Kazi 88.7 Fm Book Review

Diverse Voices Book Review host Hopeton Hay interviewed Ruben Reyes, Jr., author of the short stories collection THERE IS A RIO GRANDE IN HEAVEN. THERE IS A RIO GRANDE IN HEAVEN, Reyes's first book, blends speculative fiction with themes of Salvadoran immigration.  Reyes describes his book as speculative fiction about Salvadoran immigrants, ranging from domestic family dramas with weird elements to stories set on Mars. In the interview he shares how he was influenced by writers like Michael Crichton and Ray Bradbury, and that he aims to entertain while addressing issues like exploitation and privilege. Ruben Reyes, Jr. is a graduate of Harvard College where he studied History and Literature and Latinx Studies. His writing has appeared in Audible Originals, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, The Florida Review Online, Business Insider, The Acentos Review, Strange Horizons, Poynter, and other publications. Diverse Voices Book Review Social Media:Facebook - @diversevoicesbookreviewInstagram - @diverse_voices

Diverse Voices Book Review host Hopeton Hay interviewed Ken Krimstein, the author of the graphic narrative EINSTEIN IN KAFKALAND: How Albert Fell Down the Rabbit Hole and Came Up with the Universe. During the year that Prague was home to both Albert Einstein and Franz Kafka from 1911-1912, the trajectory of the two men's lives wove together in uncanny ways-as did their shared desire to tackle the world's biggest questions in Europe's strangest city. In stunning words and pictures, Einstein in Kafkaland reveals the untold story of how their worlds wove together in a cosmic battle for new kinds of truth.Ken Krimstein is a cartoonist, author, and educator whose work appears in The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Chicago Tribune. Diverse Voices Book Review Social Media:Facebook - @diversevoicesbookreviewInstagram - @diverse_voices_book_reviewTwitter - @diversebookshayEmail: hbh@diversevoicesbookreview.com

Diverse Voices Book Review host Hopeton Hay interviewed Megan Kimble, author of CITY LIMITS: Infrastructure, Inequality, and the Future of America’s Highways. CITY LIMITS examines the impact of urban highways on American cities. In the interview, Kimble discussed how highways were sold as progress in the 1950s and 60s, driven by car companies and oil industries. She argues that highways often disproportionately affect black and brown communities, citing examples like Houston's Fifth Ward. She also addresses the paradox of increased traffic due to induced demand and the environmental and economic costs of car-centric cities. Kimball advocates for the removal of urban highways to create more equitable and sustainable urban spaces.Diverse Voices Book Review Social Media:Facebook - @diversevoicesbookreviewInstagram - @diverse_voices_book_reviewTwitter - @diversebookshayEmail: hbh@diversevoicesbookreview.com 

Diverse Voices Book Review host Hopeton Hay interviewed Gabino Iglesias, author of the novel HOUSE OF BONE AND RAIN. In the interview, Iglesias explained how the novel was inspired in part by his personal experiences as a teen in Puerto Rico. The story follows a group of friends seeking revenge after a friend's mother is killed. Iglesias highlights the complexities of masculinity and the impact of colonialism, using Hurricane Maria as a metaphor for systemic issues. He emphasizes the deep bond among friends and the internal struggle between staying in Puerto Rico and seeking better opportunities elsewhere. The novel blends horror, crime, and political commentary, exploring themes of identity, opportunity, and the struggle for a better life.Diverse Voices Book Review Social Media:Facebook - @diversevoicesbookreviewInstagram - @diverse_voices_book_reviewTwitter - @diversebookshayEmail: hbh@diversevoicesbookreview.com

Diverse Voices Book Review host Hopeton Hay interviewed Attica Locke, the New York Times Best Selling author, about her latest novel, GUIDE ME HOME, the final installment in her Edgar Award-winning "Highway 59" trilogy. Set in east Texas, the novel explores themes of race, integrity, and family dynamics through the character Darre Matthews, a black Texas Ranger. In the interview, Attica reflects on the impact of the evolving political landscape on her writing and the themes of her Highway 59 trilogy.Diverse Voices Book Review Social Media:Facebook - @diversevoicesbookreviewInstagram - @diverse_voices_book_reviewTwitter - @diversebookshayEmail: hbh@diversevoicesbookreview.com

Diverse Voices Book Review contributor Amanda Moore interviewed, May Cobb, the author of THE HOLLYWOOD ASSISTANT. In her novel, a young writer works as a personal assistant to a wealthy Hollywood couple, but through an ironic twist of fate, she finds herself caught in the middle of a story that she cannot escape. May Cobb is award-winning author of The Hunting Wives, My Summer Darlings, A Likeable Woman, and Big Woods. You can find out more about May at maycobb.com.Diverse Voices Book Review Social Media:Facebook - @diversevoicesbookreviewInstagram - @diverse_voices_book_reviewTwitter - @diversebookshayEmail: hbh@diversevoicesbookreview.comSign-up for the Diverse Voices Book Review email notification of interviews available to listen to at https://forms.office.com/r/NtvGUfwUgb 

Diverse Voices Book Review host Hopeton Hay interviewed Nicola Yoon, author of ONE OF OUR KIND.  Yoon describes her novel as "somewhere between a thriller and a horror. It's about a woman named Jasmine who, along with her husband and young son, moved to a suburb of Los Angeles that builds itself as a black utopia. And when Jasmine gets there, she expects to find safety and community, and at first, she does, but then things quickly shift..."Nicola Yoon is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of INSTRUCTIONS FOR DANCING, EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING, THE SUN IS ALSO A STAR and a co-author of BLACKOUT AND WHITEOUT. Diverse Voices Book Review Social Media:Facebook - @diversevoicesbookreviewInstagram - @diverse_voices_book_reviewTwitter - @diversebookshayEmail: hbh@diversevoicesbookreview.comSign-up for the Diverse Voices Book Review email notification of interviews available to listen to at https://forms.office.com/r/NtvGUfwUgb 

Diverse Voices Book Review host interview Frank Andre Guridy, author of THE STADIUM: An American History of Politics, Protest, and Play. In this book, historian Frank Guridy recounts the contested history of play, protest, and politics in American stadiums from the Democratic National Convention at Madison Square Garden in 1924 to the Colin Kaepernick protest at Qualcomm Stadium in 2016. Moving between the field, the press box, and the locker room, this book recovers the hidden history of the stadium and its important role in the struggle for justice in America.  Frank Andre Guridy is an award-winning historian and the author of three books. He is a professor of history and African American studies and the executive director of the Eric H. Holder Initiative for Civil and Political Rights at Columbia University. He lives in New York City.Diverse Voices Book Review Social Media:Facebook - @diversevoicesbookreviewInstagram - @diverse_voices_book_reviewTwitter - @diversebookshayEmail: hbh@diversevoicesbookreview.

Diverse Voices Book Review host Hopeton Hay interviewed John Vercher, author of the novel DEVIL IS FINE. The novel is described by its publisher: "Still reeling from a sudden tragedy, our biracial narrator receives a letter from an attorney: he has just inherited a plot of land from his estranged white grandfather. He travels to a beach town several hours south of his home with the intention of selling the land immediately and moving on. But upon inspection, what lies beneath the dirt is far more complicated than he ever imagined. In a shocking irony, he is now the Black owner of a former plantation passed down by the men on his white mother’s side of the family..."Diverse Voices Book Review Social Media:Facebook - @diversevoicesbookreviewInstagram - @diverse_voices_book_reviewTwitter - @diversebookshayEmail: hbh@diversevoicesbookreview.com

Diverse Voices Book Review contributor Amanda Moore interviewed, Renee Watson, the author of skin & bones. Through a series of profound vignettes, her new novel tells the story of a woman who tries to live and thrive in a world that never truly sees the beauty that she has learned to love within herself.  Renée Watson is also the author of the young adult novel, PIERCING ME TOGETHER, which received a Coretta Scott King Award and Newbery Honor. You can find out more about Renee at reneewatson.net.Diverse Voices Book Review Social Media:Facebook - @diversevoicesbookreviewInstagram - @diverse_voices_book_reviewTwitter - @diversebookshayEmail: hbh@diversevoicesbookreview.com

Diverse Voices Book Review host Hopeton Hay interviewed Larry Tye, author of THE JAZZMEN: How Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie Transformed America.  From the publisher: This is the story of three revolutionary American musicians, the maestro jazzmen who orchestrated the chords that throb at the soul of twentieth-century America..  What is far less known about these groundbreakers is that they were bound not just by their music or even the discrimination that they, like nearly all Black performers of their day, routinely encountered. Each defied and ultimately overcame racial boundaries by opening America’s eyes and souls to the magnificence of their music.Diverse Voices Book Review Social Media:Facebook - @diversevoicesbookreviewInstagram - @diverse_voices_book_reviewTwitter - @diversebookshayEmail: hbh@diversevoicesbookreview.com

In 2014, Diverse Voices Book Review host Hopeton Hay interviewed Danielle Allen about her newly published book, OUR DECLARATION: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality. Featured on the front page of the New York Times, her book publisher writes in its description of the book: "Our Declaration is already regarded as a seminal work that reinterprets the promise of American democracy through our founding text. Combining a personal account of teaching the Declaration with a vivid evocation of the colonial world between 1774 and 1777, Allen, a political philosopher renowned for her work on justice and citizenship reveals our nation’s founding text to be an animating force that not only changed the world more than two-hundred years ago, but also still can. Challenging conventional wisdom, she boldly makes the case that the Declaration is a document as much about political equality as about individual liberty."Danielle Allen is James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard Universi

Diverse Voices Book Review host interviewed Walter Mosley about his latest Easy Rawlins novel, FAREWELL, AMETHYSTINE. Set in 1970 finds Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins, LA’s premier Black detective, at 50 years of age despite all expectations.  He has a loving family, a beautiful home, and a thriving investigation agency.  All is right with the world… and then Amethystine Stoller, his own personal Helen of Troy, arrives. Her ex-husband is missing. A simple enough case. But even as Easy takes his first step in the investigation he trips.  He falls into the memory of things past.

Diverse Voices Book Review host Hopeton Hay interviewed Meg Gardiner, author of the thriller SHADOWHEART, a crime fiction pick of the month.  SHADOWHEART is the fourth book in Gardiner's UNSUB thriller series featuring FBI profiler Caitlin Hendrix. In the thriller, Hendrix is  tracking a serial killer that appears to be following the modus operandi of a jailed serial killer.   In the interview Gardiner discussed the vulnerability of her protagonist, how she drives the pace of her novels, and how she uses different point of view characters to allow readers to understand and empathize with both the good and bad characters, and to give voice to those most invested in the story.Diverse Voices Book Review Social Media:Facebook - @diversevoicesbookreviewInstagram - @diverse_voices_book_reviewTwitter - @diversebookshayEmail: hbh@diversevoicesbookreview.com

Diverse Voices Book Review host Hopeton Hay interviewed award winning historian Annette Gordon-Reed, author of ON JUNETEENTH. In the interview, Gordon-Reed discussed the historical significance of Juneteenth, a holiday commemorating the emancipation of enslaved people in Texas. She also shared her personal experiences and perspectives on the holiday's origins, evolution, and cultural significance. Born and raised in Texas, Annette Gordon-Reed is a history professor at Harvard University and the author of the Pulitzer Prize winning THE HEMINGSES OF MONTICELLO.  Her web site is https://annettegordonreed.com/. Diverse Voices Book Review Social Media:Facebook - @diversevoicesbookreviewInstagram - @diverse_voices_book_reviewTwitter - @diversebookshayEmail: hbh@diversevoicesbookreview.com 

Diverse Voices Book Review host Hopeton Hay interviewed Abir Mukherjee, author of the new thriller Hunted.  Hunted, Mukherjee's sixth novel, follows the paths of a terrorist group in the U.S. planning and executing bombings in the U.S., the efforts of the FBI to stop them, and the search for two of the young adults in the group by their parents who hope to prevent catastrophe.  The novel has a multicultural cast of characters providing points of view from a U.S. and international perspective.  In the interview, Mukherjee discussed the use of crime fiction as a medium for social commentary and protest, particularly in Scotland, his home. Diverse Voices Book Review Social Media:Facebook - @diversevoicesbookreviewInstagram - @diverse_voices_book_reviewTwitter - @diversebookshayEmail: hbh@diversevoicesbookreview.com

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 decision to focus on Reconstruction as the central theme, tying it to various other historical events and movements including the women's suffrage movement, the destruction of indigenous sovereignties, the Industrial Revolution, and labor conflict.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 Understanding American Democracy's History of Abolition.

Diverse Voices Book Review contributor Chaitali Sen interviewed Gemini Wahhaj, author of the debut novel The Children of this Madness.  In The Children of this Madness, Gemini Wahhaj pens a complex tale of modern Bengalis, one that illuminates the recent histories not only of Bangladesh, but America and Iraq. Told in multiple voices over successive eras, this is the story of Nasir Uddin and his daughter Beena, and the intersection of their distant, vastly different lives.Gemini Wahhaj is a Bangladeshi American writer living in the US. She wrote her debut novel The Children of This Madness as a new immigrant in the US, while she was a graduate student in the creative writing program at the University of Houston and war raged in Iraq.Diverse Voices Book Review Social Media:Facebook - @diversevoicesbookreviewInstagram - @diverse_voices_book_reviewTwitter - @diversebookshayEmail: hbh@diversevoicesbookreview.com

Diverse Voices Book Review host Hopeton Hay interviewed Steven Han, author of Illiberal America: A History.  In the interview they discussed the realities behind American history's myths, touching on progressive thinking's complexities, wealth concentration, and public good concepts. They also examined the impact of political strategies like the Southern strategy, and the Supreme Court's role in economic rights protection and the aftermath of Obama's election. Steven Hahn is a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian who studies American political and social movements. His acclaimed works include A Nation Under Our Feet and A Nation Without Borders. He teaches at New York University.Diverse Voices Book Review Social Media:Facebook - @diversevoicesbookreviewInstagram - @diverse_voices_book_reviewTwitter - @diversebookshayEmail: hbh@diversevoicesbookreview.com

Diverse Voices Book Review contributor Amanda Moore interviewed, Kellye Garrett, the author of Missing White Woman, her latest novel. Her new book tells the story of a young woman who becomes an unwilling participant in a mystery that not only captures the attention of the public, but also forces her to face her past while fighting for her future. Kellye Garrett is also the author of the award-winning book, Like A Sister, and the co-founder of the Crime Writers of Color.  You can learn more about Kellye at www.kellyegarrett.com.Diverse Voices Book Review Social Media:Facebook - @diversevoicesbookreviewInstagram - @diverse_voices_book_reviewTwitter - @diversebookshayEmail: hbh@diversevoicesbookreview.comSign-up for the Diverse Voices Book Review email notification of interviews available to listen to at https://forms.office.com/r/NtvGUfwUgb Web site: https://diversevoicesbookreview.wordpress.com/