In this podcast, Candice Carty-Williams interviews the spectacular and ever-engaging Nell Zink, an author who, having written for years, has risen to critical acclaim almost overnight, and essentially wrote her novel The Wallcreeper to troll Jonathan Franzen. Read more…
In this podcast, we were more than lucky enough to speak to T. Geronimo Johnson about his novel ‘Welcome to Braggsville’, his writing processes, his persona; soundtrack, the challenges that he faces as a writer, and how egotistical penning a novel really is. We touched upon character development, the subversion of stereotypes, and why making his main character, who he’d always envisaged as Black,White.
We spoke about the superficial progression of race in the U.S., and we asked if the inauguration of President Obama has done anything for Black culture. One thing we dreaded asking, but did anyway, was how the Ferguson movement and the ‘I Can’t Breathe’ campaign dedicated to the memory of Eric Garner impacts how he feels as a Black male in America. Read more…
Have you ever read a book- a work of fiction- that reminds you so starkly of the world around you that you sit up straight, as though your improved posture will somehow further push you into the narrative? Well, that’s Welcome to Braggsville for you. This novel, written by T. Geronimo Johnson, presents to us a world of race relations, of cultural naivety, and of the repercussions of the realisation that you can live the same life as your peers, your colleagues and your confidantes, but that doesn’t mean that you’re all navigating through that same life in the same way.
I work in publishing, a world carved out by the white upper class. A world that, for the most part, inadvertently continues to pave the way for white middle to upper class writers. I’m a black twenty four year old woman from a working class background. I’m increasingly aware of this, especially at a time when slavery is being thrust into people’s faces, with Solomon Northup’s Twelve Years A Slave being one of the works prompting some awareness of a system that people are keen to forget happened in the not too distant past. Read more…
4x4th Estate brings you four novels focal on Black identity, looking at how it shapes and inspires.
