The United States is experiencing a time of reckoning, but too often it seems like we’re all talking past each another other rather than attempting meaningful dialogue.  In Just Us, Claudia Rankine provides a blueprint for how we talk about and experience race in America.  Listen as she and Amanda examine the emotions underpinning white privilege, shine a light on racial inequality in its less obvious forms, and explain what it actually means when a white person, "doesn't see color."

Claudia Rankine is the author of Citizen: An American Lyric and four previous books, including Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric. Her work has appeared recently in the Guardian, the New York Times Book Review, the New York Times Magazine, and the Washington Post. She is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, the winner of the 2014 Jackson Poetry Prize, and a contributing editor of Poets & Writers. She received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2016. Rankine is the Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry at Yale University.

Amanda Stern is Bookable’s host. Founder of the popular literary event series Happy Ending at Joe’s Pub in New York City, Stern is also a writer. Happy Ending ran for more than a decade and was selected as New York’s best book-related series by New York Magazine, The Village Voice and NY Press. The New York Times Magazine singled out Happy Ending as a force keeping “downtown New York alive.”

This episode was produced by Andrew Dunn, Beau Friedlander and Amanda Stern. It was edited, mixed and sound-designed by Andrew Dunn who also created Bookable's chill vibe.  Our host is Amanda Stern. Beau Friedlander is Bookable's executive producer and editor in chief of Loud Tree Media.

Music:

"Books That Bounce" by Rufus Canis, "Uni Swing Vox" by Rufus Canis, "Warmer Up Here" by The Upstroke, "This Summer" by Easy McCoy, "Eugene" by Calvin Valentine, "Tidewater" by Grant Harold, "Rebuilding" by 1,2,3.