Kazi 88.7 Fm Book Review

Diverse Voices Book Review host Hopeton Hay interviewed Nathalie Etoke, author of BLACK EXISTENTIAL FREEDOM.  Published in 2022, BLACK EXISTENTIAL FREEDOM explores how Black freedom transcends political and economic success and lies in affirming one's humanity in the face of systemic dehumanization. Etoke draws on historical experiences, Black cultural expressions, and philosophical traditions to highlight the inner and collective struggles of people of African descent across the diaspora. She emphasizes that existential agency—making choices even under oppressive conditions—is a form of resistance and a testament to enduring hope. Nathalie Etoke is a Professor of Francophone and Africana Studies at the Graduate Center, CUNY. She specializes in literature and cinema of Francophone sub-Saharan Africa, Black French studies, queer studies in Africa and the Caribbean, and Africana existential thought.

Diverse Voices Book Review host interviewed Robert Justice, author of the novel A DREAM IN THE DARK. Published in 2024, A DREAM IN THE DARK is his second novel in a planned trilogy focused on wrongful convictions. Justice shared how his novel incorporates themes of deferred dreams, systemic injustice, and jazz motifs, drawing on real-life wrongful conviction cases and literary influences like Ralph Ellison and Langston Hughes. We also discussed his involvement with the Crime Writers of Color organization and how it was founded by Walter Mosley and Kellye Garrett.  Diverse Voices Book Review Social Media: Facebook - @diversevoicesbookreview Instagram - @diverse_voices_book_review X - @diversebookshay Email: hbh@diversevoicesbookreview.com 

In October 2018, Diverse Voices Book Review host Hopeton Hay interviewed Kyle Longley, author of LBJ's 1968: Power, Politics, and the Presidency in America's Year of Upheaval.  1968 was an unprecedented year in terms of upheaval on numerous scales: political, military, economic, social, cultural. In the United States, perhaps no one was more undone by the events of 1968 than President Lyndon Baines Johnson. Kyle Longley is a Professor of History at Chapman University and the director of the M.A. in War and Society program. He served as the director of the LBJ Presidential Library from 2018 to 2019 before happily returning to academia. 

Diverse Voices Book Review host Hopeton Hay interviewed  Naa Oyo Kwate, author of  WHITE BURGERS, BLACK CASH: Food from Black Exclusion to Exploitation.In the interview, they discussed the fast-food industry and its impact on health disparities in the Black community.  They also explored the complex relationship between Black communities and fast food and the industry history.Naa Oyo A. Kwate is a nonfiction writer and interdisciplinary scholar focused on African American urban life. She has previously served on the faculties of Columbia and Rutgers University. 

In May of 2024, Diverse Voices Book Review host Hopeton Hay interviewed historian Manisha Sinha, author of THE RISE AND FALL OF THE SECOND AMERICAN REPUBLIC: Reconstruction, 1860-1920. In the interview, Manisha explained her idea that Reconstruction is a defining moment in the history of American democracy.  She also asserts that Reconstruction was unwinding until 1920, ending with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, which granted women the right to vote--and which Sinha calls the "last Reconstruction amendment."Manisha Sinha is the James L. and Shirley A. Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut and a leading authority on the history of slavery and abolition and the Civil War and Reconstruction. She is also the author of The Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum South Carolina and The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition. Diverse Voices Book Review Social Media: Facebook - @diversevoicesbookreview Instagram - @diverse_voices_book_review X - @div

Diverse Voices Book Review host Hopeton Hay interviewed Carrie R. Moore, author of the story collection MAKE YOUR WAY HOME. In the interview, Moore explained that her story collection pays "homage to the diversity of the Black South...There are mountains, there are beaches, there are cities, there are small towns, and I really just wanted to write about the South, but do so in a way that would resist a single definition." Carrie R. Moore’s fiction and essays have appeared in One Story, The Sewanee Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, For Harriet, The Southern Review, and other publications. MAKE YOUR WAY HOME is her first book. Diverse Voices Book Review Social Media: Facebook - @diversevoicesbookreview Instagram - @diverse_voices_book_review X - @diversebookshay Email: hbh@diversevoicesbookreview.com 

Diverse Voices Book Review host Hopeton Hay interviewed Tochi Onyebuchi, author of the novel HARMATTAN SEASON. Set in a dust-choked West African city, tensions rise between French occupiers and indigenous factions. The protagonist, private eye Bouba, caught between two cultures, uncovers secrets that challenge his identity and past. Blending noir grit with fantasy, the novel explores justice, memory, and postcolonial unrest.Tochi Onyebuchi is the author of Goliath, a Locus Award and Dragon Award finalist, the young adult novel Beasts Made of Night, which won the Ilube Nommo Award for Best Speculative Fiction Novel by an African, its sequel, Crown of Thunder, and War Girls. His novella Riot Baby, a finalist for the Hugo, the Nebula, the Locus, and the NAACP Image Awards, won an Ignyte Award, the New England Book Award for Fiction, and an ALA Alex Award.Diverse Voices Book Review Social Media: Facebook - @diversevoicesbookreview Instagram - @diverse_voices_book_review X - @diversebookshay 

Diverse Voices Book Review host Hopeton Hay interviewed Madeleine Thien, author of the novel THE BOOK OF RECORDS. The novel tells a time-bending, seven-year philosophical journey of a young girl named Lina, who is taught by her father and neighbors about the lives of three historical figures. They live in a surreal enclave, where Lina and her father have sought refuge after escaping a disaster in China. In the interview, we talked about how she weaves together the stories of three historical figures: Du Fu, an 8th-century Chinese poet; Baruch Spinoza, a 17th-century Dutch Jewish philosopher; and Hannah Arendt, a mid-20th-century German-American Jewish philosopher and political theorist. Lina learns about their theories and ideas and the grief, love, and tragedy they have experienced. Madeleine Thien is the author of four books, including Do Not Say We Have Nothing, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, The New York Review of Books, and elsewhere.  Diverse

Diverse Voices Book Review host Hopeton Hay interviewed Denise Mina, author of THE GOOD LIAR.  The story follows a blood spatter expert who faces ethical dilemmas similar to historical cases where discredited forensic techniques led to wrongful convictions. THE GOOD LIAR publishes on Tuesday, July 29, 2025.Denise Mina is the author of twenty novels, including the Reese's Book Club pick Conviction and its sequel Confidence, as well as The Second Murderer, The Less Dead, The Long Drop—winner of the 2017 McIlvanney Prize for Scottish crime book of the year. Diverse Voices Book Review Social Media: Facebook - @diversevoicesbookreview Instagram - @diverse_voices_book_review X - @diversebookshay

Diverse Voices Book Review host Hopeton Hay interviewed historian Paul Thomas Chamberlin, author of SCORCHED EARTH: A Global History of World War II. In the interview, we discussed how World War II fits into a larger story of the rise and fall of empires, the creation and destruction of colonial systems, and the reconfiguration of imperial power. The most surprising thing I discussed with Chamberlin is how the United States, in 1943, and the United Kingdom, in 1945, had developed plans to fight the Soviet Union using Nazi troops. Paul Thomas Chamberlin is an associate professor in history at Columbia University.  Diverse Voices Book Review Social Media: Facebook - @diversevoicesbookreview Instagram - @diverse_voices_book_review Email: hbh@diversevoicesbookreview.com 

Diverse Voices Book Review host interviewed Rachel Howzell Hall, author of the new thriller FOG AND FURY. Set in northern California, FOG AND FURY features a disgraced former Los Angeles police detective, Alyson "Sonny" Rush, whose first case with her godfather's private detective agency throws her personal life into turmoil. Her life is further complicated when  she gets involved in the case of a star Black high school football player whose body was found on a hiking trail. Rachel Howzell Hall is the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author of 15 novels, including the bestselling thriller Fog and Fury, and the Good Morning America Book Club selection, The Last One.  Diverse Voices Book Review Social Media: Facebook - @diversevoicesbookreview Instagram - @diverse_voices_book_review Email: hbh@diversevoicesbookreview.com 

Diverse Voices Book Review host Hopeton Hay interviewed Ivy Pochoda, author of ECSTASY.  Based on a Greek tragedy by Euripides, Pochoda explained how she wanted to address difficult truths about female oppression and marital patriarchy. As described on her website, "Ecstasy is a riveting, darkly poetic, one-sitting read about empowerment, desire, and what happens when women reject the roles set out for them."  Diverse Voices Book Review Social Media: Facebook - @diversevoicesbookreview Instagram - @diverse_voices_book_review 

Diverse Voices Book Review host Hopeton Hay interviewed Dana A. Williams, author of TONI AT RANDOM: The Iconic Writer's Legendary Editorship. In the interview, Dr. Williams discussed Toni Morrison's path to becoming a book editor, some of the Black writers she edited at Random House including Angela Davis and Toni Cade Bambara, and what inspired her to write the book.Dana A. Williams is Professor of African American Literature in the Department of English and Dean of the Graduate School at Howard University. She is former president of the College Language Association and the Modern Languages Association and is the author of In the Light of Likeness—Transformed: The Literary Art of Leon Forrest. Diverse Voices Book Review Social Media: Facebook - @diversevoicesbookreview Instagram - @diverse_voices_book_review     

Diverse Voices Book Review host Hopeton Hay interviewed Naomi Xu Elegant, author of the debut novel GINGKO SEASON.  Set in Philadelphia, Elegant examines the friendships and the love life of a neurotic young woman in her 20s. The novel also is a homage to Philadelphia, where the author lived while attending the University of Pennsylvania. In the interview, Naomi discussed the struggle of finding the voice of her protagonist, writing in the first person, and her journey to becoming a novelist. Diverse Voices Book Review Social Media: Facebook - @diversevoicesbookreview Instagram - @diverse_voices_book_review Email: hbh@diversevoicesbookreview.com 

Diverse Voices Book Review contributor Amanda Moore interviewed Dr. Peniel Joseph about his new book, FREEDOM SEASON: How 1963 Transformed America’s Civil Rights Revolution. Through a captivating study of leading activists during the Civil Rights movement, Joseph creates an authentic narrative about individuals who endeavored to change a nation and describes the struggle for justice and equal treatment for African Americans in the United States. You can learn more about Dr. Peniel Joseph on X, Instagram and Facebook.Diverse Voices Book Review Social Media: Facebook - @diversevoicesbookreview Instagram - @diverse_voices_book_review Email: hbh@diversevoicesbookreview.com 

Diverse Voices Book Review host Hopeton Hay interviewed Rickey Fayne about his debut novel, THE DEVIL THREE TIMES. Covering eight generations of a Black family in West Tennessee, from the slave ship to contemporary times, Fayne creates a narrative rich with historical context, emotional depth, and Black folklore. In the interview, he talked about how his writing reflects his Black Southern upbringing and aims to honor the experiences of his ancestors. Fayne also revealed how his novel was influenced by Zora Neale Hurston's folklore collection, OF MULES AND MEN.You can see Rickey Fayne on book tour on:  June 19: In Conversation with Carrie R. Moore in Austin, Texas at Book People August 1:  The National Book Club Conference in Atlanta, GA Diverse Voices Book Review Social Media: Facebook - @diversevoicesbookreview Instagram - @diverse_voices_book_review Email: hbh@diversevoicesbookreview.com 

 Diverse Voices Book Review contributor Amanda Moore interviews international reporter and news producer Abigail Leonard about her new book, “Four Mothers, An Intimate Journey through the First Year of Parenthood in Four Countries.” With a close examination of the lives of women in Japan, Finland, Kenya and the United States, Leonard writes an insightful narrative about motherhood and provides a genuine account of both the challenges and the beauty of being a mother in countries around the world. You can read more about this book at http://www.abigailleonard.com.  Diverse Voices Book Review Social Media: Facebook - @diversevoicesbookreview Instagram - @diverse_voices_book_review Email: hbh@diversevoicesbookreview.com 

Diverse Voices Book Review host Hopeton Hay interviewed Shelley Fisher Fishkin, author of JIM: The Life and Afterlives of Huckleberry Finn's Comrade.  In the interview she highlights the irony in Twain's portrayal of Jim, contrasting Huck's limited understanding with Twain's deeper critique of society. Fishkin emphasizes the need for teachers to be well-prepared to teach "Huckleberry Finn," addressing its complex themes. Fishkin also discusses the contributions of notable Black writers Ralph Wiley and Ralph Ellison to the interpretation of Twain's work.Shelley Fisher Fishkin  is the Joseph S. Atha Professor of the Humanities, professor of English, and (by courtesy) professor of African and African American Studies at Stanford University.Diverse Voices Book Review Social Media:Facebook - @diversevoicesbookreviewInstagram - @diverse_voices_book_reviewEmail: hbh@diversevoicesbookreview.com

Diverse Voices Book Review host Hopeton Hay interviewed Jesse Q. Sutanto, author of the mystery novel VERA WONG'S GUIDE TO SNOOPING (on a DEAD MAN). This is the second book in the series featuring Vera Wong, a 61-year-old tea shop owner in San Francisco. Vera, based on Sutanto's mother, investigates a murder involving a missing person social media personality. The book explores themes of social media, human trafficking, and the complexities of online personas.  Diverse Voices Book Review Social Media: Facebook - @diversevoicesbookreview Instagram - @diverse_voices_book_review Email: hbh@diversevoicesbookreview.com 

Diverse Voices Book Review host Hopeton Hay interviewed Preston Lauterbach, author of BEFORE ELVIS: The African American Musicians Who Made the King. In the interview Lauterbach highlighted the influence of African American musicians on Elvis Presley. He noted that Elvis's first hit, "That's All Right," was originally recorded by Arthur Crudup, and songs like "Hound Dog" and "Mystery Train" had African American origins. Lauterbach also explored the economic exploitation of Black artists and the cultural appropriation by white artists. He shared insights into the evolution of R&B and its impact on pop music in the 1970s, emphasizing the importance of recognizing Black music's roots and contributions to American culture. Preston Lauterbach is author of the American music classic The Chitlin’ Circuit (2011) as well as Beale Street Dynasty (2015) and Bluff City (2019).  He has co-authored three memoirs with significant figures in Black music, including Brother Robert (2020) with the stepsister of bluesman Rob