.\" width=\"664\" height=\"948\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/untitled-design-65-_custom-909b15798ce00e75e98663799b30b07ff3b82b6c.jpg 664w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/untitled-design-65-_custom-909b15798ce00e75e98663799b30b07ff3b82b6c-160x228.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 664px) 100vw, 664px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘My First Book’ by Honor Levy. \u003ccite>(Penguin Press)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>What are the kids thinking these days? That seems be to the question behind the publication of \u003cem>My First Book\u003c/em>, the buzzy debut story collection by Honor Levy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The 26-year-old writer was the subject of \u003ca href=\"https://www.thecut.com/article/honor-levy-my-first-book-dimes-square-interview.html\">a viral profile in \u003cem>The Cut\u003c/em>\u003c/a> earlier this month, in which she described the praise she received for \u003ca href=\"https://www.newyorker.com/books/flash-fiction/good-boys\">her story “Good Boys”\u003c/a> on \u003cem>The New Yorker\u003c/em> website as “not undeserved” and demurred when asked whether she’s the voice of her generation. Social media discourse and the inevitable backlash aside, Levy’s first book is an amusing, if uneven, take on growing up white, privileged and Gen Z, the first generation to completely be born after the existence of the internet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13957749']Readers won’t find meticulously plotted story arcs, fleshed-out characters, emotional epiphanies, or any other earmarks of conventional literary fiction. Most of Levy’s stories run fewer than 12 pages and feel like very long flash fiction, written in a voice dense with the chaotic patois of the internet. In her strongest stories, Levy channels the blitzkrieg of contradictory micro-observations we absorb from social media, video games, and doomscrolling to create the absurd, incomprehensible cacophony that anyone born after 1997 had to grow up enduring. These stories seem to ask: How can anyone expect a well-adjusted adult to rise from all this noise?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In “Internet Girl,” the main character is 11 and very online, and Levy’s portrayal of her narrator’s interiority is both compellingly satirical and frighteningly plausible. She writes:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>It’s 2008, and my dad gets laid off and everything is happening all at once. All at once, there are two girls and one cup and planes hitting towers and a webcam looking at me and me smiling into it and a man and a boy and a love and a stranger on the other end. All at once, there are a million videos to watch and a million more to make. All at once it’s all at once. It’s beginning and ending all at once all the time. I’m twenty-one. I’m eleven. I’m on the internet. I’m twenty-one.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Another strong piece is “Love Story,” the collection’s opener, which is about a boy and a girl having an online relationship that seems to consist entirely of texting and sending pics of their bodies to each other. Levy poignantly captures the girl’s vulnerability. “Little girl lost can’t even find herself,” Levy writes. “Pictures of her naked body are out there everywhere, in the cloud floating, and under the sea, coursing through cables in the dark. It’s so dark.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Levy smartly skewers late capitalism in “Halloween Forever,” about a young woman trying to survive a surreal and drug-filled Halloween night in Brooklyn. She meets a “boy from Stanford dressed as a cowboy,” who, when sufficiently coked-up, muses about the romance of the Wild West and how “The West was freedom … just like the internet originally was!” The narrator is skeptical:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Freedom is the stuff of dreams and nightmares only and our free market doesn’t make us free people, but the cowboy doesn’t care. Silicon Valley must have burrowed itself deep into his brain underneath that hat. He is probably afraid of blood, or social media, or something stupid. My drink is seventeen dollars.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>As the collection progresses, the unique blend of the satirical and the poignant gives way to a more essayistic approach to storytelling. In “Cancel Me,” which is about cancel culture, the characters — a young woman and two “Ivy League boys with kitten-sharp teeth and Accutane-skin,” all of whom have experienced cancellation for murky reasons — gradually fade into a series of observations about wokeness that aren’t much different or more insightful than what one might find on X or Reddit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13957276']“Z Was For Zoomer,” which runs more than 50 pages, seems to be a continuation of “Cancel Me,” except the two male “edgelords” — someone on an internet forum who deliberately posts about controversial or taboo topics to appear edgy — are named Gideon and Ivan instead of Jack and Roger. Just as in “Cancel Me,” the narrator’s relationship with the men is never defined and doesn’t progress. Character-driven narrative takes a back seat to dashed-off, inch-deep lines like “Identity is a Swedish prison, comfortable but you still can’t leave.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It should also be mentioned that these stories won’t pass the most permissive of racial Bechdel tests. The number of non-white references in this 200-page book won’t go past one hand, unless you count the few references to anime and the rapper formerly known as Kanye West. The milieu of Honor Levy’s fiction is undeniably white and privileged, but her best stories exaggerate that milieu to great satirical effect. Perhaps her second book will contain more of them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Leland Cheuk is an award-winning author of three books of fiction, including the latest “No Good Very Bad Asian.’ His writing has appeared in ‘The Washington Post,’ ‘The Boston Globe,’ ‘San Francisco Chronicle,’ and ‘Salon,’ among other outlets.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘My First Book’ by Honor Levy (Penguin Press) is out on May 14, 2014.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\u003c/figure>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13957815\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 664px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13957815\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/untitled-design-65-_custom-909b15798ce00e75e98663799b30b07ff3b82b6c.jpg\" alt=\"A blue book cover with pixelated lettering like an old-fashioned computer.\" width=\"664\" height=\"948\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/untitled-design-65-_custom-909b15798ce00e75e98663799b30b07ff3b82b6c.jpg 664w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/untitled-design-65-_custom-909b15798ce00e75e98663799b30b07ff3b82b6c-160x228.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 664px) 100vw, 664px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘My First Book’ by Honor Levy. \u003ccite>(Penguin Press)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>What are the kids thinking these days? That seems be to the question behind the publication of \u003cem>My First Book\u003c/em>, the buzzy debut story collection by Honor Levy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The 26-year-old writer was the subject of \u003ca href=\"https://www.thecut.com/article/honor-levy-my-first-book-dimes-square-interview.html\">a viral profile in \u003cem>The Cut\u003c/em>\u003c/a> earlier this month, in which she described the praise she received for \u003ca href=\"https://www.newyorker.com/books/flash-fiction/good-boys\">her story “Good Boys”\u003c/a> on \u003cem>The New Yorker\u003c/em> website as “not undeserved” and demurred when asked whether she’s the voice of her generation. Social media discourse and the inevitable backlash aside, Levy’s first book is an amusing, if uneven, take on growing up white, privileged and Gen Z, the first generation to completely be born after the existence of the internet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Readers won’t find meticulously plotted story arcs, fleshed-out characters, emotional epiphanies, or any other earmarks of conventional literary fiction. Most of Levy’s stories run fewer than 12 pages and feel like very long flash fiction, written in a voice dense with the chaotic patois of the internet. In her strongest stories, Levy channels the blitzkrieg of contradictory micro-observations we absorb from social media, video games, and doomscrolling to create the absurd, incomprehensible cacophony that anyone born after 1997 had to grow up enduring. These stories seem to ask: How can anyone expect a well-adjusted adult to rise from all this noise?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In “Internet Girl,” the main character is 11 and very online, and Levy’s portrayal of her narrator’s interiority is both compellingly satirical and frighteningly plausible. She writes:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>It’s 2008, and my dad gets laid off and everything is happening all at once. All at once, there are two girls and one cup and planes hitting towers and a webcam looking at me and me smiling into it and a man and a boy and a love and a stranger on the other end. All at once, there are a million videos to watch and a million more to make. All at once it’s all at once. It’s beginning and ending all at once all the time. I’m twenty-one. I’m eleven. I’m on the internet. I’m twenty-one.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Another strong piece is “Love Story,” the collection’s opener, which is about a boy and a girl having an online relationship that seems to consist entirely of texting and sending pics of their bodies to each other. Levy poignantly captures the girl’s vulnerability. “Little girl lost can’t even find herself,” Levy writes. “Pictures of her naked body are out there everywhere, in the cloud floating, and under the sea, coursing through cables in the dark. It’s so dark.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Levy smartly skewers late capitalism in “Halloween Forever,” about a young woman trying to survive a surreal and drug-filled Halloween night in Brooklyn. She meets a “boy from Stanford dressed as a cowboy,” who, when sufficiently coked-up, muses about the romance of the Wild West and how “The West was freedom … just like the internet originally was!” The narrator is skeptical:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Freedom is the stuff of dreams and nightmares only and our free market doesn’t make us free people, but the cowboy doesn’t care. Silicon Valley must have burrowed itself deep into his brain underneath that hat. He is probably afraid of blood, or social media, or something stupid. My drink is seventeen dollars.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>As the collection progresses, the unique blend of the satirical and the poignant gives way to a more essayistic approach to storytelling. In “Cancel Me,” which is about cancel culture, the characters — a young woman and two “Ivy League boys with kitten-sharp teeth and Accutane-skin,” all of whom have experienced cancellation for murky reasons — gradually fade into a series of observations about wokeness that aren’t much different or more insightful than what one might find on X or Reddit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“Z Was For Zoomer,” which runs more than 50 pages, seems to be a continuation of “Cancel Me,” except the two male “edgelords” — someone on an internet forum who deliberately posts about controversial or taboo topics to appear edgy — are named Gideon and Ivan instead of Jack and Roger. Just as in “Cancel Me,” the narrator’s relationship with the men is never defined and doesn’t progress. Character-driven narrative takes a back seat to dashed-off, inch-deep lines like “Identity is a Swedish prison, comfortable but you still can’t leave.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It should also be mentioned that these stories won’t pass the most permissive of racial Bechdel tests. The number of non-white references in this 200-page book won’t go past one hand, unless you count the few references to anime and the rapper formerly known as Kanye West. The milieu of Honor Levy’s fiction is undeniably white and privileged, but her best stories exaggerate that milieu to great satirical effect. Perhaps her second book will contain more of them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Leland Cheuk is an award-winning author of three books of fiction, including the latest “No Good Very Bad Asian.’ His writing has appeared in ‘The Washington Post,’ ‘The Boston Globe,’ ‘San Francisco Chronicle,’ and ‘Salon,’ among other outlets.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘My First Book’ by Honor Levy (Penguin Press) is out on May 14, 2014.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\u003cfigcaption>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Activist, musician and punk pioneer Kathleen Hanna has always been a force. With her band \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13915779/mosswood-meltdown-2022-bikini-kill-kim-gordon\">Bikini Kill\u003c/a>, she pioneered the “riot grrrl” movement in the 1990s, challenging the misogyny of both the punk scene and society at large.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When I moved to Olympia, [Wash.], there were all these kids who were making music and putting out records on small indie labels,” Hanna says. “And they sort of defined punk not as a genre or a … loud, angry, aggressive sound, but as an idea … that we don’t have to wait for corporations to tell us what is good music or art or writing. We can make it ourselves.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='pop_10272']And so she did. Along with Tobi Vail, Billy Karren and Kathi Wilcox, Hanna formed the feminist punk band Bikini Kill. The band urged women and girls in the audience to move up to the front of the stage, write political zines and talk openly about sexual violence. Emboldened by the music, fans would come to Hanna to talk about their own experiences.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On tour, Hanna and her bandmates faced abuse and disrespect from male fans and club workers. A one point, a sound man threatened to stab her when she was touring with another one of her bands, Le Tigre.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This was our workplace, and every single night was a different set of threatened angry men … who would treat us with such utter disrespect,” she says. “One of the things that has been getting me by is this phrase: ‘In punk rock, there is no HR.’ ”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In her new memoir, \u003cem>Rebel Girl\u003c/em>, Hanna looks back on her childhood and her experiences in the punk scene. She also writes about finding out that an undiagnosed case of Lyme disease was the reason she couldn’t physically perform anymore.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since her diagnosis and treatment, Hanna’s back to to performing again with Bikini Kill and her other bands, Le Tigre and \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/artists/487027362/the-julie-ruin\">The Julie Ruin\u003c/a>. She says there’s still a lot of anger in the shows, but there’s also “so much more joy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The songs really go from joy to sadness to rage very quickly. And I’m finding nuances in them that I didn’t know were there,” she says. “It feels joyous to explore our anger in public.”\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>Interview highlights\u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2024/05/13/rebelgirlbookcover---photo-by-leeta-harding_cover-by-ecco-1-1-_custom-0ef859eb029e015065ad9cadc6266a733c1ccc37.jpeg?s=1200&c=75&f=jpeg\" alt=\"A book cover featuring a photo of a young woman wearing her hair in a pony tail.\" width=\"1200\" height=\"1802\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Rebel Girl’ by Kathleen Hanna.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On the early days of the riot grrrl feminist punk movement\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[There were] girls in the riot grrrl meetings who were just crying because it was the first time they’d been in an all-female atmosphere, and they were just like, “Whoa, this feels really weird. I’m confused.” And then like, “Wait, why have I never made this a priority before?” And just that feeling of a room changing. Just sitting at a crappy plastic Office Max table with a bunch of young women who have been relegated to the back of the room at punk shows for so long, finally saying, “I’ve always wanted to start a band,” or “Hey, does anybody know how to play guitar? I’d like to learn.” That’s an amazing feeling. That really kind of changes the room into this beautiful place of possibilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On writing the 1993\u003c/strong> \u003cstrong>riot grrrl anthem, “Rebel Girl” \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We wrote that one in the basement of this house called The Embassy. It was a punk house, and punk houses a lot of times have names. And this one was called The Embassy because it was pretty close to Embassy Row in D.C. And I just remember how sweaty it was and it was very small. And I’ll always remember writing that song because it was one of those times where I was writing it as we were playing it. So they started coming up with the music, and as it became more full-formed, I started hearing the first couple lines in my head and I just stepped to the mic, and then they just kind of fell out. I stepped back and started thinking, ‘OK, what’s the chorus going to be?’ … And then I walked back to the mic and I just sang and ‘Rebel girl, rebel girl, you are the queen of my world’ came out. And it just kind of happened. It felt like the scene of punk women that I was hanging out with, and that I was becoming friends with, really wrote that song and I just like grabbed it from the air, or something.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2024/05/13/joanjettbikinikill_wide-ed61f729f30fd7890e9b85581c3640e127cff2e3.jpeg?s=1200&c=75&f=jpeg\" alt=\"A girl with a black bob hair cut wearing a leather jacket stands surrounded by three young women and one young man.\" width=\"1200\" height=\"675\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Hanna (fourth from left) poses with Joan Jett (center) and fellow Bikini Kill members Tobi Vail, Billy Karren and Kathi Wilcox in New York City in 1992.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On how she made her concerts a safe space for women and girls \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We did stuff like hand out lyric sheets that had the lyrics on them so that other girls and women would know these are the lyrics and what the subject matter was, because a lot of times you couldn’t understand what I was saying through the crappy PAs I was singing through, and sometimes even talking in between songs, you couldn’t understand what I was saying. And so that was one way that [we] gave them a souvenir to take home, to read through and think about and maybe disagree with so that they start their own bands or it encourages them to write their own poetry or write their own zines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13863821']We also had zines that talked about a lot of different political issues of the day that we sold at our shows. We prioritized having girls and women come up to the front, because a lot of the shows we were playing back then, it was straight, cisgender white guys predominating and taking up all the space of the room. And we really selfishly wanted to build the community so we had more girl bands to play with. And how is that going to happen if they’re all stuck in the back? … So I started inviting the girls to the front. ‘Hey, do you guys want to come to the front?’ And then it kind of became a thing. … It was like, what if we just rearrange this room a little bit? What’s going to happen? And what happened was a lot of men were really mad and hated us. But it was also an interesting experiment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On a drunken night with \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/pop/11767/did-our-idol-worship-drive-kurt-cobain-to-suicide\">Kurt Cobain\u003c/a> when she graffitied a phrase that inspired the title of \u003c/strong>\u003cstrong>Nirvana\u003c/strong>\u003cstrong>‘s first big hit \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I took out a Sharpie marker, and I just wrote like, ‘Kurt Smells Like Teen Spirit’ because me and Tobi [Vail] had been at a grocery store and seen this new deodorant [that said] ‘Smells like teen spirit,’ and we were like, ‘That’s hilarious. What does teen spirit smell like? … Sharpie marker and poster board? It smells like Mod Podge? What does it smell like?’ So we were just goofing on that. So [it] was in my head. And when I was wasted, it just came out and I wrote, like, 10 other things on his wall — and he was a renter, so that was kind of a bad move on my part. Not very kind or thoughtful. And then he called me on the phone many, many months later and was like, ‘Can I use that in a song?’ I didn’t even know it was going to be the title for a song. And I was like, ‘Yeah, sure, that’s great.’\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Thea Chaloner and Joel Wolfram produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Meghan Sullivan adapted it for the web.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In her new memoir, \u003cem>Rebel Girl\u003c/em>, Hanna looks back on her childhood and her experiences in the punk scene. She also writes about finding out that an undiagnosed case of Lyme disease was the reason she couldn’t physically perform anymore.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since her diagnosis and treatment, Hanna’s back to to performing again with Bikini Kill and her other bands, Le Tigre and \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/artists/487027362/the-julie-ruin\">The Julie Ruin\u003c/a>. She says there’s still a lot of anger in the shows, but there’s also “so much more joy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The songs really go from joy to sadness to rage very quickly. And I’m finding nuances in them that I didn’t know were there,” she says. “It feels joyous to explore our anger in public.”\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>Interview highlights\u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2024/05/13/rebelgirlbookcover---photo-by-leeta-harding_cover-by-ecco-1-1-_custom-0ef859eb029e015065ad9cadc6266a733c1ccc37.jpeg?s=1200&c=75&f=jpeg\" alt=\"A book cover featuring a photo of a young woman wearing her hair in a pony tail.\" width=\"1200\" height=\"1802\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Rebel Girl’ by Kathleen Hanna.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On the early days of the riot grrrl feminist punk movement\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[There were] girls in the riot grrrl meetings who were just crying because it was the first time they’d been in an all-female atmosphere, and they were just like, “Whoa, this feels really weird. I’m confused.” And then like, “Wait, why have I never made this a priority before?” And just that feeling of a room changing. Just sitting at a crappy plastic Office Max table with a bunch of young women who have been relegated to the back of the room at punk shows for so long, finally saying, “I’ve always wanted to start a band,” or “Hey, does anybody know how to play guitar? I’d like to learn.” That’s an amazing feeling. That really kind of changes the room into this beautiful place of possibilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On writing the 1993\u003c/strong> \u003cstrong>riot grrrl anthem, “Rebel Girl” \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We wrote that one in the basement of this house called The Embassy. It was a punk house, and punk houses a lot of times have names. And this one was called The Embassy because it was pretty close to Embassy Row in D.C. And I just remember how sweaty it was and it was very small. And I’ll always remember writing that song because it was one of those times where I was writing it as we were playing it. So they started coming up with the music, and as it became more full-formed, I started hearing the first couple lines in my head and I just stepped to the mic, and then they just kind of fell out. I stepped back and started thinking, ‘OK, what’s the chorus going to be?’ … And then I walked back to the mic and I just sang and ‘Rebel girl, rebel girl, you are the queen of my world’ came out. And it just kind of happened. It felt like the scene of punk women that I was hanging out with, and that I was becoming friends with, really wrote that song and I just like grabbed it from the air, or something.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2024/05/13/joanjettbikinikill_wide-ed61f729f30fd7890e9b85581c3640e127cff2e3.jpeg?s=1200&c=75&f=jpeg\" alt=\"A girl with a black bob hair cut wearing a leather jacket stands surrounded by three young women and one young man.\" width=\"1200\" height=\"675\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Hanna (fourth from left) poses with Joan Jett (center) and fellow Bikini Kill members Tobi Vail, Billy Karren and Kathi Wilcox in New York City in 1992.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On how she made her concerts a safe space for women and girls \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We did stuff like hand out lyric sheets that had the lyrics on them so that other girls and women would know these are the lyrics and what the subject matter was, because a lot of times you couldn’t understand what I was saying through the crappy PAs I was singing through, and sometimes even talking in between songs, you couldn’t understand what I was saying. And so that was one way that [we] gave them a souvenir to take home, to read through and think about and maybe disagree with so that they start their own bands or it encourages them to write their own poetry or write their own zines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>We also had zines that talked about a lot of different political issues of the day that we sold at our shows. We prioritized having girls and women come up to the front, because a lot of the shows we were playing back then, it was straight, cisgender white guys predominating and taking up all the space of the room. And we really selfishly wanted to build the community so we had more girl bands to play with. And how is that going to happen if they’re all stuck in the back? … So I started inviting the girls to the front. ‘Hey, do you guys want to come to the front?’ And then it kind of became a thing. … It was like, what if we just rearrange this room a little bit? What’s going to happen? And what happened was a lot of men were really mad and hated us. But it was also an interesting experiment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On a drunken night with \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/pop/11767/did-our-idol-worship-drive-kurt-cobain-to-suicide\">Kurt Cobain\u003c/a> when she graffitied a phrase that inspired the title of \u003c/strong>\u003cstrong>Nirvana\u003c/strong>\u003cstrong>‘s first big hit \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I took out a Sharpie marker, and I just wrote like, ‘Kurt Smells Like Teen Spirit’ because me and Tobi [Vail] had been at a grocery store and seen this new deodorant [that said] ‘Smells like teen spirit,’ and we were like, ‘That’s hilarious. What does teen spirit smell like? … Sharpie marker and poster board? It smells like Mod Podge? What does it smell like?’ So we were just goofing on that. So [it] was in my head. And when I was wasted, it just came out and I wrote, like, 10 other things on his wall — and he was a renter, so that was kind of a bad move on my part. Not very kind or thoughtful. And then he called me on the phone many, many months later and was like, ‘Can I use that in a song?’ I didn’t even know it was going to be the title for a song. And I was like, ‘Yeah, sure, that’s great.’\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "A 19th-Century Bookbinder Struggles With Race and Identity in ‘The Library Thief’",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13957647\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 990px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13957647\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/library_custom-1f630ee97d978db420c30a9463c898c40f1cdc68.jpg\" alt=\"A book cover illustration shows a woman in late 19th century dress standing between tall stacks of books before a huge window.\" width=\"990\" height=\"1500\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/library_custom-1f630ee97d978db420c30a9463c898c40f1cdc68.jpg 990w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/library_custom-1f630ee97d978db420c30a9463c898c40f1cdc68-800x1212.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/library_custom-1f630ee97d978db420c30a9463c898c40f1cdc68-160x242.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/library_custom-1f630ee97d978db420c30a9463c898c40f1cdc68-768x1164.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 990px) 100vw, 990px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘The Library Thief’ by Kuchenga Shenjé. \u003ccite>(Hanover Square Press)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The examination of race and identity can be seen throughout literature, and increasingly today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In her debut novel, \u003cem>The Library Thief\u003c/em>, Kuchenga Shenjé explores these concepts — and the associated expectations that arise when society demands that every group be neatly categorized. Shenjé delves into the past in this work of historical fiction, posing inquiries about Black people’s lives in the Victorian era.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13956715']In this 19th-century English story, Florence, an ambitious bookbinder, is expelled from her family home by her harsh and unforgiving father for being with a young man. Florence, a clever and savvy woman, persuades Lord Francis Belfield to let her stay at Rose Hall manor by promising to restore the priceless books in his library in time for an impending sale, assuring him that she is just as skilled as her father. Among Lord Belfield’s minimal staff, Florence stands out as an educated, liberal woman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Florence is not as polished as she wants her new acquaintances to believe. Being raised by a single father and not knowing her mother, whom she was told is dead, has fostered an emptiness in Florence she thought she could fill with books. She’s adrift and feels unloved. This fragile foundation is fertile ground for the harrowing experiences Florence faces during her stay at the manor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Florence arrives at Rose Hall to find that Lord Banfeild’s wife has died, and the new widower is beside himself with grief. Immediately, Florence finds herself in the middle of a tightly woven plot of family secrets and lies that conveniently shroud the lives of the upper class. She becomes fixated on Lady Persephone’s death and starts investigating suspicious activities around it. During her investigation, she uncovers some dark Banfield family secrets, which include violence, abuse, and “passing” family members. This journey of discovery forces Florence to confront her own identity and the mysteries surrounding her life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some characters in this novel intentionally or unintentionally pass as white because they find it easier than living as a Black person in Victorian England. While the topic of “passing” is frequently explored in literature set in the 1920s and 30s, Shenjé delves into what it means to be a Black person passing in the 19th century. She explores this theme in multiple ways: One character completely abandons their family to live as a white man, another maintains contact with her family but uses her husband’s wealth and influence to hide in plain sight, and the third, and perhaps most intriguing, character lives as a white person without knowing they were actually Black.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Florence is uncertain about her own race, and she passionately advocates for the rights of Black people. She often becomes offended by the viewpoints of her friends, neighbors, and even their pastor towards Black people. Florence grew up in a white community and had limited interactions with Black people, other than through books until she met Lady Persephone’s lady’s maid — a beautiful, charming, and highly educated Black woman. “How could a whole sector of humanity once viewed as animals now be writing books and teaching universities and the like? We had been lied to,” she says after a particularly awful sermon propagating the inferiority of African people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13956128']At times, Shenjé’s use of language attempting at inclusivity fails to achieve what appears to be the intended effect. The discussion of gender roles in a highly complex way seems forced and unrealistic. This is especially so when such language and philosophizing are attributed to certain characters in particular.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While \u003cem>The Library Thief\u003c/em> doesn’t exactly break new ground when it comes to exploring issues of race and identity, it does have some entertaining elements. Wesley is a standout character who should have received more attention. If a movie adaptation of the character were ever to happen, Patrick Walshe McBride would be an excellent choice to play the part. Shenjé also did an fantastic job planting hints throughout the story that lead to the main character’s true identity. The best part of the book is the unexpected twist at the end that ties up the murder mystery. Kudos to Shenjé for that surprise ending.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Keishel Williams is a Trinidadian American book reviewer, arts & culture writer, and editor.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘The Library Thief’ by Kuchenga Shenjé (Hanover Square Press) is out now.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>In this 19th-century English story, Florence, an ambitious bookbinder, is expelled from her family home by her harsh and unforgiving father for being with a young man. Florence, a clever and savvy woman, persuades Lord Francis Belfield to let her stay at Rose Hall manor by promising to restore the priceless books in his library in time for an impending sale, assuring him that she is just as skilled as her father. Among Lord Belfield’s minimal staff, Florence stands out as an educated, liberal woman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Florence is not as polished as she wants her new acquaintances to believe. Being raised by a single father and not knowing her mother, whom she was told is dead, has fostered an emptiness in Florence she thought she could fill with books. She’s adrift and feels unloved. This fragile foundation is fertile ground for the harrowing experiences Florence faces during her stay at the manor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Florence arrives at Rose Hall to find that Lord Banfeild’s wife has died, and the new widower is beside himself with grief. Immediately, Florence finds herself in the middle of a tightly woven plot of family secrets and lies that conveniently shroud the lives of the upper class. She becomes fixated on Lady Persephone’s death and starts investigating suspicious activities around it. During her investigation, she uncovers some dark Banfield family secrets, which include violence, abuse, and “passing” family members. This journey of discovery forces Florence to confront her own identity and the mysteries surrounding her life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>At times, Shenjé’s use of language attempting at inclusivity fails to achieve what appears to be the intended effect. The discussion of gender roles in a highly complex way seems forced and unrealistic. This is especially so when such language and philosophizing are attributed to certain characters in particular.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While \u003cem>The Library Thief\u003c/em> doesn’t exactly break new ground when it comes to exploring issues of race and identity, it does have some entertaining elements. Wesley is a standout character who should have received more attention. If a movie adaptation of the character were ever to happen, Patrick Walshe McBride would be an excellent choice to play the part. Shenjé also did an fantastic job planting hints throughout the story that lead to the main character’s true identity. The best part of the book is the unexpected twist at the end that ties up the murder mystery. Kudos to Shenjé for that surprise ending.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Keishel Williams is a Trinidadian American book reviewer, arts & culture writer, and editor.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘The Library Thief’ by Kuchenga Shenjé (Hanover Square Press) is out now.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Rarely Seen Rod Serling Story, ‘First Squad, First Platoon,’ Draws Upon His World War II Service",
"headTitle": "Rarely Seen Rod Serling Story, ‘First Squad, First Platoon,’ Draws Upon His World War II Service | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13957546\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1540px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13957546\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/GettyImages-103641630-scaled-e1715279150282.jpg\" alt=\"A black and white image of a white man in a 1950s-era suit, leaning on a typewriter.\" width=\"1540\" height=\"1920\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Screenwriter, television producer and host of the original ‘Twilight Zone,’ Rod Serling, circa 1955. \u003ccite>(Archive Photos/ Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In a famous \u003cem>Twilight Zone\u003c/em> episode from the early 1960s, a bloodthirsty World War II commander stationed in the Philippines finds himself transported into the body of a Japanese lieutenant and, to his horror, expected to help kill an entrapped and wounded American platoon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What you do to those men in the cave, will it shorten the war by a week, by a day, by an hour?” he pleads to a Japanese officer. ”How many must die before (we) are satisfied?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='pop_110650']For the show’s host and writer, Rod Serling, World War II was a trauma he would re-imagine often.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Serling, born 100 years ago this December, served in the 11th Airborne Division in the Philippines and received a Bronze Star for bravery and a Purple Heart for being wounded. He left the war with lasting physical and emotional scars and, like such fellow veterans as Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut, with a will to find words for what had happened. He wrote war-related scripts for \u003cem>Playhouse 90\u003c/em> and other early television drama series and for at least two other \u003cem>Twilight Zone\u003c/em> stories, including one in which an Army lieutenant can predict who will die next by looking into his soldiers’ faces.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Serling’s \u003cem>First Squad, First Platoon\u003c/em>, a fictionalized take on the war that he worked on and set aside while attending Antioch College, has now been published for the first time. It appears this week in the new edition of \u003cem>The Strand Magazine\u003c/em>, which has unearthed pieces by Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, John Steinbeck and many others. \u003cem>First Squad, First Platoon\u003c/em> is broken into five vignettes, each dedicated to a fallen peer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Serling wrote this story in his early twenties, yet it carries a maturity beyond his years,” Strand managing editor Andrew Gulli writes. “It’s a powerful, unvarnished look at war in all its brutality — an unforgettable study of ordinary people in an extraordinarily hellish situation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nicholas Parisi, author of the 2018 biography \u003cem>Rod Serling: His Life, Work, and Imagination\u003c/em>, helped edit the story. Daughters Jodi Serling and Anne Serling each contributed brief forewords. Jodi Serling wrote that the war “opened up dark horizons of terror” for her father and left him “gut-wrenching memories” that influenced his writing and awakened him at night, “sweating and screaming inconsolably.” Anne Serling told The Associated Press that \u003cem>First Squad, First Platoon\u003c/em> reminded her of his innocence when he joined the military.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='pop_98580']“My reaction was particularly painful because when I read the story, I was writing a memoir about my dad and reading the letters he wrote from training camp before he was sent to the Pacific,” she said. “He was just barely 18 when he enlisted and sounded like a kid at summer camp in his letters to his parents. He was asking for gum, candy, underwear (because he didn’t like the GI ones). Like all of the kids we send into the horror of war — he didn’t know what was waiting on the other side.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Amy Boyle Johnston, author of the 2015 book \u003cem>Unknown Serling\u003c/em>, found the story while looking through Serling’s papers at the University of Wisconsin. Serling, who died in 1975, had yet to start a family when he wrote \u003cem>First Squad, First Platoon\u003c/em>. But he was already thinking about the next generation, including a dedication to his yet-unborn children urging them to remember “a semblance of the feeling of a torn limb, a burnt patch of flesh” and “the hopeless emptiness of fatigue” were as much part of war as “uniforms and flags, honor and patriotism.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Parasi says that \u003cem>First Squad, First Platoon\u003c/em> was an early sign of Serling’s ironic touch. One soldier is shot dead as he admires a wooden statuette of Jesus, and another — a true story — is killed by a food relief package.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='pop_109055']In the opening section of \u003cem>First Squad\u003c/em>, Cpl. Melvin Levy is introduced as the squad’s resident comedian, whose usual barrage of jokes had been silenced by the ongoing starvation that threatened to kill them all. But as Levy slept weakly in the mud, dreaming of pastrami and other treats back home, he is startled by the sound of motors — airplanes clearly marked as American. Levy shouts with delight as more than 100 heavy boxes of K-rations fall from on high, fatally unaware that one will land right on him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The heavy crates were smashing into the earth close to their holes. Men started shouting in alarm,” Serling writes. “Levy just stood where he was, waving his arms and shouting. Sergeant Etherson pulled at him from behind, trying to get him down in a hole. But Levy was oblivious to all around him except the food which poured down.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“‘It’s raining chow, boys … it’s raining chow,’” his shrill voice pierced the air.”\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13957546\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1540px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13957546\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/GettyImages-103641630-scaled-e1715279150282.jpg\" alt=\"A black and white image of a white man in a 1950s-era suit, leaning on a typewriter.\" width=\"1540\" height=\"1920\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Screenwriter, television producer and host of the original ‘Twilight Zone,’ Rod Serling, circa 1955. \u003ccite>(Archive Photos/ Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In a famous \u003cem>Twilight Zone\u003c/em> episode from the early 1960s, a bloodthirsty World War II commander stationed in the Philippines finds himself transported into the body of a Japanese lieutenant and, to his horror, expected to help kill an entrapped and wounded American platoon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What you do to those men in the cave, will it shorten the war by a week, by a day, by an hour?” he pleads to a Japanese officer. ”How many must die before (we) are satisfied?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>For the show’s host and writer, Rod Serling, World War II was a trauma he would re-imagine often.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Serling, born 100 years ago this December, served in the 11th Airborne Division in the Philippines and received a Bronze Star for bravery and a Purple Heart for being wounded. He left the war with lasting physical and emotional scars and, like such fellow veterans as Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut, with a will to find words for what had happened. He wrote war-related scripts for \u003cem>Playhouse 90\u003c/em> and other early television drama series and for at least two other \u003cem>Twilight Zone\u003c/em> stories, including one in which an Army lieutenant can predict who will die next by looking into his soldiers’ faces.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Serling’s \u003cem>First Squad, First Platoon\u003c/em>, a fictionalized take on the war that he worked on and set aside while attending Antioch College, has now been published for the first time. It appears this week in the new edition of \u003cem>The Strand Magazine\u003c/em>, which has unearthed pieces by Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, John Steinbeck and many others. \u003cem>First Squad, First Platoon\u003c/em> is broken into five vignettes, each dedicated to a fallen peer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Serling wrote this story in his early twenties, yet it carries a maturity beyond his years,” Strand managing editor Andrew Gulli writes. “It’s a powerful, unvarnished look at war in all its brutality — an unforgettable study of ordinary people in an extraordinarily hellish situation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nicholas Parisi, author of the 2018 biography \u003cem>Rod Serling: His Life, Work, and Imagination\u003c/em>, helped edit the story. Daughters Jodi Serling and Anne Serling each contributed brief forewords. Jodi Serling wrote that the war “opened up dark horizons of terror” for her father and left him “gut-wrenching memories” that influenced his writing and awakened him at night, “sweating and screaming inconsolably.” Anne Serling told The Associated Press that \u003cem>First Squad, First Platoon\u003c/em> reminded her of his innocence when he joined the military.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“My reaction was particularly painful because when I read the story, I was writing a memoir about my dad and reading the letters he wrote from training camp before he was sent to the Pacific,” she said. “He was just barely 18 when he enlisted and sounded like a kid at summer camp in his letters to his parents. He was asking for gum, candy, underwear (because he didn’t like the GI ones). Like all of the kids we send into the horror of war — he didn’t know what was waiting on the other side.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Amy Boyle Johnston, author of the 2015 book \u003cem>Unknown Serling\u003c/em>, found the story while looking through Serling’s papers at the University of Wisconsin. Serling, who died in 1975, had yet to start a family when he wrote \u003cem>First Squad, First Platoon\u003c/em>. But he was already thinking about the next generation, including a dedication to his yet-unborn children urging them to remember “a semblance of the feeling of a torn limb, a burnt patch of flesh” and “the hopeless emptiness of fatigue” were as much part of war as “uniforms and flags, honor and patriotism.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Parasi says that \u003cem>First Squad, First Platoon\u003c/em> was an early sign of Serling’s ironic touch. One soldier is shot dead as he admires a wooden statuette of Jesus, and another — a true story — is killed by a food relief package.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>In the opening section of \u003cem>First Squad\u003c/em>, Cpl. Melvin Levy is introduced as the squad’s resident comedian, whose usual barrage of jokes had been silenced by the ongoing starvation that threatened to kill them all. But as Levy slept weakly in the mud, dreaming of pastrami and other treats back home, he is startled by the sound of motors — airplanes clearly marked as American. Levy shouts with delight as more than 100 heavy boxes of K-rations fall from on high, fatally unaware that one will land right on him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The heavy crates were smashing into the earth close to their holes. Men started shouting in alarm,” Serling writes. “Levy just stood where he was, waving his arms and shouting. Sergeant Etherson pulled at him from behind, trying to get him down in a hole. But Levy was oblivious to all around him except the food which poured down.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“‘It’s raining chow, boys … it’s raining chow,’” his shrill voice pierced the air.”\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13957277\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 890px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13957277\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Screen-Shot-2024-05-06-at-10.58.04-AM.png\" alt=\"A book cover featuring a photo of three young women sat at the top of a fire escape outside a building. One of them is smoking a cigarette.\" width=\"890\" height=\"1342\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Screen-Shot-2024-05-06-at-10.58.04-AM.png 890w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Screen-Shot-2024-05-06-at-10.58.04-AM-800x1206.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Screen-Shot-2024-05-06-at-10.58.04-AM-160x241.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Screen-Shot-2024-05-06-at-10.58.04-AM-768x1158.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 890px) 100vw, 890px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘First Love’ by Lilly Dancyger. \u003ccite>(Dial Press via AP)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Who means more to you — your friends or your lovers? In a vivid, thoughtful and nuanced collection of essays, Lilly Dancyger explores the powerful role that female friendships played in her chaotic upbringing marked by her parents’ heroin use and her father’s untimely death when she was only 12.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13956388']\u003cem>First Love: Essays on Friendship\u003c/em> begins with a beautiful paean to her cousin Sabina, who was raped and murdered at age 20 on her way home from a club. As little kids, their older relatives used to call them Snow White and Rose Red after the Grimm’s fairy tale, “two sisters who are not rivals or foils, but simply love each other.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That simple, uncomplicated love would become the template for a series of subsequent relationships with girls and women that helped her survive her self-destructive adolescence and provided unconditional support as she scrambled to create a new identity as a “hypercompetent” writer, teacher and editor. “It’s true that I’ve never been satisfied with friendships that stay on the surface. That my friends are my family, my truest beloveds, each relationship a world of its own,” she writes in the title essay “First Love.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The collection stands out not just for its elegant, unadorned writing but also for the way she effortlessly pivots between personal history and spot-on cultural criticism that both comments on and critiques the way that girls and women have been portrayed — and have portrayed themselves — in the media, including on online platforms like Tumblr and Instagram.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13956050']For instance, she examines the 1994 Peter Jackson film, \u003cem>Heavenly Creatures\u003c/em>, based on the true story of two teenage girls who bludgeoned to death one of their mothers. And in the essay “Sad Girls,” about the suicide of a close friend, she analyzes the allure of self-destructive figures like Sylvia Plath and Janis Joplin to a certain type of teen, including herself, who wallows in sadness and wants to make sure “the world knew we were in pain.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the last essay, “On Murder Memoirs,” Dancyger considers the runaway popularity of true crime stories as she tries to explain her decision not to attend the trial of the man charged with killing her cousin — even though she was trained as a journalist and wrote a well-regarded book about her late father that relied on investigative reporting. “When I finally sat down to write about Sabina, the story that came out was not about murder at all,” she says. “It was a love story.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Readers can be thankful that it did.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘\u003ca href=\"https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/714347/first-love-by-lilly-dancyger/\">First Love: Essays on Friendship\u003c/a>’ by Lilly Dancyger is released on May 7, 2024 via The Dial Press.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>For instance, she examines the 1994 Peter Jackson film, \u003cem>Heavenly Creatures\u003c/em>, based on the true story of two teenage girls who bludgeoned to death one of their mothers. And in the essay “Sad Girls,” about the suicide of a close friend, she analyzes the allure of self-destructive figures like Sylvia Plath and Janis Joplin to a certain type of teen, including herself, who wallows in sadness and wants to make sure “the world knew we were in pain.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the last essay, “On Murder Memoirs,” Dancyger considers the runaway popularity of true crime stories as she tries to explain her decision not to attend the trial of the man charged with killing her cousin — even though she was trained as a journalist and wrote a well-regarded book about her late father that relied on investigative reporting. “When I finally sat down to write about Sabina, the story that came out was not about murder at all,” she says. “It was a love story.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Readers can be thankful that it did.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘\u003ca href=\"https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/714347/first-love-by-lilly-dancyger/\">First Love: Essays on Friendship\u003c/a>’ by Lilly Dancyger is released on May 7, 2024 via The Dial Press.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1007px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2024/04/29/real_custom-44d5751cac02d2b0c80da752bc7e350641016d6e.jpg?s=1200&c=75&f=jpeg\" alt=\"A book cover showing four illustrated oval panels featuring architectural details and floral patterns.\" width=\"1007\" height=\"1500\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Real Americans’ by Rachel Khong.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“The trouble with beginnings is that there’s no such thing,” muses the narrator of Rachel Khong’s debut novel \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2017/07/12/535799520/goodbye-vitamin-is-sweet-but-not-sugarcoated\">\u003cem>Goodbye, Vitamin\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. “What’s a beginning but an arbitrary point of entry? You begin when you’re born, I guess, but it’s not like you know anything about that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The difficulty of demarcating starting points also animates Khong’s new book, \u003cem>Real Americans\u003c/em>, which begins at least four times: The book is carved up into three novella-length sections, each told from the perspective of a different character, plus a prologue. Khong’s latest begins, faute de mieux, with a short set piece in Beijing in 1966 before leaping forward to 1999. In this first section, we meet Lily, one of the book’s three protagonists. While working as an unpaid intern at an online travel magazine in New York, she crosses paths with Matthew, a “distractingly hot” asset manager who works in private equity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13956411']They bond over the rather banal fact that they were both born on Long Island and the more consequential fact that they vaguely knew one another as children. The art-history major confesses, “I wasn’t the sort of person who yearned to shape a landscape. I wanted only to observe it.” Matthew is intrigued enough to propose, after just a few dates. After she loses her job, he wires a thousand dollars to her bank account each week, no questions asked, and gives her a separate allowance to redecorate their condo. It’s only when they’re about to get married that Lily finds out that Matthew is the scion of a blue-blooded family; he uses a different surname to deflect attention. After they conceive a child via IVF, she discovers a secret connection between Matthew’s parents and her own, which splits the family apart.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The book then skips ahead to 2021 and lodges us in the perspective of Nick, Lily’s son. It’s by far the most plodding and prosaic section, giving us chapter and verse on Nick’s teenage years, college relationships, and eventual employment at a foundation whose “many projects included vaccination campaigns; addressing health inequities; screening against diseases in utero,” and more. The strongest parts are the early years, when we encounter the high-achieving teen fretting over college admissions; his mother wants him to stay close to their home in Seattle, whereas he itches to matriculate at an Ivy League school on the East Coast. “I was self-absorbed without even knowing who I was, or who I should be — an exasperating combination,” he self-mockingly notes. Long estranged from Matthew, Lily raised Nick to understand that his father wanted nothing to do with him. When Nick finally does meet his father — after doing a DNA test — his life takes a fairly predictable turn. Money is an open sesame, unlocking doors to the most prestigious universities, secret societies, and jobs. But the accumulation of it turns Nick into an automaton.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The third and most memorable part of the book is told largely from the perspective of May, Nick’s maternal grandmother. It opens in 2030 with a now octogenarian May trailing her grandson, who works at a “biotechnology startup.” Nick had been led to believe — once again by his mother — that his grandmother had died years ago, but after bumping into each other in a drugstore, they slowly form a friendship and she unfurls the story of her life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As an adolescent “in the southern basin of the Yangtze River,” the “outspoken” May drank in scientific knowledge and distinguished herself as a young scholar. The amount of research Khong did for this section alone, brimming with strange and delightful facts, could earn her an honorary doctorate at some university. In this section, Khong also masterfully evokes the atmosphere of Beijing during the time of the Cultural Revolution and the Four Pests campaign. In school, May strikes up a romance with a fellow student named Ping; together, they “study the lotus and its repair mechanisms” and dream of running away together to the U.S. to become geneticists and escape the oppressiveness of Mao’s China. Their dream doesn’t come to pass — or only part of it comes to fruition: After a short stay in Hong Kong, May manages to find a job in the U.S., but her new life starts with the “wrong man.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13956128']An element of fantasy suffuses all three stories: May and her descendants possess the power to “keep time still.” At first, this power feels less like a volitional exertion than the onset of a panic attack. To go into more detail about what exactly is going on would spoil part of the fun of reading the final section; suffice it to say that the time-arresting power has something to do with “an ancient lotus seed.” Like his grandmother before him, Nick learns to control this power and opportunistically exploit it by studying longer and more intensely than his classmates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many philosophical ideas get an airing in \u003cem>Real Americans\u003c/em>, including the existence of free will and the ethics of altering genomes to select for “favorable” inheritable traits and suppress unfavorable ones. “What could we change about our lives? Could we nudge inheritance in particular directions?” wonders one character. Unfortunately, too many of these moral conundrums are expressed in the baldly straightforward manner of a scientific study. But the questions that drive May’s academic research baldly double as animating questions for the novel. Unsubtle as they are, they’re also queries that we will likely have to answer in the near future — a time when polygenic screenings are increasingly common, people lengthen their lives with elixirs, and beginnings become harder and harder to recall.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Rhoda Feng is a freelance writer from New York whose criticism has appeared in ‘4Columns,’ ‘The Baffler,’ ‘The White Review,’ ‘The New Republic,’ ‘Public Books,’ ‘Village Voice,’ and others.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Copyright 2024 NPR. To see more, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/\">visit NPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1007px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2024/04/29/real_custom-44d5751cac02d2b0c80da752bc7e350641016d6e.jpg?s=1200&c=75&f=jpeg\" alt=\"A book cover showing four illustrated oval panels featuring architectural details and floral patterns.\" width=\"1007\" height=\"1500\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Real Americans’ by Rachel Khong.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“The trouble with beginnings is that there’s no such thing,” muses the narrator of Rachel Khong’s debut novel \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2017/07/12/535799520/goodbye-vitamin-is-sweet-but-not-sugarcoated\">\u003cem>Goodbye, Vitamin\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. “What’s a beginning but an arbitrary point of entry? You begin when you’re born, I guess, but it’s not like you know anything about that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The difficulty of demarcating starting points also animates Khong’s new book, \u003cem>Real Americans\u003c/em>, which begins at least four times: The book is carved up into three novella-length sections, each told from the perspective of a different character, plus a prologue. Khong’s latest begins, faute de mieux, with a short set piece in Beijing in 1966 before leaping forward to 1999. In this first section, we meet Lily, one of the book’s three protagonists. While working as an unpaid intern at an online travel magazine in New York, she crosses paths with Matthew, a “distractingly hot” asset manager who works in private equity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>They bond over the rather banal fact that they were both born on Long Island and the more consequential fact that they vaguely knew one another as children. The art-history major confesses, “I wasn’t the sort of person who yearned to shape a landscape. I wanted only to observe it.” Matthew is intrigued enough to propose, after just a few dates. After she loses her job, he wires a thousand dollars to her bank account each week, no questions asked, and gives her a separate allowance to redecorate their condo. It’s only when they’re about to get married that Lily finds out that Matthew is the scion of a blue-blooded family; he uses a different surname to deflect attention. After they conceive a child via IVF, she discovers a secret connection between Matthew’s parents and her own, which splits the family apart.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The book then skips ahead to 2021 and lodges us in the perspective of Nick, Lily’s son. It’s by far the most plodding and prosaic section, giving us chapter and verse on Nick’s teenage years, college relationships, and eventual employment at a foundation whose “many projects included vaccination campaigns; addressing health inequities; screening against diseases in utero,” and more. The strongest parts are the early years, when we encounter the high-achieving teen fretting over college admissions; his mother wants him to stay close to their home in Seattle, whereas he itches to matriculate at an Ivy League school on the East Coast. “I was self-absorbed without even knowing who I was, or who I should be — an exasperating combination,” he self-mockingly notes. Long estranged from Matthew, Lily raised Nick to understand that his father wanted nothing to do with him. When Nick finally does meet his father — after doing a DNA test — his life takes a fairly predictable turn. Money is an open sesame, unlocking doors to the most prestigious universities, secret societies, and jobs. But the accumulation of it turns Nick into an automaton.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The third and most memorable part of the book is told largely from the perspective of May, Nick’s maternal grandmother. It opens in 2030 with a now octogenarian May trailing her grandson, who works at a “biotechnology startup.” Nick had been led to believe — once again by his mother — that his grandmother had died years ago, but after bumping into each other in a drugstore, they slowly form a friendship and she unfurls the story of her life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As an adolescent “in the southern basin of the Yangtze River,” the “outspoken” May drank in scientific knowledge and distinguished herself as a young scholar. The amount of research Khong did for this section alone, brimming with strange and delightful facts, could earn her an honorary doctorate at some university. In this section, Khong also masterfully evokes the atmosphere of Beijing during the time of the Cultural Revolution and the Four Pests campaign. In school, May strikes up a romance with a fellow student named Ping; together, they “study the lotus and its repair mechanisms” and dream of running away together to the U.S. to become geneticists and escape the oppressiveness of Mao’s China. Their dream doesn’t come to pass — or only part of it comes to fruition: After a short stay in Hong Kong, May manages to find a job in the U.S., but her new life starts with the “wrong man.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>An element of fantasy suffuses all three stories: May and her descendants possess the power to “keep time still.” At first, this power feels less like a volitional exertion than the onset of a panic attack. To go into more detail about what exactly is going on would spoil part of the fun of reading the final section; suffice it to say that the time-arresting power has something to do with “an ancient lotus seed.” Like his grandmother before him, Nick learns to control this power and opportunistically exploit it by studying longer and more intensely than his classmates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many philosophical ideas get an airing in \u003cem>Real Americans\u003c/em>, including the existence of free will and the ethics of altering genomes to select for “favorable” inheritable traits and suppress unfavorable ones. “What could we change about our lives? Could we nudge inheritance in particular directions?” wonders one character. Unfortunately, too many of these moral conundrums are expressed in the baldly straightforward manner of a scientific study. But the questions that drive May’s academic research baldly double as animating questions for the novel. Unsubtle as they are, they’re also queries that we will likely have to answer in the near future — a time when polygenic screenings are increasingly common, people lengthen their lives with elixirs, and beginnings become harder and harder to recall.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Rhoda Feng is a freelance writer from New York whose criticism has appeared in ‘4Columns,’ ‘The Baffler,’ ‘The White Review,’ ‘The New Republic,’ ‘Public Books,’ ‘Village Voice,’ and others.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Copyright 2024 NPR. To see more, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/\">visit NPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13956716\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1547px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-13956716 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/gettyimages-3072437_custom-a79fddc7e5d22b41a352b1bc0d2a3b1029839308-scaled-e1714160605404.jpg\" alt=\"An 19th century portrait of a young woman.\" width=\"1547\" height=\"1920\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A new collection of Emily Dickinson’s letters has been published by Harvard’s Belknap Press, edited by Dickinson scholars Cristanne Miller and Domhnall Mitchell. \u003ccite>(Three Lions/ Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Among the Great Moments in Literary History I wish I could’ve witnessed is that day, sometime after May 15, 1886, when Lavinia Dickinson entered the bedroom of her newly deceased older sister and began opening drawers. Out sprang poems, almost 1,800 of them. Given that Emily Dickinson had only published a handful of poems during her lifetime, this discovery was a shock.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13956411']“‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers/That perches in the soul,” \u003ca href=\"https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42889/hope-is-the-thing-with-feathers-314\">begins one of those now-famous poems. \u003c/a>Whatever Dickinson hoped for her poems, she could never have envisioned how they’d resonate with readers; nor how curious those readers would be about her life, much of it spent within her father’s house in Amherst, Mass., and, in later years, within that bedroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Every so often, the reading public’s image of Emily Dickinson shifts: For much of the 20th century, she was a fey Stevie Nicks-type figure — check out, for instance, the 1976 film of Julie Harris’ lauded one-woman show, \u003cem>The Belle of Amherst\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A feminist Emily Dickinson emerged during the Second Women’s Movement, when poems like “I’m ‘wife’” were celebrated for their \u003cem>avant garde\u003c/em> anger. And, jumping to the present, a new monumental volume of Dickinson’s letters — the first in more than 60 years — gives us an engaged Emily Dickinson; a woman in conversation with the world, through gossip, as well as remarks about books, politics and the signal events of her age, particularly the Civil War.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 676px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2024/04/21/51om5bjyvel._sl1000__custom-ec9c737497b65eefa6872d24e745711e729592e4.jpg?s=1200&c=75&f=jpeg\" alt=\"A book cover featuring a stamped letter, addressed in cursive.\" width=\"676\" height=\"1000\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘The Letters of Emily Dickinson,’ by Emily Dickinson, edited by Cristanne Miller and Domhnall Mitchell.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>This new collection of \u003cem>The Letters of Emily Dickinson \u003c/em>is published by Harvard’s Belknap Press and edited by two Dickinson scholars, Cristanne Miller and Domhnall Mitchell. To accurately date some of Dickinson’s letters, they’ve studied weather reports and seasonal blooming and harvest cycles in 19th century Amherst. They’ve also added some 300 previously uncollected letters to this volume for a grand total of 1,304 letters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13955903']The result is that \u003cem>The Letters of Emily Dickinson\u003c/em> reads like the closest thing we’ll probably ever have to an intimate autobiography of the poet. The first letter here is written by an 11-year-old Dickinson to her brother Austin, away at school. It’s a breathless, kid-sister-marvel of run-on sentences about yellow hens and a “skonk” and poor “Cousin Zebina [who] had a fit the other day and bit his tongue…”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The final letter, by an ailing 55-year-old Dickinson — most likely the last she wrote before falling unconscious on May 13, 1886 — was to her cousins Louisa and Frances Norcross. It reads:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Little Cousins,\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Called back.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Emily.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>In between is a life filled with visitors, chores and recipes for doughnuts and coconut cakes. There’s mention of the racist minstrel stereotype Jim Crow, as well as of public figures like Florence Nightingale and Walt Whitman. There are also allusions to the death toll of the ongoing Civil War.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dickinson’s loyal dog Carlo walks with her, and frogs and even flies keep her company. Indeed, in an 1859 letter about one such winged companion, Belle of Amherst charm alternates with cold-blooded callousness. Dickinson writes to her cousin Louisa:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>I enjoy much with a fly, during sister’s absence, not one of your blue monsters, but a timid creature, that hops from pane to pane of her white house, so very cheerfully, and hums and thrums, a sort of speck piano. … I’ll kill him the day [Lavinia] comes [home], for I shan’t need him any more …”\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Dickinson’s singular voice comes into its own in the letters of the 1860s, which often blur into poems: cryptic, comic and charged with Awe. A simple thank-you note to her soul mate and beloved sister-in-law, Susan Gilbert Dickinson, reads:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Dear Sue,\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Supper was delicate and strange. I ate it with compunction as I would eat a Vision.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>There are 1,304 letters, and, still, they’re not enough. Scholars estimate that we only have about one-tenth of the letters Dickinson ever wrote. And, on that momentous day in 1886, Lavinia entered her sister’s bedroom to find and successfully burn all the letters Dickinson herself had received from others during her lifetime. Such was the custom of the day. Which makes this new volume of Dickinson’s letters feel like both an intrusion and an outwitting of the silence of death — something I want to believe Dickinson would have relished.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Copyright 2024 NPR. To see more, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/\">visit NPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers/That perches in the soul,” \u003ca href=\"https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42889/hope-is-the-thing-with-feathers-314\">begins one of those now-famous poems. \u003c/a>Whatever Dickinson hoped for her poems, she could never have envisioned how they’d resonate with readers; nor how curious those readers would be about her life, much of it spent within her father’s house in Amherst, Mass., and, in later years, within that bedroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Every so often, the reading public’s image of Emily Dickinson shifts: For much of the 20th century, she was a fey Stevie Nicks-type figure — check out, for instance, the 1976 film of Julie Harris’ lauded one-woman show, \u003cem>The Belle of Amherst\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A feminist Emily Dickinson emerged during the Second Women’s Movement, when poems like “I’m ‘wife’” were celebrated for their \u003cem>avant garde\u003c/em> anger. And, jumping to the present, a new monumental volume of Dickinson’s letters — the first in more than 60 years — gives us an engaged Emily Dickinson; a woman in conversation with the world, through gossip, as well as remarks about books, politics and the signal events of her age, particularly the Civil War.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 676px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2024/04/21/51om5bjyvel._sl1000__custom-ec9c737497b65eefa6872d24e745711e729592e4.jpg?s=1200&c=75&f=jpeg\" alt=\"A book cover featuring a stamped letter, addressed in cursive.\" width=\"676\" height=\"1000\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘The Letters of Emily Dickinson,’ by Emily Dickinson, edited by Cristanne Miller and Domhnall Mitchell.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>This new collection of \u003cem>The Letters of Emily Dickinson \u003c/em>is published by Harvard’s Belknap Press and edited by two Dickinson scholars, Cristanne Miller and Domhnall Mitchell. To accurately date some of Dickinson’s letters, they’ve studied weather reports and seasonal blooming and harvest cycles in 19th century Amherst. They’ve also added some 300 previously uncollected letters to this volume for a grand total of 1,304 letters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The result is that \u003cem>The Letters of Emily Dickinson\u003c/em> reads like the closest thing we’ll probably ever have to an intimate autobiography of the poet. The first letter here is written by an 11-year-old Dickinson to her brother Austin, away at school. It’s a breathless, kid-sister-marvel of run-on sentences about yellow hens and a “skonk” and poor “Cousin Zebina [who] had a fit the other day and bit his tongue…”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The final letter, by an ailing 55-year-old Dickinson — most likely the last she wrote before falling unconscious on May 13, 1886 — was to her cousins Louisa and Frances Norcross. It reads:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Little Cousins,\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Called back.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Emily.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>In between is a life filled with visitors, chores and recipes for doughnuts and coconut cakes. There’s mention of the racist minstrel stereotype Jim Crow, as well as of public figures like Florence Nightingale and Walt Whitman. There are also allusions to the death toll of the ongoing Civil War.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dickinson’s loyal dog Carlo walks with her, and frogs and even flies keep her company. Indeed, in an 1859 letter about one such winged companion, Belle of Amherst charm alternates with cold-blooded callousness. Dickinson writes to her cousin Louisa:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>I enjoy much with a fly, during sister’s absence, not one of your blue monsters, but a timid creature, that hops from pane to pane of her white house, so very cheerfully, and hums and thrums, a sort of speck piano. … I’ll kill him the day [Lavinia] comes [home], for I shan’t need him any more …”\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Dickinson’s singular voice comes into its own in the letters of the 1860s, which often blur into poems: cryptic, comic and charged with Awe. A simple thank-you note to her soul mate and beloved sister-in-law, Susan Gilbert Dickinson, reads:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Dear Sue,\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Supper was delicate and strange. I ate it with compunction as I would eat a Vision.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>There are 1,304 letters, and, still, they’re not enough. Scholars estimate that we only have about one-tenth of the letters Dickinson ever wrote. And, on that momentous day in 1886, Lavinia entered her sister’s bedroom to find and successfully burn all the letters Dickinson herself had received from others during her lifetime. Such was the custom of the day. Which makes this new volume of Dickinson’s letters feel like both an intrusion and an outwitting of the silence of death — something I want to believe Dickinson would have relished.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Copyright 2024 NPR. To see more, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/\">visit NPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>nic feliciano will find a way to creatively express herself, no matter what.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>feliciano (who also goes by \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/cocomachetz/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Coco Machete\u003c/a>) contains multitudes. She’s a fashionista who currently resides in Berkeley, but was born in the Philippines and spent her teenage years in Southern California. After moving to the East Bay for school two decades ago, she’s grown into a playwright, chef, thespian and — as she says — “a master of fun.” She’s also a former MC and member of the Bay Area-based hip-hop group \u003ca href=\"https://hottuboakland.bandcamp.com/album/3-the-hard-way\">HOTTUB\u003c/a>, which made Miami Bass–inspired rap songs from roughly 2006 to 2013.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When it comes to her work, there are two important things to understand: first, she incorporates her Filipina identity into everything she creates. Second, her “work” isn’t really work at all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13956529\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-13956529 size-medium\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/coco-machete-2-800x1207.jpg\" alt=\"A woman poses in a squat stance with her left hand holding her chin. She wears neon green clogs, black tights and a zebra print skirt. In the background are shelves holding recycled water jugs and plastic pots.\" width=\"800\" height=\"1207\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/coco-machete-2-800x1207.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/coco-machete-2-1020x1538.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/coco-machete-2-160x241.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/coco-machete-2-768x1158.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/coco-machete-2-1018x1536.jpg 1018w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/coco-machete-2-1358x2048.jpg 1358w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/coco-machete-2-1920x2896.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/coco-machete-2-scaled.jpg 1697w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">nic feliciano is a writer, performer and cook based in Berkeley by way of the Philippines. \u003ccite>(Kate Buenconsejo)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>feliciano proudly maintains flexible daytime employment to pay her bills, while letting her creative juices flow during the evening hours. This separation allows her to stay inspired, penning funny sketches that she performs as a part of her \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/grannycartgangstas?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw==\">Grannycart Gangstas\u003c/a> act at \u003ca href=\"https://www.bindlestiffstudio.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Blindlestiff Studio\u003c/a> in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>feliciano’s creations go beyond the stage. She’s currently writing a comic book in which she gives a modern spin on the mythological creature from Filipino folklore, the Manananggal. The storyline sheds light on the exploitation that workers in the Philippines face working as contractors for Big Tech.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This week, we talk about how the Bay Area has assisted feliciano’s artistic endeavors, from rapping over bass-heavy hip-hop beats in the early 2000s to forging a “creative family of misfit Filipino kids who didn’t follow the path.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm/?e=KQINC8148943076\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Music]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Pendarvis Harshaw, Host:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Hey what’s up Rightnowish listeners. I’m your host, Pendarvis Harshaw. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For this episode, we hear from cook, slash writer, slash actor, slash musician and all around funny person, nic feliciano, who goes by the moniker Coco Machete. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At age 10, nic, along with her mother and sister, left the Philippines and settled in Orange County. Itching to find like-minded folks, nic eventually left SoCal and moved to Berkeley for community college… and she’s been here ever since. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As y’all may know, juggling day jobs and side gigs to pay the bills comes with the territory of being an artist in the Bay. But for nic, she’s not pressed to let how she pays the rent define her.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>nic feliciano, Guest: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The true art and what I do is just kind of like surviving. Like my mom to me is an artist because of- she’s never picked up a paintbrush in her life. But like, the way she moves through life and the way she like, makes shit happen and the way she like, figures this out over that or whatever. Like, damn, that’s like such art to me!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Pendarvis Harshaw: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Rightnowish producer Marisol Medina-Cadena and I dive into the splendor that is nic’s mind, and discuss how she honors Filipino brilliance in all that she does. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That and more right after this. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Ad break]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marisol Medina-Cadena: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When we spoke on the phone a while ago, you said something that just really crystallized your creative practice for me. You said you were in your “expansive era.” I feel like that expression really speaks volumes about where you’re at with your relationship to artmaking. So what does your expansive area look like? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>nic feliciano: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s more of just a consciousness whenever I can… if I try- if I have a moment to like meditate on something, it’s just asking for guidance in terms of like how I- how this experience can make me a little bit more expansive and a little bit more able to hold more empathy, more love. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If I forget to remind myself that I’m in that space right now, it’s very easy for everything to knock it down, and feel tired and unaligned. And so I’m kind of using that as a way to stay the course and create some stamina… trying to come from as much love as I can in these crazy times because it’s harder and harder. \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Laughs]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marisol Medina-Cadena: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I know that you have a day job outside of your creative practice. And maybe there’s overlap but they’re not really contingent on each other. How do you structure your life in a way that you have the passion and the desire to still make art outside of, like what pays your bills? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>nic feliciano: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I always like, kind of gave myself a hard time about that and been like, what’s wrong with you? Like, why wouldn’t you want to go all in on your art and like, really be about it, live it or whatnot? And I think that for me, not depending on it financially has always sustained it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think I just am one of those people who were blessed or cursed with an overactive creative mind that is constantly feeling the need to like express and release or whatever. But I realized that every time it got to a point where it was time to take it serious, or even like the idea of living off of my art, or like any of that, I feel like — personally, like it kind of kills it a little bit and it doesn’t feel super aligned. I’m not super inspired by it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So it’s just about like finding work that’s not going to keep me there, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Laughs]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> like beyond the hours that I need to be. And my brain doesn’t get going until the nighttime anyway. So like, I take advantage of like whatever time, you know, I have outside of that.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so, I’m grateful, I feel grateful that my day jobs haven’t completely, like, overshadowed my my creative work. You know, how I pay my bills is kind of like the smallest part of my identity. \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Laughs]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It’s just… no to careers and no to making art a career either, I don’t know. \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Laughs]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Pendarvis Harshaw: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Balance. It sounds like balance. And also making sure that you work within what’s best for you. You said your night hours, you know, being at home. You know yourself. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>nic feliciano: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m trying you know, it’s the journey. It’s part of the ride! \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Laughs]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Pendarvis Harshaw: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Diving into your artistic endeavors. You’re on the cusp of finishing your first comic book, so I hear. And it’s a sci-fi thriller based on Filipino folklore?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>nic feliciano: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, gosh!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Pendarvis Harshaw: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Please tell me about the inspiration for this. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>nic feliciano: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This has been in the works for quite a while. Inspired by a PBS documentary called The Cleaners, which was about a third party company in the Philippines that was being hired by, like, the Googles, the Facebooks, all that kind of stuff. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Basically, when something gets flagged on any of these platforms, they’re going to these workers — oftentimes, you know, in the Global South: Philippines, India, and a human is processing these images and they’re deciding whether to delete or to keep. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Music]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>nic feliciano: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They’re getting PTSD. They’re like processing 8,000 images a day, you know, just like constant, just the worst images you can imagine!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One of my favorite folkloric creatures in Filipino folklore is this creature called the manananggal. And it’s oftentimes a femme creature. They stay in the trees, they’re kind of vampiric or what have you. And their top half comes off, and that’s what goes flying around at night looking for food, primarily victims or whatnot. They’re known to suck the life through belly buttons.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Typically, it’s represented as a scary thing that, you know, growing up, if you didn’t, like, go to sleep right away, they’d be like, “oh, the Manananggal is going to come get you.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As I’ve like, gotten older and whatnot, I’m just like, well, like, what if it actually was like a creature that, like, went out and did stuff for justice, you know what I mean? I just, like, made up all this stuff in my head. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So anyway, I wrote this short one act play that was from the perspective of this Manananggalgal who didn’t realize they were a Manananggal until they were exploited super hard at work. They snap. And they go and kill, like, all the CEOs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Thank god Bindlestiff Studios, shout out to Bindlestiff Studios over there in the SOMA, 6th and Howard. The only place for Filipino and Filippinx performing arts, like, they put this play up. It’s pretty ridiculous, but I’m obsessed with this world, like… it’s kind of like the prequel to this piece that I wrote. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so I feel like — comic book, that’s a good way to kind of… not so much lighten it, but like not make it so realistic. The fact that it’s not the real thing, I think feels sort of liberating to tell the story in the way that it is in my head, without it being too, like, real. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I’m really excited about it, and it’s taken a while, but I’m glad we’ve taken our time because I’ve been collaborating with this incredible illustrator Corpser. Shout out Corpser from Bulacan, in the Philippines. He and I have been going back and forth and he’s illustrated the whole thing and he snapped on the illustration. Neither of us had done this before, but oh man, like, with his vision and my crazy, gross world building. It’s nasty and I can’t wait to share it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marisol Medina-Cadena: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You’ve spoken a lot about Bindlestiff, can you tell us what drew you to that space? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>nic feliciano: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So it’s just my mom, my sister and I here in the U.S., everybody else is back in Manila.\u003c/span>\u003cb> \u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Sound design: birds chirping]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I have like 25 cousins back home that I when I’m there, like everyone’s around and just kind of really missing like that sense of home, or what have you.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so this thing happens to me every time I go back and forth where my reality gets really shook up. Like, I can’t tell what’s real. I feel a lot of guilt of living here and not being a part of what my family back home has to go through to survive, you know what I mean? It’s very- our lives are very different, and jumping back and forth is kind of a challenging thing for me. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so I remember being on the bus on my way home from work, and I saw that Bindlestiff- I was in their mailing list somehow, and I saw that they were auditioning for Tagalog speaking actors.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I was like, “Oh, maybe… that’s scary, I don’t know.” And then a month later, I see it again. And so I was like, “Okay, they’re still looking. Obviously it’s been a month. Like, maybe this is a sign I should just go and just do it.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">By the grace of God, I somehow still remember, like the Tagalog Pledge of Allegiance from school! \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Giggles]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I pulled up and I did the best pledge of allegiance with feelings that I could like a fool, and sang my little song, and I guess they were down because they called me back! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Music]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">From that point on, I’ve never said no to anything Bindlestiff-related again. It’s just 30 years, volunteer-run. Beyond just the theater space, the amount of work that they do in the SOMA neighborhood, like over the pandemic, their artistic director, Irene, ran a program where a bunch of, like, actors were volunteering- everyone, like, delivering groceries to the elders around there.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s put so much purpose to my art. I’ve had to reverse engineer my, even my own knowledge of, like, Philippine history and pre-colonial history. Like, I wouldn’t have probably learned that there, but coming here and being around other people in diaspora and learning about how other cultures have looked inward to be able to, like, get through our experiences out here — I feel like, in some sense, we owe it to really center like those who are still living in the land and the and the realities that they face every day and support their art. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I feel like Bindlestiff does a really good job doing that. Like, they’re in direct communication with the community here and always trying to, like, bridge that- that ocean, you know, those thousands and thousands of miles ya know? So it feels good. I’m so grateful to have found them and create a- like a creative family of misfit Filipino kids who didn’t follow the path. \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Laughs]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Pendarvis Harshaw: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You’re a part of a crew called Granny Cart Gangstas. What does that entail?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>nic feliciano: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, Granny Cart Gangstas is an open-door \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Laughs]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> comedy troupe — mostly Asian American, femme, multi-gender folks — who have been around for ten years, thank you very much. We just celebrated our ten-year anniversary last year. Basically, yeah, we- we’re a sketch comedy troupe. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Our two founders, Aureen and Ava, came up with the name because they’re always riding around with their granny cart, getting on the bus with it, you know, like as you see all around town. People move when it’s time to roll the granny cart full of laundry or groceries or whatever. It’s like, okay! So that’s kind of what inspired the name. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We do 2 to 3 week shows once a year at Bindlestiff. We all write all our own material. And we- when it’s time to put it up. Oh, man. It’s a hoot. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Video Clip, Granny Cart Gangstas: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Good evening. I am Lauren Goodman, and welcome to \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Quarantine Now\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Our top story is about the “Adobo Hoes,” a retired roller derby squad. They are leading the way in roller skating security escort tactics. Now being adopted around the San Francisco Bay Area to protect Asian American seniors. The community at large is now reporting feeling more confident and more secure with the hoes working the streets.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Pendarvis Harshaw: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Before you got into theater, you were part of a group called HOTTUB…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>nic feliciano: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oh my gosh.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Pendarvis Harshaw: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, we’re going there. You were involved in Oakland’s underground music scene — a lot of warehouse parties. Tell me about that music and how that era really shaped your perspective on life today? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>nic feliciano: \u003c/b>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Exhales breath]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> That era was wild, number one. Proved to be unsustainable. It started mid-2000s, like 2006 and we’re pretty active all the way to 2013. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There was so much reaction to, kind of like now, like to what was going on there. That was, like, the tail end of the, kind of like, Bush era. Oh my gosh, Occupy- like the Occupy Movement. So there was a lot of just like tension, especially in the East Bay, where the, the, the trickle of like what was going on in San Francisco hadn’t quite made it over there, but you could still start to feel it. And there was just a real sort of tension there. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I think out of that came just a very confrontational time, I would say. There wasn’t a lot of, like, femme acts at the time when we were, when, when we were performing. And so it’s three girls to the front, you know, it was, like, rough! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marisol Medina-Cadena: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In that vein of like being you said confrontational, loud, using your voice to claim space on stage. Sonically, what did your set sound like? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>nic feliciano: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">My gosh, a battle. Like our producers Jaysonic, Funky Finger Mark. We would bring out an MPC drum machine and a ASR ten sampler keyboard. Those were like our two things. They didn’t have, like, didn’t use laptops, nothing. And these are, like, really textured, heavy sounds that are going straight into sound systems. And then three girl MC chanting banshees like wild women. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Music: “Shoot the Lights Out” by HOTTUB]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Looking at my Casio it’s about that time\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m ’bout to pick it up stat on my hustle and grind\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I got nothin in my pocket but motha-fuckin’ fuck it\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I can get a fat loan if you can co-sign it\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But who cares!\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I ain’t tripin’ I ain’t tryin to trick for the man\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Just to get a couple grand in my hand…\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>nic feliciano: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The original concept of HOTTUB was, was going to be like Tagalog-Miami bass-type stuff. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I was always represent- you know, representing my, my shit. And so when I would write raps in Tagalog, lucky for us, we’re here in the Bay area with hella Filipinos. So every so often, like someone would be like “Yo!!!!” you know, and really like kind of recognizing. And that’s always, like, such a gift. But even though it feels like screaming in the void, like I- it just, feels great! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Music]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Shoot the lights out shoot the lights out!\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Shoot the lights out shoot the lights out, oh!!\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Shoot the lights out shoot the lights out!\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Shoot the lights out shoot the lights out, whoa!!\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cb>nic feliciano: \u003c/b>I’m so glad that I was able to come up creatively during that time because it never felt like there was so much to lose, because it was already coming from nothing. It was like so beyond DIY, you know, like… There was no fear in what we wanted to say. And we could just confront, like, every issue- You know, creating like this, like safe space for like, femme energy to kind of aggressively take over! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Music: “M.A.N.B.I.T.C.H” by HOTTUB]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Don’t disrespect\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You gotta come correct\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m tired of your nasty-ass…\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cb>nic feliciano: \u003c/b>It really was so empowering to- to be doing this with two of my best friends, you know, Jen and Amber shout out. Just making the most noise and just trying to, like, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Yells]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> get it out! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Definitely formative. And it, it it it gave me the guts to do things that are creative and to actually allow yourself to express, like, some of the stuff that’s going on in, in our minds takes so much guts. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m so grateful for that time in my life. And I’m also so grateful that I’ve recovered. \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Laughs] \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Pendarvis Harshaw:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It’s out. It’s done. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Music]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">M. A. N. B. I. T. C. H.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We know what it is,\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s written all over your face!\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marisol Medina-Cadena: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Just hearing you talk, there’s like this throughline between the comic book, the band HOTTUB, the work you do with Bindlestiff, of like centering Filipino culture. Is there like a thesis or like mission statement behind that, or is that just who you are? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>nic feliciano:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I think about this all the time. I think it’s just who I’ve always been. The very first day of school, of American school, ten years old, Orange County of all places. It was just so clear that I was not… of here. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Music]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s so many times that my creative mind and like this idea of trying to reconcile, you know, my- my existence here to home. Like I still think Philippines is home. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I was five years old when the Philippine Revolution happened. So in 1986, the Filipino people banded together, got the support of the military, and ousted Ferdinand Marcos, who was dictator for like, the last 26 years or whatever. And so I kind of feel like I’m a kid of revolution. Like, I understand that there is… that people can really get together and like, do something great, like, I believe in it, I seen it happen with my own eyes. And I feel like coming here, there’s always just been this sense of, like, refusing to be erased. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marisol Medina-Cadena:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The last question that we have for you is: being in your expansive era now, and all the personal values you have for yourself. What do you need from, like, the art scene or your peers or art spaces to do the kind of work you want to do? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>nic feliciano: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Watching how — especially here in the Bay Area — watching how artists come together to like, really fight for what they believe in, and really, like, put their necks on the line and really support certain movements, like it’s fired up right now. And I think that, you know, what we can all do for each other is provide ways that we can build our stamina, because I really think that’s what we’re gonna need. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And the more of that we use our art as leverage and as power, and the more that we understand how powerful we are together… I think that’s probably my greatest ask for myself and our community. It’s like, figure out ways to build stamina because we’re really gonna need it for the long haul.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Credits music]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Pendarvis Harshaw: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Big thank you nic feliciano for dropping by the KQED stu’ to talk about the important things and for making us laugh through it all. You can find her on instagram @cocomachetez. That’s spelled c-o-c-o-m-a-c-h-e-t-e-z. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">From May 16th through June 1st, nic will be taking part in an original production at Bindlestiff Studios called Dark Heart. Be sure to check that out. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode was hosted by me, Pendarvis Harshaw. Marisol Medina-Cadena produced this episode. Chris Hambrick held it down for edits on this one. Christopher Beale engineered this joint. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The music you heard was courtesy of HOTTUB and Audio Network.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Rightnowish team is also supported by Jen Chien, Ugur Dursun, Holly Kernan, Cesar Saldaña and Katie Sprenger. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Thank you all for listening! For longtime fans of the show, y’all know how we roll. But if you’re new here, welcome! We’re glad to have you, it’s our honor to introduce you to Bay Area culture keepers and change makers you may not have the privilege of knowing… yet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, if you enjoy what we’re doing at Rightnowish, please share the podcast with a friend or a coworker. Subscribe and rate the podcast on whatever platform you choose. Every little action goes a long way. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ok, y’all be easy! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Rightnowish is a KQED production.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Peace.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Rightnowish is an arts and culture podcast produced at KQED. Listen to it wherever you get your podcasts or click the play button at the top of this page and subscribe to the show on \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/721590300/rightnowish\">NPR One\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://open.spotify.com/show/7kEJuafTzTVan7B78ttz1I\">Spotify\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rightnowish/id1482187648\">Apple Podcasts\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://tunein.com/podcasts/Arts--Culture-Podcasts/Rightnowish-p1258245/\">TuneIn\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqed/rightnowish\">Stitcher\u003c/a> or wherever you get your podcasts. \u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "The fashionista, playwright, chef, thespian and 'master of fun' discusses her many artistic endeavors.",
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"title": "nic feliciano Is Blessed With The ‘Curse Of An Overactive Creative Mind’ | KQED",
"description": "nic feliciano (who also goes by Coco Machete) contains multitudes. She's a fashionista who currently resides in the East Bay, but was born in the Philippines and raised in Southern California. After moving to Berkeley for school two decades ago, she's grown into a playwright, comedian, chef and thespian. She's also a former MC and member of the Bay Area-based hip-hop group, HOTTUB, which made Miami-boom bass inspired rap songs from about 2006 to 2013.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>nic feliciano will find a way to creatively express herself, no matter what.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>feliciano (who also goes by \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/cocomachetz/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Coco Machete\u003c/a>) contains multitudes. She’s a fashionista who currently resides in Berkeley, but was born in the Philippines and spent her teenage years in Southern California. After moving to the East Bay for school two decades ago, she’s grown into a playwright, chef, thespian and — as she says — “a master of fun.” She’s also a former MC and member of the Bay Area-based hip-hop group \u003ca href=\"https://hottuboakland.bandcamp.com/album/3-the-hard-way\">HOTTUB\u003c/a>, which made Miami Bass–inspired rap songs from roughly 2006 to 2013.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When it comes to her work, there are two important things to understand: first, she incorporates her Filipina identity into everything she creates. Second, her “work” isn’t really work at all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13956529\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-13956529 size-medium\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/coco-machete-2-800x1207.jpg\" alt=\"A woman poses in a squat stance with her left hand holding her chin. She wears neon green clogs, black tights and a zebra print skirt. In the background are shelves holding recycled water jugs and plastic pots.\" width=\"800\" height=\"1207\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/coco-machete-2-800x1207.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/coco-machete-2-1020x1538.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/coco-machete-2-160x241.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/coco-machete-2-768x1158.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/coco-machete-2-1018x1536.jpg 1018w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/coco-machete-2-1358x2048.jpg 1358w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/coco-machete-2-1920x2896.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/coco-machete-2-scaled.jpg 1697w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">nic feliciano is a writer, performer and cook based in Berkeley by way of the Philippines. \u003ccite>(Kate Buenconsejo)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>feliciano proudly maintains flexible daytime employment to pay her bills, while letting her creative juices flow during the evening hours. This separation allows her to stay inspired, penning funny sketches that she performs as a part of her \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/grannycartgangstas?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw==\">Grannycart Gangstas\u003c/a> act at \u003ca href=\"https://www.bindlestiffstudio.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Blindlestiff Studio\u003c/a> in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>feliciano’s creations go beyond the stage. She’s currently writing a comic book in which she gives a modern spin on the mythological creature from Filipino folklore, the Manananggal. The storyline sheds light on the exploitation that workers in the Philippines face working as contractors for Big Tech.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This week, we talk about how the Bay Area has assisted feliciano’s artistic endeavors, from rapping over bass-heavy hip-hop beats in the early 2000s to forging a “creative family of misfit Filipino kids who didn’t follow the path.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm/?e=KQINC8148943076\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-content post-body\">\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Music]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Pendarvis Harshaw, Host:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Hey what’s up Rightnowish listeners. I’m your host, Pendarvis Harshaw. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For this episode, we hear from cook, slash writer, slash actor, slash musician and all around funny person, nic feliciano, who goes by the moniker Coco Machete. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At age 10, nic, along with her mother and sister, left the Philippines and settled in Orange County. Itching to find like-minded folks, nic eventually left SoCal and moved to Berkeley for community college… and she’s been here ever since. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As y’all may know, juggling day jobs and side gigs to pay the bills comes with the territory of being an artist in the Bay. But for nic, she’s not pressed to let how she pays the rent define her.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>nic feliciano, Guest: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The true art and what I do is just kind of like surviving. Like my mom to me is an artist because of- she’s never picked up a paintbrush in her life. But like, the way she moves through life and the way she like, makes shit happen and the way she like, figures this out over that or whatever. Like, damn, that’s like such art to me!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Pendarvis Harshaw: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Rightnowish producer Marisol Medina-Cadena and I dive into the splendor that is nic’s mind, and discuss how she honors Filipino brilliance in all that she does. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That and more right after this. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Ad break]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marisol Medina-Cadena: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When we spoke on the phone a while ago, you said something that just really crystallized your creative practice for me. You said you were in your “expansive era.” I feel like that expression really speaks volumes about where you’re at with your relationship to artmaking. So what does your expansive area look like? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>nic feliciano: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s more of just a consciousness whenever I can… if I try- if I have a moment to like meditate on something, it’s just asking for guidance in terms of like how I- how this experience can make me a little bit more expansive and a little bit more able to hold more empathy, more love. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If I forget to remind myself that I’m in that space right now, it’s very easy for everything to knock it down, and feel tired and unaligned. And so I’m kind of using that as a way to stay the course and create some stamina… trying to come from as much love as I can in these crazy times because it’s harder and harder. \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Laughs]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marisol Medina-Cadena: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I know that you have a day job outside of your creative practice. And maybe there’s overlap but they’re not really contingent on each other. How do you structure your life in a way that you have the passion and the desire to still make art outside of, like what pays your bills? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>nic feliciano: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I always like, kind of gave myself a hard time about that and been like, what’s wrong with you? Like, why wouldn’t you want to go all in on your art and like, really be about it, live it or whatnot? And I think that for me, not depending on it financially has always sustained it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think I just am one of those people who were blessed or cursed with an overactive creative mind that is constantly feeling the need to like express and release or whatever. But I realized that every time it got to a point where it was time to take it serious, or even like the idea of living off of my art, or like any of that, I feel like — personally, like it kind of kills it a little bit and it doesn’t feel super aligned. I’m not super inspired by it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So it’s just about like finding work that’s not going to keep me there, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Laughs]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> like beyond the hours that I need to be. And my brain doesn’t get going until the nighttime anyway. So like, I take advantage of like whatever time, you know, I have outside of that.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so, I’m grateful, I feel grateful that my day jobs haven’t completely, like, overshadowed my my creative work. You know, how I pay my bills is kind of like the smallest part of my identity. \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Laughs]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It’s just… no to careers and no to making art a career either, I don’t know. \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Laughs]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Pendarvis Harshaw: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Balance. It sounds like balance. And also making sure that you work within what’s best for you. You said your night hours, you know, being at home. You know yourself. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>nic feliciano: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m trying you know, it’s the journey. It’s part of the ride! \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Laughs]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Pendarvis Harshaw: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Diving into your artistic endeavors. You’re on the cusp of finishing your first comic book, so I hear. And it’s a sci-fi thriller based on Filipino folklore?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>nic feliciano: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, gosh!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Pendarvis Harshaw: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Please tell me about the inspiration for this. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>nic feliciano: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This has been in the works for quite a while. Inspired by a PBS documentary called The Cleaners, which was about a third party company in the Philippines that was being hired by, like, the Googles, the Facebooks, all that kind of stuff. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Basically, when something gets flagged on any of these platforms, they’re going to these workers — oftentimes, you know, in the Global South: Philippines, India, and a human is processing these images and they’re deciding whether to delete or to keep. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Music]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>nic feliciano: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They’re getting PTSD. They’re like processing 8,000 images a day, you know, just like constant, just the worst images you can imagine!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One of my favorite folkloric creatures in Filipino folklore is this creature called the manananggal. And it’s oftentimes a femme creature. They stay in the trees, they’re kind of vampiric or what have you. And their top half comes off, and that’s what goes flying around at night looking for food, primarily victims or whatnot. They’re known to suck the life through belly buttons.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Typically, it’s represented as a scary thing that, you know, growing up, if you didn’t, like, go to sleep right away, they’d be like, “oh, the Manananggal is going to come get you.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As I’ve like, gotten older and whatnot, I’m just like, well, like, what if it actually was like a creature that, like, went out and did stuff for justice, you know what I mean? I just, like, made up all this stuff in my head. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So anyway, I wrote this short one act play that was from the perspective of this Manananggalgal who didn’t realize they were a Manananggal until they were exploited super hard at work. They snap. And they go and kill, like, all the CEOs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Thank god Bindlestiff Studios, shout out to Bindlestiff Studios over there in the SOMA, 6th and Howard. The only place for Filipino and Filippinx performing arts, like, they put this play up. It’s pretty ridiculous, but I’m obsessed with this world, like… it’s kind of like the prequel to this piece that I wrote. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so I feel like — comic book, that’s a good way to kind of… not so much lighten it, but like not make it so realistic. The fact that it’s not the real thing, I think feels sort of liberating to tell the story in the way that it is in my head, without it being too, like, real. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I’m really excited about it, and it’s taken a while, but I’m glad we’ve taken our time because I’ve been collaborating with this incredible illustrator Corpser. Shout out Corpser from Bulacan, in the Philippines. He and I have been going back and forth and he’s illustrated the whole thing and he snapped on the illustration. Neither of us had done this before, but oh man, like, with his vision and my crazy, gross world building. It’s nasty and I can’t wait to share it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marisol Medina-Cadena: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You’ve spoken a lot about Bindlestiff, can you tell us what drew you to that space? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>nic feliciano: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So it’s just my mom, my sister and I here in the U.S., everybody else is back in Manila.\u003c/span>\u003cb> \u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Sound design: birds chirping]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I have like 25 cousins back home that I when I’m there, like everyone’s around and just kind of really missing like that sense of home, or what have you.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so this thing happens to me every time I go back and forth where my reality gets really shook up. Like, I can’t tell what’s real. I feel a lot of guilt of living here and not being a part of what my family back home has to go through to survive, you know what I mean? It’s very- our lives are very different, and jumping back and forth is kind of a challenging thing for me. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so I remember being on the bus on my way home from work, and I saw that Bindlestiff- I was in their mailing list somehow, and I saw that they were auditioning for Tagalog speaking actors.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I was like, “Oh, maybe… that’s scary, I don’t know.” And then a month later, I see it again. And so I was like, “Okay, they’re still looking. Obviously it’s been a month. Like, maybe this is a sign I should just go and just do it.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">By the grace of God, I somehow still remember, like the Tagalog Pledge of Allegiance from school! \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Giggles]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I pulled up and I did the best pledge of allegiance with feelings that I could like a fool, and sang my little song, and I guess they were down because they called me back! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Music]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">From that point on, I’ve never said no to anything Bindlestiff-related again. It’s just 30 years, volunteer-run. Beyond just the theater space, the amount of work that they do in the SOMA neighborhood, like over the pandemic, their artistic director, Irene, ran a program where a bunch of, like, actors were volunteering- everyone, like, delivering groceries to the elders around there.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s put so much purpose to my art. I’ve had to reverse engineer my, even my own knowledge of, like, Philippine history and pre-colonial history. Like, I wouldn’t have probably learned that there, but coming here and being around other people in diaspora and learning about how other cultures have looked inward to be able to, like, get through our experiences out here — I feel like, in some sense, we owe it to really center like those who are still living in the land and the and the realities that they face every day and support their art. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I feel like Bindlestiff does a really good job doing that. Like, they’re in direct communication with the community here and always trying to, like, bridge that- that ocean, you know, those thousands and thousands of miles ya know? So it feels good. I’m so grateful to have found them and create a- like a creative family of misfit Filipino kids who didn’t follow the path. \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Laughs]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Pendarvis Harshaw: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You’re a part of a crew called Granny Cart Gangstas. What does that entail?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>nic feliciano: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, Granny Cart Gangstas is an open-door \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Laughs]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> comedy troupe — mostly Asian American, femme, multi-gender folks — who have been around for ten years, thank you very much. We just celebrated our ten-year anniversary last year. Basically, yeah, we- we’re a sketch comedy troupe. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Our two founders, Aureen and Ava, came up with the name because they’re always riding around with their granny cart, getting on the bus with it, you know, like as you see all around town. People move when it’s time to roll the granny cart full of laundry or groceries or whatever. It’s like, okay! So that’s kind of what inspired the name. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We do 2 to 3 week shows once a year at Bindlestiff. We all write all our own material. And we- when it’s time to put it up. Oh, man. It’s a hoot. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Video Clip, Granny Cart Gangstas: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Good evening. I am Lauren Goodman, and welcome to \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Quarantine Now\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Our top story is about the “Adobo Hoes,” a retired roller derby squad. They are leading the way in roller skating security escort tactics. Now being adopted around the San Francisco Bay Area to protect Asian American seniors. The community at large is now reporting feeling more confident and more secure with the hoes working the streets.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Pendarvis Harshaw: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Before you got into theater, you were part of a group called HOTTUB…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>nic feliciano: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oh my gosh.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Pendarvis Harshaw: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, we’re going there. You were involved in Oakland’s underground music scene — a lot of warehouse parties. Tell me about that music and how that era really shaped your perspective on life today? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>nic feliciano: \u003c/b>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Exhales breath]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> That era was wild, number one. Proved to be unsustainable. It started mid-2000s, like 2006 and we’re pretty active all the way to 2013. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There was so much reaction to, kind of like now, like to what was going on there. That was, like, the tail end of the, kind of like, Bush era. Oh my gosh, Occupy- like the Occupy Movement. So there was a lot of just like tension, especially in the East Bay, where the, the, the trickle of like what was going on in San Francisco hadn’t quite made it over there, but you could still start to feel it. And there was just a real sort of tension there. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I think out of that came just a very confrontational time, I would say. There wasn’t a lot of, like, femme acts at the time when we were, when, when we were performing. And so it’s three girls to the front, you know, it was, like, rough! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marisol Medina-Cadena: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In that vein of like being you said confrontational, loud, using your voice to claim space on stage. Sonically, what did your set sound like? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>nic feliciano: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">My gosh, a battle. Like our producers Jaysonic, Funky Finger Mark. We would bring out an MPC drum machine and a ASR ten sampler keyboard. Those were like our two things. They didn’t have, like, didn’t use laptops, nothing. And these are, like, really textured, heavy sounds that are going straight into sound systems. And then three girl MC chanting banshees like wild women. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Music: “Shoot the Lights Out” by HOTTUB]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Looking at my Casio it’s about that time\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m ’bout to pick it up stat on my hustle and grind\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I got nothin in my pocket but motha-fuckin’ fuck it\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I can get a fat loan if you can co-sign it\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But who cares!\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I ain’t tripin’ I ain’t tryin to trick for the man\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Just to get a couple grand in my hand…\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>nic feliciano: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The original concept of HOTTUB was, was going to be like Tagalog-Miami bass-type stuff. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I was always represent- you know, representing my, my shit. And so when I would write raps in Tagalog, lucky for us, we’re here in the Bay area with hella Filipinos. So every so often, like someone would be like “Yo!!!!” you know, and really like kind of recognizing. And that’s always, like, such a gift. But even though it feels like screaming in the void, like I- it just, feels great! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Music]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Shoot the lights out shoot the lights out!\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Shoot the lights out shoot the lights out, oh!!\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Shoot the lights out shoot the lights out!\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Shoot the lights out shoot the lights out, whoa!!\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cb>nic feliciano: \u003c/b>I’m so glad that I was able to come up creatively during that time because it never felt like there was so much to lose, because it was already coming from nothing. It was like so beyond DIY, you know, like… There was no fear in what we wanted to say. And we could just confront, like, every issue- You know, creating like this, like safe space for like, femme energy to kind of aggressively take over! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Music: “M.A.N.B.I.T.C.H” by HOTTUB]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Don’t disrespect\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You gotta come correct\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m tired of your nasty-ass…\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cb>nic feliciano: \u003c/b>It really was so empowering to- to be doing this with two of my best friends, you know, Jen and Amber shout out. Just making the most noise and just trying to, like, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Yells]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> get it out! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Definitely formative. And it, it it it gave me the guts to do things that are creative and to actually allow yourself to express, like, some of the stuff that’s going on in, in our minds takes so much guts. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m so grateful for that time in my life. And I’m also so grateful that I’ve recovered. \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Laughs] \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Pendarvis Harshaw:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It’s out. It’s done. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Music]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">M. A. N. B. I. T. C. H.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We know what it is,\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s written all over your face!\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marisol Medina-Cadena: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Just hearing you talk, there’s like this throughline between the comic book, the band HOTTUB, the work you do with Bindlestiff, of like centering Filipino culture. Is there like a thesis or like mission statement behind that, or is that just who you are? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>nic feliciano:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I think about this all the time. I think it’s just who I’ve always been. The very first day of school, of American school, ten years old, Orange County of all places. It was just so clear that I was not… of here. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Music]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s so many times that my creative mind and like this idea of trying to reconcile, you know, my- my existence here to home. Like I still think Philippines is home. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I was five years old when the Philippine Revolution happened. So in 1986, the Filipino people banded together, got the support of the military, and ousted Ferdinand Marcos, who was dictator for like, the last 26 years or whatever. And so I kind of feel like I’m a kid of revolution. Like, I understand that there is… that people can really get together and like, do something great, like, I believe in it, I seen it happen with my own eyes. And I feel like coming here, there’s always just been this sense of, like, refusing to be erased. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marisol Medina-Cadena:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The last question that we have for you is: being in your expansive era now, and all the personal values you have for yourself. What do you need from, like, the art scene or your peers or art spaces to do the kind of work you want to do? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>nic feliciano: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Watching how — especially here in the Bay Area — watching how artists come together to like, really fight for what they believe in, and really, like, put their necks on the line and really support certain movements, like it’s fired up right now. And I think that, you know, what we can all do for each other is provide ways that we can build our stamina, because I really think that’s what we’re gonna need. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And the more of that we use our art as leverage and as power, and the more that we understand how powerful we are together… I think that’s probably my greatest ask for myself and our community. It’s like, figure out ways to build stamina because we’re really gonna need it for the long haul.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Credits music]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Pendarvis Harshaw: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Big thank you nic feliciano for dropping by the KQED stu’ to talk about the important things and for making us laugh through it all. You can find her on instagram @cocomachetez. That’s spelled c-o-c-o-m-a-c-h-e-t-e-z. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">From May 16th through June 1st, nic will be taking part in an original production at Bindlestiff Studios called Dark Heart. Be sure to check that out. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode was hosted by me, Pendarvis Harshaw. Marisol Medina-Cadena produced this episode. Chris Hambrick held it down for edits on this one. Christopher Beale engineered this joint. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The music you heard was courtesy of HOTTUB and Audio Network.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Rightnowish team is also supported by Jen Chien, Ugur Dursun, Holly Kernan, Cesar Saldaña and Katie Sprenger. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Thank you all for listening! For longtime fans of the show, y’all know how we roll. But if you’re new here, welcome! We’re glad to have you, it’s our honor to introduce you to Bay Area culture keepers and change makers you may not have the privilege of knowing… yet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, if you enjoy what we’re doing at Rightnowish, please share the podcast with a friend or a coworker. Subscribe and rate the podcast on whatever platform you choose. Every little action goes a long way. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ok, y’all be easy! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Rightnowish is a KQED production.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Peace.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Rightnowish is an arts and culture podcast produced at KQED. Listen to it wherever you get your podcasts or click the play button at the top of this page and subscribe to the show on \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/721590300/rightnowish\">NPR One\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://open.spotify.com/show/7kEJuafTzTVan7B78ttz1I\">Spotify\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rightnowish/id1482187648\">Apple Podcasts\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://tunein.com/podcasts/Arts--Culture-Podcasts/Rightnowish-p1258245/\">TuneIn\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqed/rightnowish\">Stitcher\u003c/a> or wherever you get your podcasts. \u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>"
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"content": "\u003cp>As a child growing up in Kansas City, Ivan McClellan would sing the national anthem at the \u003ca href=\"https://www.americanroyal.com/rodeo/\">American Royal\u003c/a> rodeo with a youth choir. Those performances are some of his fondest memories, but they’re also bittersweet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13939278']That’s because just about everybody else around him was white.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It wasn’t a place that we felt like we belonged,” McClellan told \u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> host \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/1018429547/a-martinez\">A Martínez\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Learning about Black rodeos as an adult came as a revelation to him. McClellan spent nearly a decade documenting this unique culture all across the United States.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2024/04/23/ivan_mcclellan_03_sq-acafa9119030ddf411da2cab26a000dc19d00146.jpg?s=1200&c=75&f=jpeg\" alt=\"Two young Black men seen in a wooded area at dusk, standing on the backs of two horses.\" width=\"1200\" height=\"1200\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rodney & RJ, McCalla, Ala.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>His forthcoming photobook, \u003ca href=\"https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/eight-seconds-miss-rosen/1144643838?ean=9788862088121\">\u003cem>Eight Seconds: Black Rodeo Culture\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, out April 30, features highlights from that journey. The title refers to the minimum amount of time a rider has to stay on a horse or other livestock in order to register a score during a competition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“All of this beauty and energy and environment just stuck to me,” McClellan said about his first encounter with a Black rodeo. “I saw thousands of Black cowboys and they were doing the Cupid Shuffle in the desert and they were cooking turkey legs. And there were Black folks dressed like traditional cowboys. There were also Black folks riding their horses in Jordans and women riding with their braids blowing behind them and their hands with long acrylic nails clutching the reins.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2024/04/23/ivan_mcclellan_06_custom-d85e2c1b239ef70972128b1ddd896e5162adf770.jpg?s=1200&c=75&f=jpeg\" alt=\"Two Black men on horses race at high speeds around a sandy arena.\" width=\"1200\" height=\"930\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Riders pass a baton during a Pony Express relay race in Okmulgee, Okla.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>That event, \u003ca href=\"https://www.greencountryok.com/event/roy-leblanc-okmulgee-invitational-rodeo-%26-festival/69/\">the Roy Leblanc Invitational Rodeo in Oklahoma\u003c/a>, is one McClellan has come to dub “the Super Bowl of Black rodeos.” It is the oldest of its kind in the country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13955021']He began posting his photographs of the event online. As his social media audience grew, McClellan was soon traveling the country in search of similar happenings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There are Black cowboys pretty much everywhere. I mean, there are Black cowboys here in Portland, Ore., where I live, which I think is the last place that I would have expected to find them,” said McClellan, who now runs his own rodeo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I went all the way to Oklahoma to realize that there were cowboys up the road from me who have been there for four generations … You’d be hard pressed to find a part of America where there wasn’t at least some some portion of this culture.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2024/04/23/ivan_mcclellan_07_custom-0da721f05dccc9141ff2052b7e9719d3d118157d.jpg?s=1200&c=75&f=jpeg\" alt=\"A Black woman in a cowboy hat, shirt and jeans poses inside an industrial enclosure.\" width=\"1200\" height=\"891\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jadayia Kursh, Okmulgee, Okla.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>It’s a narrative largely shunned by Hollywood and the broader mass culture, where the cowboy is consistently portrayed as a white male, be it John Wayne, Val Kilmer or on TV series like \u003cem>Bonanza\u003c/em> (1959-73) and \u003cem>Gunsmoke\u003c/em> (1955-75).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Up until a few years ago, “I really thought that term [cowboy] was a joke when applied to a Black person,” McClellan said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, the term was once a pejorative for African Americans working on ranches and farms, while white cowboys were known as “cowhands.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2024/04/23/ivan_mcclellan_08_custom-f5fa59efb45a4fb53276ba52a59684a8cc36fcc9.jpg?s=1200&c=75&f=jpeg\" alt=\"A Black man lies flat along a horse's back, his hat flying off behind him, as he struggles to stay on the bucking horse.\" width=\"1200\" height=\"891\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Patrick Liddell, Las Vegas, Nevada.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But ultimately, cowboy became “a shorthand for our noblest ideals,” McClellan said. “A lot of these things our popular culture is hesitant to attribute to a Black person. So I think to have a cowboy rushing in, saving the day with a black face just didn’t jibe with the stories that Hollywood was trying to tell. I think it’s erasure. I think it’s at best, laziness, at worst, very intentional and malicious. But I’m excited to see that transforming before my eyes.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beyoncé’s recent country-influenced album \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9XHMK3nWr4\">\u003cem>Cowboy Carter\u003c/em>\u003c/a> is the latest iteration of that push for change in popular culture. Lil Nas X challenged the country genre in 2018 with his song “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7qovpFAGrQ\">Old Town Road.\u003c/a>” It became a viral hit after sparking widespread conversations \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/04/05/710021098/lil-nas-x-country-musics-unlikely-son-sparks-conversation-on-genre-and-race\">about genre gatekeeping and Black musicians’ place within country culture\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2024/04/23/ivan_mcclellan_09_custom-d069a736f1be991e2c90579b2e603ca412549042.jpg?s=1200&c=75&f=jpeg\" alt=\"Two young Black men in full cowboy regalia stand behind a fence in a large warehouse, watching the distance intently. An older Black man stands at their side doing the same.\" width=\"1200\" height=\"894\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bull Riders, Rosenberg, Texas.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“It was a perfect alley-oop. And Beyoncé is hanging on the rim right now,” said McClellan. “Beyoncé is not only revealing Black cowboy culture, but she’s transforming country music forever and tearing down genres in a way that that I don’t think has ever been done.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13939314']For McClellan, there’s now one place where he keeps returning over and over.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“As far as cultural impact, there’s nothing like the Roy LeBlanc Invitational Rodeo,” he said. “On the second weekend in August at about 8 p.m. when the sun is going down, everything is gold and all the athletes are filing into the arena for the grand entry. And that is where I like to take photos more than anywhere else on the entire planet.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2024/04/23/ivan_mcclellan_04_custom-6997682f2f6e5a0d922046c6178e1759c11b9ebd.jpg?s=1200&c=75&f=jpeg\" alt=\"A young Black woman in a fringed red shirt and black cowboy hat decorated with a tiara sits on horseback comfortably holding reins.\" width=\"1200\" height=\"930\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rodeo Queen, Okmulgee, Okla.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The broadcast version of this story was produced by \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/896256272/lilly-quiroz\">\u003cem>Lilly Quiroz\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>. The digital version was edited by Obed Manuel.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>That’s because just about everybody else around him was white.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It wasn’t a place that we felt like we belonged,” McClellan told \u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> host \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/1018429547/a-martinez\">A Martínez\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Learning about Black rodeos as an adult came as a revelation to him. McClellan spent nearly a decade documenting this unique culture all across the United States.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2024/04/23/ivan_mcclellan_03_sq-acafa9119030ddf411da2cab26a000dc19d00146.jpg?s=1200&c=75&f=jpeg\" alt=\"Two young Black men seen in a wooded area at dusk, standing on the backs of two horses.\" width=\"1200\" height=\"1200\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rodney & RJ, McCalla, Ala.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>His forthcoming photobook, \u003ca href=\"https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/eight-seconds-miss-rosen/1144643838?ean=9788862088121\">\u003cem>Eight Seconds: Black Rodeo Culture\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, out April 30, features highlights from that journey. The title refers to the minimum amount of time a rider has to stay on a horse or other livestock in order to register a score during a competition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“All of this beauty and energy and environment just stuck to me,” McClellan said about his first encounter with a Black rodeo. “I saw thousands of Black cowboys and they were doing the Cupid Shuffle in the desert and they were cooking turkey legs. And there were Black folks dressed like traditional cowboys. There were also Black folks riding their horses in Jordans and women riding with their braids blowing behind them and their hands with long acrylic nails clutching the reins.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2024/04/23/ivan_mcclellan_06_custom-d85e2c1b239ef70972128b1ddd896e5162adf770.jpg?s=1200&c=75&f=jpeg\" alt=\"Two Black men on horses race at high speeds around a sandy arena.\" width=\"1200\" height=\"930\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Riders pass a baton during a Pony Express relay race in Okmulgee, Okla.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>That event, \u003ca href=\"https://www.greencountryok.com/event/roy-leblanc-okmulgee-invitational-rodeo-%26-festival/69/\">the Roy Leblanc Invitational Rodeo in Oklahoma\u003c/a>, is one McClellan has come to dub “the Super Bowl of Black rodeos.” It is the oldest of its kind in the country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>He began posting his photographs of the event online. As his social media audience grew, McClellan was soon traveling the country in search of similar happenings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There are Black cowboys pretty much everywhere. I mean, there are Black cowboys here in Portland, Ore., where I live, which I think is the last place that I would have expected to find them,” said McClellan, who now runs his own rodeo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I went all the way to Oklahoma to realize that there were cowboys up the road from me who have been there for four generations … You’d be hard pressed to find a part of America where there wasn’t at least some some portion of this culture.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2024/04/23/ivan_mcclellan_07_custom-0da721f05dccc9141ff2052b7e9719d3d118157d.jpg?s=1200&c=75&f=jpeg\" alt=\"A Black woman in a cowboy hat, shirt and jeans poses inside an industrial enclosure.\" width=\"1200\" height=\"891\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jadayia Kursh, Okmulgee, Okla.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>It’s a narrative largely shunned by Hollywood and the broader mass culture, where the cowboy is consistently portrayed as a white male, be it John Wayne, Val Kilmer or on TV series like \u003cem>Bonanza\u003c/em> (1959-73) and \u003cem>Gunsmoke\u003c/em> (1955-75).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Up until a few years ago, “I really thought that term [cowboy] was a joke when applied to a Black person,” McClellan said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, the term was once a pejorative for African Americans working on ranches and farms, while white cowboys were known as “cowhands.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2024/04/23/ivan_mcclellan_08_custom-f5fa59efb45a4fb53276ba52a59684a8cc36fcc9.jpg?s=1200&c=75&f=jpeg\" alt=\"A Black man lies flat along a horse's back, his hat flying off behind him, as he struggles to stay on the bucking horse.\" width=\"1200\" height=\"891\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Patrick Liddell, Las Vegas, Nevada.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But ultimately, cowboy became “a shorthand for our noblest ideals,” McClellan said. “A lot of these things our popular culture is hesitant to attribute to a Black person. So I think to have a cowboy rushing in, saving the day with a black face just didn’t jibe with the stories that Hollywood was trying to tell. I think it’s erasure. I think it’s at best, laziness, at worst, very intentional and malicious. But I’m excited to see that transforming before my eyes.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beyoncé’s recent country-influenced album \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9XHMK3nWr4\">\u003cem>Cowboy Carter\u003c/em>\u003c/a> is the latest iteration of that push for change in popular culture. Lil Nas X challenged the country genre in 2018 with his song “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7qovpFAGrQ\">Old Town Road.\u003c/a>” It became a viral hit after sparking widespread conversations \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/04/05/710021098/lil-nas-x-country-musics-unlikely-son-sparks-conversation-on-genre-and-race\">about genre gatekeeping and Black musicians’ place within country culture\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2024/04/23/ivan_mcclellan_09_custom-d069a736f1be991e2c90579b2e603ca412549042.jpg?s=1200&c=75&f=jpeg\" alt=\"Two young Black men in full cowboy regalia stand behind a fence in a large warehouse, watching the distance intently. An older Black man stands at their side doing the same.\" width=\"1200\" height=\"894\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bull Riders, Rosenberg, Texas.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“It was a perfect alley-oop. And Beyoncé is hanging on the rim right now,” said McClellan. “Beyoncé is not only revealing Black cowboy culture, but she’s transforming country music forever and tearing down genres in a way that that I don’t think has ever been done.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>For McClellan, there’s now one place where he keeps returning over and over.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“As far as cultural impact, there’s nothing like the Roy LeBlanc Invitational Rodeo,” he said. “On the second weekend in August at about 8 p.m. when the sun is going down, everything is gold and all the athletes are filing into the arena for the grand entry. And that is where I like to take photos more than anywhere else on the entire planet.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2024/04/23/ivan_mcclellan_04_custom-6997682f2f6e5a0d922046c6178e1759c11b9ebd.jpg?s=1200&c=75&f=jpeg\" alt=\"A young Black woman in a fringed red shirt and black cowboy hat decorated with a tiara sits on horseback comfortably holding reins.\" width=\"1200\" height=\"930\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rodeo Queen, Okmulgee, Okla.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The broadcast version of this story was produced by \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/896256272/lilly-quiroz\">\u003cem>Lilly Quiroz\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>. The digital version was edited by Obed Manuel.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "The Rainin Foundation Announces Its 2024 Fellows, Receiving $100,000 Each",
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"content": "\u003cp>The Kenneth Rainin Foundation announced its 2024 class of fellows on Wednesday, giving unrestricted grants of $100,000 each to three individual artists and one trio of creatives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The list includes filmmaker \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/adrianlburrell/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Adrian L. Burrell\u003c/a>, dancer \u003ca href=\"https://www.danceforallbodies.org/antoinehunter\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Antoine Hunter, a.k.a. Purple Fire Crow\u003c/a>, poet and thespian \u003ca href=\"https://www.ayodelenzinga.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Ayodele ‘WordSlanger’ Nzinga\u003c/a>, and the trio of Mike Arcega, Paolo Asuncion, and Rachel Lastimosa of the \u003ca href=\"https://arcega.us/section/501274-TNT%20Traysikel.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">TNT Traysikel\u003c/a> mobile art exhibition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13956437\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13956437\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/b46deecd95380203a29c0adb7ee6ec25-800x621.jpg\" alt=\"TNT Traysikel, a roaming sculpture that represents the Filipino-American community, parked in front of the Golden Gate Bridge. \" width=\"800\" height=\"621\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/b46deecd95380203a29c0adb7ee6ec25-800x621.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/b46deecd95380203a29c0adb7ee6ec25-1020x792.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/b46deecd95380203a29c0adb7ee6ec25-160x124.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/b46deecd95380203a29c0adb7ee6ec25-768x596.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/b46deecd95380203a29c0adb7ee6ec25-1536x1192.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/b46deecd95380203a29c0adb7ee6ec25.jpg 1572w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">TNT Traysikel, a roaming sculpture that represents the Filipino-American community, seen parked in front of the Golden Gate Bridge. \u003ccite>(Mark Baugh-Sasaki)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>When asked what it feels like to receive the award, Oakland Poet Laureate Ayodele Nzinga says: “Liberated… It affords me a tiny bit of security here in the Bay.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A playwright and owner of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13933205/ayodele-nzinga-opens-curtain-at-bam-house-a-new-home-for-black-arts\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">BAM House\u003c/a> theatre, Nzinga has produced shows in Oakland for more than two decades. She founded the theatre company the Lower Bottom Playaz in 1999, and in 2021 was awarded the title of \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/07/15/1013730633/meet-oaklands-first-poet-laureate-dr-ayodele-wordslanger-nzinga\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Oakland’s first Poet Laureate.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I spent most of the time as Poet Laureate hoping that I could stay in Oakland for the term of laureatecy,” says Nzinga, adding that the ability to “root” both personally and professionally is her biggest takeaway from the grant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13956481\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13956481\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/0.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1000\" height=\"1250\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/0.jpg 1000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/0-800x1000.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/0-160x200.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/0-768x960.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Adrian L. Burrell. \u003ccite>(Dondre Stutley )\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Adrian L. Burrell echoes Nzinga’s plan to invest the funds into personal and professional development.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Burrell is a filmmaker, photographer and proud third-generation Oakland representative. He makes multimedia works comprised of his personal sojourns, family video archives and elements of Afrocentric spirituality. His work has received national acclaim; earlier this year, he was the recipient of \u003ca href=\"https://thegrio.com/2024/02/27/meet-adrian-burrell-the-first-recipient-of-thegrios-emerging-filmmaker-fellowship/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">TheGrio’s Emerging Filmmaker Fellowship\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the Rainin Fellowship has special meaning to him. “It feels good to be supported by the soil,” Burrell says. As an independent artist, with no official gallery representation, he knows such recognition is rare.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s been cool to be in a position where I can make my work and it touches people,” says Burrell, who will be at the \u003ca href=\"https://museumca.org/event/book-release-and-conversation-with-filmmaker-artist-and-author-adrian-burrell/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Oakland Museum of California\u003c/a> on May 4 for a Q&A about his book, \u003cem>Sugarcane & Lighting\u003c/em>, and a screening of his short film, \u003cem>The Saints Step in Kongo Time\u003c/em>. Burrell says support from local institutions is important: “That allows me to grow my practice, and continue to try to grow toward being a practicing sustainable artist.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13956558\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1170px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-13956558 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/unnamed-1.jpg\" alt=\"Antoine Hunter (Purple Fire Crow) poses for a photo while wearing a golden-brown cloth draped over his upper body. \" width=\"1170\" height=\"1476\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/unnamed-1.jpg 1170w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/unnamed-1-800x1009.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/unnamed-1-1020x1287.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/unnamed-1-160x202.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/unnamed-1-768x969.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1170px) 100vw, 1170px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Award-winning dancer Antoine ‘Purple Fire Crow’ Hunter. \u003ccite>(Mark Kitoaka)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Sustainability, for self and community, are on the mind of dancer Antoine Hunter as he receives the fellowship. Hunter, also known as Purple Fire Crow, says when he learned about the award, he was hit with a mixture of emotion — joy and gratitude, as well as the “stress to stay the best human being I can be to support my community.” He was reminded, he says, of how there’s more work to do, as his goal is to open more doors for people to come after him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An award winning-dancer and choreographer from Oakland, Hunter is Deaf and creates work for people living with disabilities. “This award is a milestone blessing that adds on the layer to the story of my career with the \u003ca href=\"https://www.realurbanjazzdance.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Urban Jazz Dance Company\u003c/a> (UJDC),” Hunter writes in an email. He adds that the fellowship is a way of recognizing the challenges faced by members of the Deaf and Disabled communities who are working to overcome ableism, and that it will deepen the impact of his work in the Bay Area arts community — “particularly in advocating for Deaf (and) Disabled folks of many kinds of artists, and promoting inclusivity in dance.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13956574\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-13956574 size-medium\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/unnamed-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"The TNT Traysikel trio and their three-wheeled vehicle. \" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/unnamed-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/unnamed-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/unnamed-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/unnamed-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/unnamed-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/unnamed-2048x1152.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/unnamed-1920x1080.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The TNT Traysikel trio and their three-wheeled vehicle. \u003ccite>(Alvin Dizon)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Mike Arcega of TNT Traysikel says the fellowship feels like validation for the group’s work. They created a vehicle that speaks to the culture of the Philippines and connects Filipino community members here in the Bay, and it’s paying off.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>TNT Traysikel’s Rachel Lastimosa says the stipulation-free grant “signals that artists know what they’re doing, and that they know how to get the job done.” She adds that “the job” isn’t always about producing. “There’s more parts to being an artist that are very human — like housing, healthcare, childcare for example — that contribute to the work we do,” says Lastimosa. “It’s validating to get this sense of self-determination.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Paolo Asuncion, the third member of TNT Traysikel, says the group plans on taking their vehicle on the road, connecting with Filipino communities in Stockton, Morro Bay and as far as \u003ca href=\"https://filipinola.com/st-malo/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Bayou St. Malo in Louisiana\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The plan is to ride TNT across the states,” Asuncion says, “to collect stories from all of these people and to spread the joy outward from San Francisco Bay.” \u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The Kenneth Rainin Foundation announced its 2024 class of fellows on Wednesday, giving unrestricted grants of $100,000 each to three individual artists and one trio of creatives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The list includes filmmaker \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/adrianlburrell/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Adrian L. Burrell\u003c/a>, dancer \u003ca href=\"https://www.danceforallbodies.org/antoinehunter\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Antoine Hunter, a.k.a. Purple Fire Crow\u003c/a>, poet and thespian \u003ca href=\"https://www.ayodelenzinga.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Ayodele ‘WordSlanger’ Nzinga\u003c/a>, and the trio of Mike Arcega, Paolo Asuncion, and Rachel Lastimosa of the \u003ca href=\"https://arcega.us/section/501274-TNT%20Traysikel.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">TNT Traysikel\u003c/a> mobile art exhibition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13956437\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13956437\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/b46deecd95380203a29c0adb7ee6ec25-800x621.jpg\" alt=\"TNT Traysikel, a roaming sculpture that represents the Filipino-American community, parked in front of the Golden Gate Bridge. \" width=\"800\" height=\"621\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/b46deecd95380203a29c0adb7ee6ec25-800x621.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/b46deecd95380203a29c0adb7ee6ec25-1020x792.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/b46deecd95380203a29c0adb7ee6ec25-160x124.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/b46deecd95380203a29c0adb7ee6ec25-768x596.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/b46deecd95380203a29c0adb7ee6ec25-1536x1192.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/b46deecd95380203a29c0adb7ee6ec25.jpg 1572w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">TNT Traysikel, a roaming sculpture that represents the Filipino-American community, seen parked in front of the Golden Gate Bridge. \u003ccite>(Mark Baugh-Sasaki)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>When asked what it feels like to receive the award, Oakland Poet Laureate Ayodele Nzinga says: “Liberated… It affords me a tiny bit of security here in the Bay.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A playwright and owner of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13933205/ayodele-nzinga-opens-curtain-at-bam-house-a-new-home-for-black-arts\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">BAM House\u003c/a> theatre, Nzinga has produced shows in Oakland for more than two decades. She founded the theatre company the Lower Bottom Playaz in 1999, and in 2021 was awarded the title of \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/07/15/1013730633/meet-oaklands-first-poet-laureate-dr-ayodele-wordslanger-nzinga\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Oakland’s first Poet Laureate.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I spent most of the time as Poet Laureate hoping that I could stay in Oakland for the term of laureatecy,” says Nzinga, adding that the ability to “root” both personally and professionally is her biggest takeaway from the grant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13956481\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13956481\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/0.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1000\" height=\"1250\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/0.jpg 1000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/0-800x1000.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/0-160x200.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/0-768x960.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Adrian L. Burrell. \u003ccite>(Dondre Stutley )\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Adrian L. Burrell echoes Nzinga’s plan to invest the funds into personal and professional development.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Burrell is a filmmaker, photographer and proud third-generation Oakland representative. He makes multimedia works comprised of his personal sojourns, family video archives and elements of Afrocentric spirituality. His work has received national acclaim; earlier this year, he was the recipient of \u003ca href=\"https://thegrio.com/2024/02/27/meet-adrian-burrell-the-first-recipient-of-thegrios-emerging-filmmaker-fellowship/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">TheGrio’s Emerging Filmmaker Fellowship\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the Rainin Fellowship has special meaning to him. “It feels good to be supported by the soil,” Burrell says. As an independent artist, with no official gallery representation, he knows such recognition is rare.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s been cool to be in a position where I can make my work and it touches people,” says Burrell, who will be at the \u003ca href=\"https://museumca.org/event/book-release-and-conversation-with-filmmaker-artist-and-author-adrian-burrell/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Oakland Museum of California\u003c/a> on May 4 for a Q&A about his book, \u003cem>Sugarcane & Lighting\u003c/em>, and a screening of his short film, \u003cem>The Saints Step in Kongo Time\u003c/em>. Burrell says support from local institutions is important: “That allows me to grow my practice, and continue to try to grow toward being a practicing sustainable artist.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13956558\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1170px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-13956558 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/unnamed-1.jpg\" alt=\"Antoine Hunter (Purple Fire Crow) poses for a photo while wearing a golden-brown cloth draped over his upper body. \" width=\"1170\" height=\"1476\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/unnamed-1.jpg 1170w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/unnamed-1-800x1009.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/unnamed-1-1020x1287.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/unnamed-1-160x202.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/unnamed-1-768x969.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1170px) 100vw, 1170px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Award-winning dancer Antoine ‘Purple Fire Crow’ Hunter. \u003ccite>(Mark Kitoaka)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Sustainability, for self and community, are on the mind of dancer Antoine Hunter as he receives the fellowship. Hunter, also known as Purple Fire Crow, says when he learned about the award, he was hit with a mixture of emotion — joy and gratitude, as well as the “stress to stay the best human being I can be to support my community.” He was reminded, he says, of how there’s more work to do, as his goal is to open more doors for people to come after him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An award winning-dancer and choreographer from Oakland, Hunter is Deaf and creates work for people living with disabilities. “This award is a milestone blessing that adds on the layer to the story of my career with the \u003ca href=\"https://www.realurbanjazzdance.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Urban Jazz Dance Company\u003c/a> (UJDC),” Hunter writes in an email. He adds that the fellowship is a way of recognizing the challenges faced by members of the Deaf and Disabled communities who are working to overcome ableism, and that it will deepen the impact of his work in the Bay Area arts community — “particularly in advocating for Deaf (and) Disabled folks of many kinds of artists, and promoting inclusivity in dance.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13956574\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-13956574 size-medium\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/unnamed-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"The TNT Traysikel trio and their three-wheeled vehicle. \" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/unnamed-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/unnamed-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/unnamed-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/unnamed-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/unnamed-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/unnamed-2048x1152.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/unnamed-1920x1080.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The TNT Traysikel trio and their three-wheeled vehicle. \u003ccite>(Alvin Dizon)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Mike Arcega of TNT Traysikel says the fellowship feels like validation for the group’s work. They created a vehicle that speaks to the culture of the Philippines and connects Filipino community members here in the Bay, and it’s paying off.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>TNT Traysikel’s Rachel Lastimosa says the stipulation-free grant “signals that artists know what they’re doing, and that they know how to get the job done.” She adds that “the job” isn’t always about producing. “There’s more parts to being an artist that are very human — like housing, healthcare, childcare for example — that contribute to the work we do,” says Lastimosa. “It’s validating to get this sense of self-determination.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Paolo Asuncion, the third member of TNT Traysikel, says the group plans on taking their vehicle on the road, connecting with Filipino communities in Stockton, Morro Bay and as far as \u003ca href=\"https://filipinola.com/st-malo/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Bayou St. Malo in Louisiana\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The plan is to ride TNT across the states,” Asuncion says, “to collect stories from all of these people and to spread the joy outward from San Francisco Bay.” \u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Amy Tan’s Bird Obsession Led to a New Book — and Keeping Mealworms in Her Fridge",
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"content": "\u003cp>If you know author Amy Tan for \u003cem>The Joy Luck Club\u003c/em> — a novel about Chinese immigrant families in San Francisco — her new book, \u003cem>The Backyard Bird Chronicles\u003c/em>, might seem like a deviation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s because Tan didn’t set out to write a book when she started working on it in 2016.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She was depressed with the state of the world then and was trying to lose herself in nature.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She began looking out her window and journaling. Soon, she had pages and pages of observations and drawings of the birds in her very own backyard. Those musings turned into \u003cem>The Backyard Bird Chronicles\u003c/em>, a nature journal out this week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Morning Edition \u003c/em>host Leila Fadel spoke with Tan about the joys of birdwatching.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This interview has been edited for length and clarity. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leila Fadel: \u003c/strong>What made you start journaling and focusing on birds?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy Tan: \u003c/strong>I tend to be an obsessive person to begin with, but one of the things I obsessed on in 2016 was the degree of racism that was being shown, and people now considered it almost their freedom of expression to say exactly what they thought about other people who were of a different race. It was people ignoring me as if I were invisible in a store — everybody else being served, but not me. And it happened on an airplane not that long ago. And the first thing that comes to mind is: racism. Yeah, and I never had that feeling before, and it was horrible. So I needed to get it out of my mind, and I decided to go back into nature and also start learning how to draw.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13956419\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1096px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13956419\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-23-at-12.00.39-PM.png\" alt=\"Six sketches of owl's facial expressions, labeled Great Horned Owls.\" width=\"1096\" height=\"1318\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-23-at-12.00.39-PM.png 1096w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-23-at-12.00.39-PM-800x962.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-23-at-12.00.39-PM-1020x1227.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-23-at-12.00.39-PM-160x192.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-23-at-12.00.39-PM-768x924.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1096px) 100vw, 1096px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sketches of Great Horned Owls from Amy Tan’s new book, ‘The Backyard Bird Chronicles.’ \u003ccite>(Penguin Randomhouse)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Fadel: \u003c/strong>Did it help with all of this terribleness that you were feeling and experiencing?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Tan:\u003c/strong> Yes, it was like a reset for the world at the time because I was feeling so much despair that our world was turning uglier and uglier. And instead, here I was in nature. And it was beautiful. It was in the moment. And what better antidote to be in a place of biodiversity as opposed to hatred of diversity?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Fadel:\u003c/strong> You have these incredible drawings of California quail and golden crown sparrows and hummingbirds, pine siskins — in different moods and health. All of these scenes are from the bird life in your own backyard?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Tan: \u003c/strong>Every single bird in the book is from my backyard. Every bird that I’ve drawn is a bird that looked at me. I only write about the birds in my backyard. And that was just a decision I made for myself that I would make this very personal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[aside postid='arts_13938121']Fadel: \u003c/strong>You say that you’re a bit obsessive. How many hours a day were you watching birds in your backyard?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Tan:\u003c/strong> I have bird feeders visible from almost all of the windows in my house and I have a lot of windows. So I was spending, on some days, 10 hours watching the birds and sketching them … Now, I was learning to draw. So a lot of that time was simply drawing the same bird over and over and over again just for the practice of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Fadel:\u003c/strong> You notice the birds and you also notice them noticing you. Who is Amy Tan to these birds?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Tan: \u003c/strong>I suspect that they know me as the flightless creature who brings out the food. I once took away the feeders because there was an outbreak of disease that some finches had brought. And I took them all down for a very long time, and suddenly I had birds coming to the window in the bathroom … and they were looking at me very intensely. These were birds I always wanted to see. And now here they were coming to the window. And I remember one of them just looked at me, an orange crowned warbler, and then it tapped his beak on the window. And I’ve heard people say, ‘Oh, they’re tapping it because they see their reflection, blah, blah, blah.’ But this was not that. When I moved to another room, it followed me and went to that window and just stared at me. And then it followed me to another window. And then later in the day, when I opened the door, it flew in and it just stared at me like, “Where is the food?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13956420\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 968px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13956420\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-23-at-12.02.51-PM.png\" alt=\"Playful illustrations of three blue scrub jays, an adult female owl and its male offspring, three crows and a young girl.\" width=\"968\" height=\"1294\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-23-at-12.02.51-PM.png 968w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-23-at-12.02.51-PM-800x1069.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-23-at-12.02.51-PM-160x214.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-23-at-12.02.51-PM-768x1027.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 968px) 100vw, 968px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sketches from Amy Tan’s book, ‘The Backyard Bird Chronicles.’ \u003ccite>(Penguin Randomhouse)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Fadel: \u003c/strong>Your husband makes a few little appearances in the book where he drives you to get food for the birds. And I think at one point you’re spending $250 a month on food for the birds. What does he think about your hobby?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Tan: \u003c/strong>That’s obsessive, I would say. I know. I would buy these live mealworms. Sometimes there were 20,000 of them. And I would put them in containers … and then I would put them in the fridge. And so when I started getting 20,000 instead of 10,000, Lou did say something about, “You’ve got too many mealworms in here.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13951961']The other thing that he was tolerant of is that sometimes I would have a dead bird and I carefully wrapped them up, put the date when they were found and what the breed was. And then I’d put them in the freezer to give to the California Academy of Sciences. Then I feel they’re going off to a very advanced institution, and it makes me feel better in a way. They will serve a purpose, even though they’ve died.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Fadel: \u003c/strong>Also, Lou really loves you. That’s a sign of real love.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Tan: \u003c/strong>We’ve been together for 54 years, so he knows me and my habits, and I’ve had dead snakes in the freezer in the past. So this is probably one step up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Fadel: \u003c/strong>Par for the course. Amy Tan, her new book is \u003cem>The Backyard Bird Chronicles\u003c/em> and she’s written and illustrated it. Thank you so much for this book and really such a joyful conversation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Tan: \u003c/strong>Thank you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2024 NPR. To see more, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\">visit NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Amy+Tan%27s+bird+obsession+led+to+a+new+book+%E2%80%94+and+keeping+mealworms+in+her+fridge&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>If you know author Amy Tan for \u003cem>The Joy Luck Club\u003c/em> — a novel about Chinese immigrant families in San Francisco — her new book, \u003cem>The Backyard Bird Chronicles\u003c/em>, might seem like a deviation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s because Tan didn’t set out to write a book when she started working on it in 2016.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She was depressed with the state of the world then and was trying to lose herself in nature.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She began looking out her window and journaling. Soon, she had pages and pages of observations and drawings of the birds in her very own backyard. Those musings turned into \u003cem>The Backyard Bird Chronicles\u003c/em>, a nature journal out this week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Morning Edition \u003c/em>host Leila Fadel spoke with Tan about the joys of birdwatching.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This interview has been edited for length and clarity. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Leila Fadel: \u003c/strong>What made you start journaling and focusing on birds?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amy Tan: \u003c/strong>I tend to be an obsessive person to begin with, but one of the things I obsessed on in 2016 was the degree of racism that was being shown, and people now considered it almost their freedom of expression to say exactly what they thought about other people who were of a different race. It was people ignoring me as if I were invisible in a store — everybody else being served, but not me. And it happened on an airplane not that long ago. And the first thing that comes to mind is: racism. Yeah, and I never had that feeling before, and it was horrible. So I needed to get it out of my mind, and I decided to go back into nature and also start learning how to draw.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13956419\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1096px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13956419\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-23-at-12.00.39-PM.png\" alt=\"Six sketches of owl's facial expressions, labeled Great Horned Owls.\" width=\"1096\" height=\"1318\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-23-at-12.00.39-PM.png 1096w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-23-at-12.00.39-PM-800x962.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-23-at-12.00.39-PM-1020x1227.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-23-at-12.00.39-PM-160x192.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-23-at-12.00.39-PM-768x924.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1096px) 100vw, 1096px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sketches of Great Horned Owls from Amy Tan’s new book, ‘The Backyard Bird Chronicles.’ \u003ccite>(Penguin Randomhouse)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Fadel: \u003c/strong>Did it help with all of this terribleness that you were feeling and experiencing?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Tan:\u003c/strong> Yes, it was like a reset for the world at the time because I was feeling so much despair that our world was turning uglier and uglier. And instead, here I was in nature. And it was beautiful. It was in the moment. And what better antidote to be in a place of biodiversity as opposed to hatred of diversity?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Fadel:\u003c/strong> You have these incredible drawings of California quail and golden crown sparrows and hummingbirds, pine siskins — in different moods and health. All of these scenes are from the bird life in your own backyard?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Tan: \u003c/strong>Every single bird in the book is from my backyard. Every bird that I’ve drawn is a bird that looked at me. I only write about the birds in my backyard. And that was just a decision I made for myself that I would make this very personal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Fadel: \u003c/strong>You say that you’re a bit obsessive. How many hours a day were you watching birds in your backyard?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Tan:\u003c/strong> I have bird feeders visible from almost all of the windows in my house and I have a lot of windows. So I was spending, on some days, 10 hours watching the birds and sketching them … Now, I was learning to draw. So a lot of that time was simply drawing the same bird over and over and over again just for the practice of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Fadel:\u003c/strong> You notice the birds and you also notice them noticing you. Who is Amy Tan to these birds?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Tan: \u003c/strong>I suspect that they know me as the flightless creature who brings out the food. I once took away the feeders because there was an outbreak of disease that some finches had brought. And I took them all down for a very long time, and suddenly I had birds coming to the window in the bathroom … and they were looking at me very intensely. These were birds I always wanted to see. And now here they were coming to the window. And I remember one of them just looked at me, an orange crowned warbler, and then it tapped his beak on the window. And I’ve heard people say, ‘Oh, they’re tapping it because they see their reflection, blah, blah, blah.’ But this was not that. When I moved to another room, it followed me and went to that window and just stared at me. And then it followed me to another window. And then later in the day, when I opened the door, it flew in and it just stared at me like, “Where is the food?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13956420\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 968px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13956420\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-23-at-12.02.51-PM.png\" alt=\"Playful illustrations of three blue scrub jays, an adult female owl and its male offspring, three crows and a young girl.\" width=\"968\" height=\"1294\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-23-at-12.02.51-PM.png 968w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-23-at-12.02.51-PM-800x1069.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-23-at-12.02.51-PM-160x214.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-23-at-12.02.51-PM-768x1027.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 968px) 100vw, 968px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sketches from Amy Tan’s book, ‘The Backyard Bird Chronicles.’ \u003ccite>(Penguin Randomhouse)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Fadel: \u003c/strong>Your husband makes a few little appearances in the book where he drives you to get food for the birds. And I think at one point you’re spending $250 a month on food for the birds. What does he think about your hobby?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Tan: \u003c/strong>That’s obsessive, I would say. I know. I would buy these live mealworms. Sometimes there were 20,000 of them. And I would put them in containers … and then I would put them in the fridge. And so when I started getting 20,000 instead of 10,000, Lou did say something about, “You’ve got too many mealworms in here.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The other thing that he was tolerant of is that sometimes I would have a dead bird and I carefully wrapped them up, put the date when they were found and what the breed was. And then I’d put them in the freezer to give to the California Academy of Sciences. Then I feel they’re going off to a very advanced institution, and it makes me feel better in a way. They will serve a purpose, even though they’ve died.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Fadel: \u003c/strong>Also, Lou really loves you. That’s a sign of real love.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Tan: \u003c/strong>We’ve been together for 54 years, so he knows me and my habits, and I’ve had dead snakes in the freezer in the past. So this is probably one step up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Fadel: \u003c/strong>Par for the course. Amy Tan, her new book is \u003cem>The Backyard Bird Chronicles\u003c/em> and she’s written and illustrated it. Thank you so much for this book and really such a joyful conversation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Tan: \u003c/strong>Thank you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2024 NPR. To see more, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\">visit NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Amy+Tan%27s+bird+obsession+led+to+a+new+book+%E2%80%94+and+keeping+mealworms+in+her+fridge&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
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"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
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"mindshift": {
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"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
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"order": 12
},
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"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
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"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
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},
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},
"perspectives": {
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"order": 14
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"info": "The economy explained. Imagine you could call up a friend and say, Meet me at the bar and tell me what's going on with the economy. Now imagine that's actually a fun evening.",
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"politicalbreakdown": {
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"title": "Political Breakdown",
"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
"airtime": "THU 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Political-Breakdown-2024-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"possible": {
"id": "possible",
"title": "Possible",
"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Possible-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.possible.fm/",
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"source": "Possible"
},
"link": "/radio/program/possible",
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"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/730YpdUSNlMyPQwNnyjp4k"
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},
"pri-the-world": {
"id": "pri-the-world",
"title": "PRI's The World: Latest Edition",
"info": "Each weekday, host Marco Werman and his team of producers bring you the world's most interesting stories in an hour of radio that reminds us just how small our planet really is.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 2pm-3pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-World-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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},
"radiolab": {
"id": "radiolab",
"title": "Radiolab",
"info": "A two-time Peabody Award-winner, Radiolab is an investigation told through sounds and stories, and centered around one big idea. In the Radiolab world, information sounds like music and science and culture collide. Hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, the show is designed for listeners who demand skepticism, but appreciate wonder. WNYC Studios is the producer of other leading podcasts including Freakonomics Radio, Death, Sex & Money, On the Media and many more.",
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