Dr. Henrie Treadwell Discusses Plight of African American Men and Boys Tomorrow

On KAZI Book Review tomorrow at 8am CT – Dr. Henrie Treadwell, author of Beyond Stereotypes in Black and White: How Everyday Leaders Can Build Healthier Opportunities for African American Boys and Men. Listen live online at kazifm.org.

“African American boys and men are more victims than victimizers – yes, they are unemployed, underemployed, undereducated and incarcerated at higher rates than any other group in the United States,” says Dr. Treadwell, “but when the plight of these boys and men is discussed, it is often from a blame the victim perspective. What is not acknowledged is the havoc their marginalization wreaks on them as individuals, on their children and families, on their neighborhoods, and on this potential workforce that could add to the overall growth of the US. economy.”

Dr. Henrie Treadwell is a full time Research Professor in the Department of Community Health and Preventive Medicine at Morehouse School of Medicine. Her major responsibilities include program oversight and management for Community Voices: Healthcare for the Underserved, a special informing policy initiative funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

Walter Mosley Interviewed on KAZI Monday Morning

Walter Mosley, author of Little Green, the 12th Easy Rawlins novel and the first since 2007′s Blonde Faith, will be the guest on KAZI Book Review’s Monday morning edition at 8am CT Memorial Day on KAZI 88.7 FM.

In the interview Mosley talks about why he took a break from writing the Easy Rawlins mysteries and the source of the hippie culture that Easy encounters in 1967 Los Angeles.

Listen to Podcast With Haitian Novelist Elsie Augustave on KAZI Book Review

Listen to the podcast of the interview on KAZI Book Review with Elsie Augustave as she explores the currents of identity, racism, class, and culture in her debut novel, The Roving Tree: 

The central character, Iris Odys, is adopted by an upperclass white American family in 1961 from a rural village in Haiti. The novel traces her life growing up in America and through flashback, the lives of her parents in Haiti. Augustave paints a vivid picture of the class conflicts, cultural and religious traditions of Haiti in the 1950s and 60s.

Jamaica, England, and Martin Luther King Focus of KAZI Book Review Interviews

This Sunday at 12:30pm CT on KAZI Book Review on KAZI 88.7 FM my guests are Anthony Winkler, author of The Family Mansion, and Nancy Bilyeau, author of The Chalice. The Family Mansion, set in London and Jamaica in 1805, chronicles the follies of the second son of an English aristocrat and the racial conflicts between slaves and whites in Jamaica.

The Chalice is set in 1538 England and Europe during the reign of Henry VIII, and follows a Dominican novice who some believe is destined to bring the “true religion back to England” after King Henry VIII started the Church of England.

At 8:30am CT on the Monday morning edition of KAZI Book Review I’m airing an interview with Jonathan Rieder, author of Gospel of Freedom: Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail and the Struggle That Changed a Nation.

Podcast of Interview with Philip Kerr, author of A Man Without Breath

If you missed my interview with Philip Kerr, author of the the latest Bernie Gunther Novel, A Man Awithout Breath, listen to the podcast: 

A Man Without Breath (from Penguin Books Web Site)

Berlin, March, 1943. A month has passed since the stunning defeat at Stalingrad. Though Hitler insists Germany is winning the war, commanders on the ground know better. Morale is low, discipline at risk. Now word has reached Berlin of a Red massacre of Polish officers in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk. If true, the message it would send to the troops is clear: Fight on or risk certain death. For once, both the Wehrmacht and Propaganda Minister Goebbels want the same thing: irrefutable evidence of this Russian atrocity. To the Wehrmacht, such proof will soften the reality of its own war crimes in the eyes of the victors. For Goebbels, such proof could turn the tide of war by destroying the Alliance, cutting Russia off from its western supply lines.

Both parties agree that the ensuing investigation must be overseen by a professional trained in sifting evidence and interrogating witnesses. Anything that smells of incompetence or tampering will defeat their purposes. And so Bernie Gunther is dispatched to Smolensk, where truth is as much a victim of war as those poor dead Polish officers.

Smolensk, March, 1943. Army Group Center is an enclave of Prussian aristocrats who have owned the Wehrmacht almost as long as they’ve owned their baronial estates, an officer class whose families have been intermarrying for generations. The wisecracking, rough-edged Gunther is not a good fit. He is, after all, a Berlin bull. But he has a far bigger concern than sharp elbows and supercilious stares, for somewhere in this mix is a cunning and savage killer who has left a trail of bloody victims.

This is no psycho case. This is a man with motive enough to kill and skills enough to leave no trace of himself. Bad luck that in this war zone, such skills are two-a-penny. Somehow Bernie must put a face to this killer before he puts an end to Bernie.

Podcast of of Interview with Marcus Anthony Hunter, author of Black Citymakers

If you missed my interview with Marcus Hunter on KAZI Book Review, here is the podcast: 

Black Citymakers: How The Philadelphia Negro Changed Urban America (from Oxford University Press Web Site)

W.E.B. DuBois immortalized Philadelphia’s Black Seventh Ward neighborhood, one of America’s oldest urban black communities, in his 1899 sociological study The Philadelphia Negro. In the century after DuBois’s study, however, the district has been transformed into a largely white upper middle class neighborhood.

Black Citymakers revisits the Black Seventh Ward, documenting a century of banking and tenement collapses, housing activism, black-led anti-urban renewal mobilization, and post-Civil Rights political change from the perspective of the Black Seventh Warders. Drawing on historical, political, and sociological research, Marcus Hunter argues that black Philadelphians were by no means mere casualties of the large scale social and political changes that altered urban dynamics across the nation after World War II. Instead, Hunter shows that black Americans framed their own understandings of urban social change, forging dynamic inter- and intra-racial alliances that allowed them to shape their own migration from the old Black Seventh Ward to emergent black urban enclaves throughout Philadelphia. These Philadelphians were not victims forced from their homes – they were citymakers and agents of urban change.

Black Citymakers explores a century of socioeconomic, cultural, and political history in the Black Seventh Ward, creating a new understanding of the political agency of black residents, leaders and activists in twentieth century urban change.

Interview – Black Citymakers: How the Philadelphia Negro Changed Urban America

Tune in at 8am CT tomorrow on KAZI 88.7 FM: One of W.E.B. DuBois greatest academic accomplishments was his sociological study published in 1899 of African Americans in Philadelphia, The Philadelphia Negro.  In Yale sociologist Marcus Anthony Hunter’s new book Black Citymakers, he traces the transformation of one of the neighborhoods immortalized by DuBois’s study, Black Seventh Ward.

In his book Hunter ” argues that black Philadelphians were by no means mere casualties of the large scale social and political changes that altered urban dynamics across the nation after World War II. Instead, Hunter shows that black Americans framed their own understandings of urban social change, forging dynamic inter- and intra-racial alliances that allowed them to shape their own migration from the old Black Seventh Ward to emergent black urban enclaves throughout Philadelphia. These Philadelphians were not victims forced from their homes – they were citymakers and agents of urban change.”