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The 90 species of kingfishers don't think they huntin woodlands where the smaller ones like the 4 inch pygmy Kingfisher will eat grasshoppers incentive Pede and the larger ones will take frogs reptiles small mammals and even. Young Australians laughing kookaburra is a member of the kingfisher family and it's been known to dispatch snakes up to 3 feet in length. No matter whether the kingfisher you see is wrangling a snake or plunging for a fish you'll be looking at a member of one of the world's most charismatic groups of birds. For bird No I'm Michael Stein. About about. The u.s. Military is considered the most powerful in the world with a caviar it's a long list from the f. 35 to Patriot missiles are all hackable So we go to war and the enemy pushes the button and the live our weapons work I'm Ari Shapiro the vulnerabilities and capabilities of American cyber security this afternoon on All Things Considered from n.p.r. News you can hear all things considered and 3 o'clock this afternoon here on 91.7 k. A.l.w. San Francisco 6 minutes past 9 o'clock in the morning. This is Fresh Air I'm Terry Gross Colson Whitehead landed on the cover of Time magazine last week next to a caption that called him America's storyteller he's earned that honor over the course of 7 novels that have ranged from Rise speculative fiction to zombie apocalypse to sobering historical fiction all of them in various ways considering the topic of race in America his 2016 novel The Underground Railroad is being adapted into an Amazon t.v. Series directed by Barry Jenkins who directed moonlight and of Beale Street could talk Whitehead's new novel is called the nickel boys he's going to talk with us about it but 1st our book critic Maureen Corrigan has this review she says this is his best novel yet. It's pretty rare for a writer to produce a novel that wins the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award and then a scant 3 years later bring out another novel that's even more extraordinary but that's what Colson Whitehead has done in following up his 2016 novel The Underground Railroad with the nickel boys it's a masterpiece squared rooted in history and American mythology and yet painfully topical in its visions of justice and mercy erratic Lee dinar I'd buy Whitehead's own admission the disturbing true story that informs the nickel boys d. Railed him from the crime novel he'd been planning to write a few years ago White had read news reports about the Arthur g. Dozier School for Boys a segregated reform school in Florida that opened in 1900 and was finally shut down in 2011 unmarked graves of boys brutalized and even possibly murdered at the school were discovered and are still being discovered by forensic archaeologists in Whitehead's novel The Dozier school is renamed the nickel Academy and it's at this house of horrors that his main character an African-American teenager named Elwood Curtis winds up. It's the early 1960 s. And Elwood has been listening to a record album of Martin Luther King's speeches that his grandmother gave him for Christmas Elwood has absorbed Dr King's message that he must walk the streets of life every day with a sense of dignity and somebody ness the other kids in high school think he's a goody goody but industrious Elwood believes in the meritocracy and in fact he's already been offered an opportunity to take classes at a colored college miles away from his home in Tallahassee to get there he has to hitchhike that's when fate steps in in the form of a black man driving a bright green Plymouth Fury which turns out to be stolen even though Elwood is but a clueless passenger he's sent to the nickel Academy for car theft. Whitehead's novel is short and intense it's chapters as compact as the isolation cells that nickel boys are thrown into and sometimes never leave one way that Whitehead uses the narrative spareness of the nickel boys to devastating effect is by tightly juxtaposing scenes and images and letting the contrasts silently sink in for instance Elwood's arrival in handcuffs at the nickel Academy is made all the more wretched by the fact that the school all green lawns and red brick looks like his intended college at least on the outside and a shattering chapter about a rigged and vicious boxing match that nods to Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is followed by a description of the annual Christmas fair at the nickel Academy the child friendly displays of Santa and gingerbread houses are constructed by the forced labor of the nickel boys boys who years later we're told could have been so many things had they not been ruined by that place doctors who cure diseases or perform brain surgery sure not all of them were geniuses but they had been denied even the simple pleasure of being ordinary hobbled and handicapped before the race even began never figuring out how to be normal. At nickel Elwood makes a friend whose name is Turner Turner is an expert Whistler often breaking into the theme music from The Andy Griffith Show another disorienting juxtaposition he's also more skeptical especially about the civil rights movement and the chances of justice within the walls of nickel or beyond Turner goes along to get along and as Elwood begins to do the same he feels his spirit dying we're told that Elwood wakes up at night and realizes that in keeping his head down he fooled himself that he had prevailed in fact he had been ruined he was like one of those negroes Dr King spoke of in his Letter from Birmingham jail so complacent and sleepy after years of oppression that they had adjusted to it and learned to sleep in it as their only bed. Before he gives up Elwood resolves he'll make one last gesture of faith in the possibility that someone in power cares about correcting injustice you may think you can guess how that effort ends but you'd only be partially right the nickel boys issues a complex and deeply affecting verdict on whether or not the arc of the moral universe does indeed bend toward justice but my verdict so to speak on the nickel boys is much more straightforward it's a great American novel. Marine Corrigan teaches literature at Georgetown University she reviewed Colson Whitehead new novel The nickel boys and if that enthusiastic review got you interested in the novel stick around because we're going to hear from the author Fresh Air's Dave Davies just recorded this interview with Clawson Whitehall Colson Whitehead Welcome back to Fresh Air It's good to have you and the book is remarkable. I thought we would begin with a reading I mean your book is about is some students at this thing that's called the Trevor nickel Academy that's the nickel boys is the book but it's based on the story of the dozer school in the panhandle of Florida which is now closed in which where many abuses were discovered. This is a reading about a group of ex didn't write just set it up for us sure it's about 2014 and the school's been closed for a couple years and people who had been there in the fifties and sixties and seventies have started a survivors' group and they meet once a year and check out their old haunted place. The annual reunion now in its 5th year with strange and necessary the boys who are old men now with wives and ex wives and children they did or didn't talk to with wary grandchildren who were brought around some times and those whom they were prevented from seeing they had managed to scrape up a life after leaving nickel or had never fit in at all with normal people the last smokers of cigarette brands you never see late to the self-help regimens always on the verge of disappearing dead in prison or decomposing in rooms they rented by the week frozen to death in the woods after drinking turpentine the men met in the conference room of the Eleanor garden in to catch up before caravanning out to nickel for the solemn tour some years you felt strong enough to head down that cement walkway knowing that it led to one of your bad places and some years you didn't avoid a building or stared in the face depending on your reserves that morning. And that is Colson Whitehead reading from his new book The nickel boys. This school really changed people's lives that. You know 1st for some people is a very traumatic place not everyone who went through those or ended up being abused and the other $600.00 students going through each to each year and I would be a tragedy on a catastrophic scale but for it's 110 years of existence there are many stories of sexual abuse physical abuse and even murder they found some unmarked graves on the grounds and that's when I sort of investigation of what actually happened at those are happened your last book the Underground Railroad which won the National Book Award of the Pulitzer Prize was a look at slavery what made you want to write about those are about this school I didn't want to I thought sort of compelled to you know I came across a story of the school in 2014 they want to sell the property the state of Florida did and they started examining the official graveyard and they found out of unmarked graves and some archaeology students started excavating the unmarked graves and trying to id different students who'd been there and the story stayed with me you know there's one place like this there are many places and maybe it's a reform school it's an orphanage talk to some folks in Canada they talk about residential schools there where. Indigenous kids were taken from their families and put in schools to learn about white culture and the same kind of use happened and it seemed if the story had been told. Somebody to tell it. How did you research the subject to did you go down and visit while I was on Twitter where I often am that's right I 1st came across the news report and then immediately started searching and then Mark Comrie from the Tampa Bay Times I had covered the story for years there a lot of there's lot of Florida coverage now on national coverage. When I started writing. There's a memoirs there's a Survivor site called the White House boys and people who've been there in the fifty's and sixty's and had written down some of their. Stories of being there and then you know online a lot of photo archives and you can see the White House where the kids are being you can see the dormitories and the administration buildings and it all looks very nice it's it's a very beautiful campus and then once you hear about it you know your idea that it definitely changes. But you didn't feel the need to go there had to go electing research whenever I travel for a book I always feel like I'm earning like a real writer badge or something. And I figured I'd go through and go down there after I got halfway through the book and then that the deeper I got in and the more I wrote about I would in turn are my 2 main characters the more I sense a real I had a sense of real physical dread and anger thinking about the place. And then I realized I was not going to go and if I was going to go it would be with some dynamite or a bulldozer. I think is an evil place and and I'm not sure I'll ever go there so how did you get the texture of the place for to write about it. You know I'm not a zombie hunter or a runaway slave or an elevator inspector generally I you know I can show that you have written about yes yeah yeah and other books and I do enough research to feel grounded and really eager to start working and that's why I know I have enough to keep going and I'm like any writer fiction writer you know I use my empathy and magination what I know about myself and other people to make it real. How did kids get into a school like those or what sort of fences or circumstances would cause them to be sent to sure the idea behind a place was you know was very enlightened and in the mid 19th century reformers tried to think of how they could prevent juvenile offenders from being criminalized you don't lock them up with adult offenders so a reform school where you get classes one day and learn a skill the next day working a farm. Make something build their hands you might be reformed. Immediately when the school start opening there are stories of abuse that opened in 1800 and in 1000 to 3 people complaining about what was going on the school was leasing students. To local businesses and the people who were there were all juvenile delinquents they were orphans and wards of the state if they had no rules to go they put you there and that the charges for the so-called you know offenders were you know truancy graffiti vandalism these sort of them or if this you know quality of life crimes right in a lot of cases kids just who just ran away right because they came from places where they were abused or unwanted what they used to call broken homes Yeah and so it was a warehouse for people who had no us to go if you're under 18 We're speaking with Colson Whitehead His new novel is The nickel boys we will continue our conversation in just a moment this is Fresh Air. Or are. This is Fresh Air and we're speaking with novelist Colson Whitehead his new book The nickel boys is based on the true story of the Dozier school for boys and now closed juvenile reform school in the Florida panhandle where former students have told stories of beatings and sexual abuse and where investigators have found dozens of unmarked graves so the teenager the well the young man who is at the heart of our story Elwood. Isn't a kid who has come from an abusive home you want to just talk about this character and why he's the kind of kid you wanted to let take us into the school sure has them as with Curtis he's a straight a student being raised by his grandparents you know it's a job after school working out of tobacco store must go to college and he's grown up idolizing monitor King and all the lights of the civil rights movement he reads Life magazine every week and sees the updates on the boycotts and protests and sit ins and season self as a part of new generation it's going to change America you know bit by bit and we should just know this he's in Tallahassee Florida in the Jim Crow south in the late fifty's early sixty's right the book of the fifty's the main action in 63 and so he's actually lived in an era where things actually are moving slowly slowly afford He just has a ride with the wrong person and it's a stolen car and gets sent to nickel and for me. It's a way in for my experience I've been stopped by police for no reason I've been handcuffed and Tara gaited I think most young people of color have been stopped by police in this way and he makes a wrong turn and he's in the wrong places at the wrong time and I think for for many people for many people of color. We can relate to suddenly having a life be able to change any 2nd. So what happened when you were pulled over in handcuffs what happened. Was you know junior in high school and. I was with some friends we were in a supermarket and suddenly there was a white cop saying. Put your hands behind behind you he put handcuffs on me took me out to the street to a squad car where there was a white woman in the back seat she'd been mugged and I guess I was the 1st black person black teenager that came across and luckily she. Said I was not a personal matter. And I had to speak my own business and like many young people of color. You know if I had shifted in wrong way which my water wrong way you know who knows it could have happened and so that informs my idea of. Being in the world how many 2nd things can go on Iraq and I know I'm not alone in understanding that's that sort of menacing reality is always winning there. Or you could be misidentified by somebody misidentified and you know she had been in the back seat would have spent the night in the Tombs the local New York jail and once I'm there who knows. The man that goes this way or that way so that you know that opportunity for tragedy is always there I think when it comes for people of the tween people of color and and white law enforcement and that's not sort of our reality. Elwood is in high school in the early sixty's when the civil rights movement is really rolling and he has a teacher Mr Hill who's interested in this and kind of committed to the battle for civil rights there was a very compelling moment when you described the 1st day of school when the kids in the segregated school get their textbooks you want to share that with us sure the kids in the blacks will across town get their 2nd hand books from the white school which is well funded. As yours these the case and the white students knowing that their school books are going to the black part of town right epithets f.-u. The n word. For their black neighbors to enjoy when you open up the books on of the 1st day of school and Mr Hill was teachers the 1st person to say you know Mark those out they've taken the views for granted you know for a generation year after year and he and Mr Hill who's a freedom writer. Is the 1st person says you're decent people scratch that out and let's start and make these books fresh. So Elwood he is committed to the principles of the civil rights movement and looks forward to participating What's his attitude towards you know the life ahead of him where he's got to deal with segregation and deal with a white power structure and limited opportunities how does he conduct themselves. You know he's one of these very optimistic and idealistic sorts who thinks that if he wants to do it he can do it. If you if you March. If you raise your voice if you stand up you can change the world and and if you devote your energies you can fight back the vast machinery arrayed against you and so he see himself going to college he sees himself joining the nattily dressed people of Snick and poor. Marching on Washington. Doing sit ins. Desegregating. All the various various venues and it's one big moments before he goes off to those are happens in the. Late school year when he protests and he protest the segregated movie theater in Tallahassee which is a real protest and. They hand in a sign to get in the slogans and the white deputies and and riffraff gaze upon them the protesters stare razor fists and this is necessary real sort of moment of a person who can actually be. He's a bit of a miracle you know he's an unlikely person and I think I was struck when I was going back to reading about money through King and the early civil rights struggle how unlikely all those people were you know to believe that they could. Beat back 200 years of systematic oppression and they did it. You know sort of action by action and so I definitely was writing you know Al would seem like a very rare sorts. But he was not alone you know he's part of a generation that really did. Change. The country an important way. Of course now we slide back a bit. But they never. Things were listening to the interview Fresh Air's Dave Davies recorded with Colson Whitehead His new novel is called the nickel boys we'll hear more of the interview after a break and Kevin Whitehead will review a new book about the Detroit Jazz scene I'm Terry Gross and this is Fresh Air. The new power Family Foundation supports w.h.y. Was fresh air and its commitment to sharing ideas purging meaningful conversation support for n.p.r. Comes from this station and from Subaru committed to doing its part to make the world a better place by supporting philanthropic initiatives in local communities learn more at Subaru dot com Love bonus money it's what makes a Subaru. And from battle a language learning at the teaches real life conversations using speech recognition technology and voiced by native speakers daily 10 to 15 minute lessons are at Babble b a b b dot com. On the next we'll discuss sea of Shadows a new documentary that follows a team of scientists journalists and undercover agents as they put their lives on the line to save the Keita there are fewer than 15 left in the Sea of Cortez when Mexican drug cartels and Chinese traffickers poach the rare a fish their nets also have Akita is there still time to save the planet's smallest whale join the next with me Rose Aguilar and one half hour from now at 10 o'clock here on Calle followed at 11 by one a dog whistle politics are nothing new including to Donald Trump he's used racist and incendiary language for decades including as president this weekend he told 4 Democratic lawmakers of color to go back where they came from 3 born in the u.s. One a naturalized citizen what do we do about racism from the White House if anything the next time. 11 o'clock this morning here on time now is 930 this is Fresh Air I'm Terry Gross let's get back to the interview Dave Davies recorded with writer Whitehead His new novel The nickel boys set in the early sixty's is based on the true story of the now closed Reform School for Boys in Florida where many former students say they were beaten or sexually abused the central character of Whitehead's book is Elwood a hardworking college bound African-American high school student who believes in the promise of the civil rights movement but his life changes when he ends up in reform school so this optimistic young man ends up in this reform school because he hitches a ride with a guy who happens to have stolen a car he gets convicted of car theft and he's in this place how do his values mesh with his the experience that confronts them. Well you know he's not there very long before he discovers that at the spot it's beautiful exterior things are quite off he breaks up a fight between some big kids and a little kid and his real initiation into the school is being taken to the White House. And the real dozer school was called the White House it was a utility said on campus. That he started using for beatings after a short lived reform corporal punishment was outlawed and so that they took the the boys and realized this place called the White House and it was too great a detail the change and of a name that is and the kids on campus at those are called it the ice cream factory because you came out with different bruises of every color and so he picked up this fight and nobody is really particularly concerned about who started it was trying to break it up the guilty and innocent are punished equally and that's an early lesson at Nicholl Academy you know I thought we would listen to a piece of tape from an n.p.r. Report this is from 2012 reporter named Greg Allen and it's based on his conversation with a guy who survived Dodger named Jerry Cooper and what happened when he had committed some offense and was taken to the White House for some discipline that's what school staff got him out of bed at 2 am one morning and took him to the White House where he says they threw him on a bed tied his feet and began beating him with a leather strap the 1st blow lifted me after off that bed and every time that strat would come down you could hear the shuffle. On the concrete because their shoes would slide and you know you could hear that bag Cooper passed out but a boy in the next room later told him he counted 135 lashes and that's from report from n.p.r. Reporter Greg Allen about abuses at the dozer school the story has inspired the novel by our guest Colson Whitehead It's called the nickel boys that really is the way it happened isn't. That the same details came up and a lot different accounts of the day to muffle the sounds of the beatings and the screams they'd had this huge industrial fan and so if you heard the fan go on on the side of campus you knew what was happening and that came up a lot the sound of the leather strap hitting the ceiling before it came down upon your back was very it was repeated a lot and I've talked to one man who said that when you heard the belt had to hit the ceiling you knew the tense up you know sort of diminished the blow and so all and all those tiny details have stayed with the people you know for decades and decades and you can still hear it and still feel it and hear it and in a in a very bones right what would it do to your to the students back to get 100 of those kinds of lashes delivered with that kind of force Sure breaks it open and then another thing that came up a lot was the kids being being across the lake so much that their fibers of their jeans are embedded in their skin not to get I'm sorry I'm being grizzly and then the doctor an infirmary having to take tweezers and pluck them out and you know more than one person. Really of that detail and so you see it's a you know it's a bit of a factory unfortunately. So a lot of kids were beaten and there are a lot of stories about this. Do we believe that kids were murdered. Well there are kids in unmarked graves with blunt trauma to their skulls and gunshot pellets in every cages. And so. How they get their. Teenagers buried in the ground with. Great evidence of violence they didn't you know faint right or get the flu. We should know that no one has been criminally accused of killing anybody there of course a lot of this happened decades ago so the evidence isn't easy to acquire and some of the perpetrators are are now deceased. The kids did work and produce stuff was the school a source of profit for some local people. It was profitable for the state of Florida you know making those bricks and putting those pamphlets in the early days they stopped that in the mid for the century I believe but they would lease out students to local businesses local farmers. Some of the kids did end up dead under mysterious circumstances and then eventually you know whatever state investigators put a stop to it. But I was sort of you know convict leasing. For grownups you know it was it was a big business picked up your picked up for some minor infraction. Vagrancy and then the local deputy truck drove the south and black people being sold by a white deputies to mines to farms and in a sort of. I don't say indentured servitude because you could your time your 6 months or year could be up and I would tell you and to be sort of stuck in the same way that you know there's no place for you to run. You know once you're sort of in a system you're embroiled and there's no place to go there are quotes from Martin Luther King in the story because they come from this record that would love to play and one of them you quote a couple of times and it's striking it's in which King describes the you know nonviolent resistance and the importance of loving your oppressors and kind of an abridged version of the quote is he says you know throw us in jail and we will love you we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer we will not only win freedom for ourselves we will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process and our victory will be a double victory. Don't tell me why that quote was something you wanted to use in a story sure. You know the great things about research that you make a decision and it starts paying off and terms of having I would be an acolyte of the civil rights movement is that the. Pick speeches and different episodes I would inspire him and so I had to go back to monitor King speeches and figure out which ones would fit well with which ones with that this part of the book. Once I would it's tested at nickel cademy. Has to really live up to all these things is believed and he's heard monitor King talk about love the oppressor. He's talking about suffering and rising above it and. And loving in the face of impossible odds and it's really want to get cynical that Elwood has to think can I do this. I mean sort of ridiculous but sort of what we have to do and you know it's real sort of struggle. The longer he spends at nickel is having to finally put into concrete practice what he's been reading about and perhaps he never imagined he'd have to. Prove himself so thoroughly. As he does a nickel. In the last part of the book we meet some of the characters later in life and I don't want to say more than that about it because. It would spoil it for readers and they deserve to experience this but I have to say the narrative structure here of how the course of their lives is revealed I think is pretty brilliant and I wonder if you can without giving away the story just talk a little bit about how you decide to reveal the outcomes Yeah yeah I mean. The majority of book takes place in 63 and 64 and we follow Elwood as he grows up and gets out of the nickel Cademy and moves to New York and we seem in 1000 in the seventies and it's even eighty's the early part of this century and so we see what sort of makes sense as a man and then we see the after effects of it how do you come back from something as dramatic as being a nickel who makes a whole life decades later and who is perpetually victimized by that by their time there do you become addicted to drugs and alcohol or can you find someone to love make a family keep a job. It's a few months out of his life would young life and then. His to spend the next couple of decades finding his way in the world and I think whether you were in a place like those or. If you had a family catastrophe early on. Any sort of faster you you balance back from you reckon with it it changes you and then you and changes your world and so that's where we you know we find Elwood in his later chapters is a man you know trying to find himself after this very formative few months. Colson Whitehead the new novel is The nickel boys we'll continue our conversation after a short break this is Fresh Air. Support for n.p.r. Comes from this station and from here maker of him water unsweetened sparkling are still water infused with fruit essences like Black Berry and cherries in stores or delivered to homes drink hint dot com hint mouth watering water and from caring transitions a senior move resource to help families ease the stress of life's transitions offering relocation home cleaning and the resale of everyday household items locations at caring transitions dot com This is Fresh Air and we're speaking with novelist Colson Whitehead his new book The nickel boys is based on the true story of the Dozier School for Boys a now closed reform school in the Florida panhandle where there were accusations of serious beatings and sexual abuse over many decades and where investigators have found dozens of unmarked graves. You know the book is a lot about the struggle between. Optimism about social change and kind of a pragmatic acceptance of the world as it is. And we're in some pretty turbulent times in this country that these days how optimistic are you. Positive change. I find it hope that if I don't think about it. Now. You know this book comes out of you know feeling very desperate feeling that. You know the last 60 years we have made some toddler steps towards equality and then you know we fall back and that's been my sort of experience my whole life is sort of making advanced me go back to spaces and. You know my parents were basically Elwood's generation and I can't imagine my grandparents my parents. Raising their kids and in the racist country and then seeing what would have happened in the last 50 years you know at blacks. President that's crazy. And then I think they'd be not surprised about swastikas being painted on synagogues and incarceration camps full of brown people at the border so I guess my new line on hope is that I don't see a lot changing in my lifetime I think hopefully my kids you know 50 years from now have a different idea the same way that I have a different idea than my parents and grandparents but right now I think we're pretty stuck and I don't see things going a lot better before they get worse How old are your kids 5 and 14 Ok so they'll want to specially is in a position to be aware of a lot of things and she's like super wook you know she's like policing me on my super P.C.'s which is. Sort of startling. And then the younger one you know to start training early you know he's in the cops and robbers and so we raise an eyebrow and a psych you know a police car was speeding by will say. You know there's a cop going to you know stop a stop or offer and ought to stop and say or. An innocent person driving a car that cop thinks is too fancy for him in the wrong neighborhood that's the sort of early 2 lives you get in the white hood household what well you were writing this book I'm wondering you know what was happening in the country on race relations and you know what's happened in the last few years and I'm wondering what events might have informed your thinking as you were writing this what made. That 1st news report but those are an indelible was the fact that it was the summer of 2014 and the summer Michael Brown was shot by a white policeman in an Ferguson Missouri Eric Garner put a chokehold by a white policeman in Staten Island and it's been a feature of my life that you know we had these high profile police brutality. Incidents I mean talk about police brutality for a few months and stop until the next time comes along so that summer was so. You know the fact that no one's ever held accountable no one ever goes to jail no one ever taking responsibility made me feel very raw and I think that allowed the story of those that are sort of settled in there so settle in me. Was another example of just people who are. Powerless people who have no defenses being abused by an institution and. The guilty go free and innocent suffer. This is your 9th book and your last one of the Underground Railroad want to National Book Award in the Pulitzer Prize selected by Oprah Winfrey which I'm sure boosted sales a lot gave it a much bigger profile as you finished and published this book did it feel like a completely different experience because of where your career is not so much because of the success of the Underground Railroad. You know it seem like a once in a lifetime kind of convergence of. Me doing what I set out to do and other people getting it and it was quite lovely but you know 9 books and you have had books that lots of people didn't appreciate her underappreciated and books that people sort of got and then whether it goes well or craftily last time us at the start with a blank page and you know I switch John was a lot of the most trying to figure out different ways of telling stories and so that challenge is always there I'm writing a short realistic book about some that actually happened this book is a fact is fantastic this book is a nonfiction book about poker and so. I was in a good mood for a year and then. You go back to work and it's a scrappy several of us. What is it true you had to sign 15000 copies of this one they asked me to and I said Yes it's like you said no but you know this a lot of independent bookstores had asked for them and they've been so supportive over 20 years that you know how can I say no and so I went to the you know big Random House warehouse. Outside Baltimore and for 3 days signed $15000.00 copies of the nickel boys and it was on my arm that hurt my neck I got a weird tramp but I still have like a month later and a massage has been suggested by having Diane. Your last book the Underground Railroad is is being produced as a t.v. Series on Amazon do you have any role in that no you know I had a few you know talks with with Barry Jenkins the director but my attitude is that once I wouldn't want to write again and then I would have things I want to work on stuff you know like new books like nickel voice so you know it's really cool there's going to shoot in August next month and like 10 episodes and I you know I can't. Wait to see what they do with it you know are you nervous about seeing your work adapted like that well. I think in general adaptations are terrible so having someone like Barry Jenkins makes me feel very comfortable and excited and you know it's one thing to write you know different scenes on the page and other thing to put them on on screen and so we've talked about some of his solutions for making it dynamic for the screen and they're very smart and stuff I could never come up with yes tell a different medium and it's. Oh I'm pretty excited. So you don't want your like be drawn into writing screenplays next. You know periodically I'm like. Teach a semester and I've got blockbuster screenplay now I get 20 pages and I'm like ah the socks are a novel you know it's it's hard work to do something like I can write screenplays apparently so I. Stay in my lane is my motto. All right well congratulations on the book called Whitehead it's been great to have you back thanks so much thank you so next time Colson Whitehead spoke with Fresh Air's Dave Davies His new novel is called the nickel boys White had won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for his previous novel The Underground Railroad which is being adapted into an Amazon t.v. Series after we take a short break our jazz critic Kevin Whitehead will review a book about the Detroit Jazz scene this is Fresh Air I'm Tim Franks has to be seen on the program marking the moon landing when next to space travel and election for one of the most powerful jobs in Europe and the surgeons who separated twins can joined by their heads well as afternoon for b.b.c. News hour here on 91.7 k l w. Historical Park in Oakland is throwing 8 celebration every Friday this summer enjoy food a d.j. And community performances centering around this week's theme of island of vibe scale to use a media sponsor for the sprit event taking place from 5 to 8 pm this Friday July 19th visit. Or for details. This is Fresh Air. Is the title of a new book by journalist and critic Mark Stryker who spent a couple of decades covering jazz and its people in that city are jazz critic Kevin Whitehead says Stryker looks at Detroit hers who made their mark in the larger world and a few who stayed behind Here's Kevin's review. Saxophonist James Carter Baker's keyboard lounge in Detroit in 2001. Throughout the city's boom and bust decades since World War 2 Detroit has train more than a chair of high performance jazz musicians saxophonist like Carter Joe Henderson Yusef witty friend Charles MacPherson or pianists like Barry Harris Hank Jones Tommy Flanagan Roland Hanna and Gerry Allen or drummers like Elvin Jones Lewis Hayes Gerald cleaver and were already skipping key players before moving on to other instruments most of these jazz stars broke through in New York but even their Detroiters stuck together pulling colleagues into high profile bands and using the old gang on records on 1957 John Coltrane jam session the whole rhythm section was from Detroit Kenny Burrell on guitar Tommy Flanagan on piano Doug Watkins on bass and Louis has on drums. Typical The city's boppers they swing hard but their beat can be open and airy. I am hearing such musicians with fresh years since reading Mark striker's very informative unreadable new book Jazz from Detroit. Stryker spent a couple of decades covering jazz and its people for the Detroit Free Press he has a good reporter's I and a good critics fear for the telling detail and the particulars of a musician's art his tone is positive but he's not blind to racist realities Detroit's best are mostly African-American though white boppers like Singer Sheila Jordan and saxophonist pepper Adams were welcome Detroit standards are high and musicians are encouraged to find their own sound Streicher shows how Detroit's bebop drench scene grew up supported by good public school music programs and a few dedicated teachers outside the classroom. Pianist Barry Harris mentor of just about all the modernists who came up behind him till he left for New York in 1960 later he began schooling musicians there. Here's Harrison 1965. Barry Harrison Detroit drummer Ed Iraq with saxophonist Coleman Hawkins. The book Jazz from Detroit isn't just about musicians who left but also ones who remained some old school boppers 1960 s. And seventy's on guard ists and diverse young lions who started coming up in the eighty's the old support system continued much as before with new teachers rising up for most was a trumpet player and classic jazz stay at home who tried New York but found it cold in cliquish Marcus Belgrave. Here's Belgrave in 2012 from the Blue Note anthology Detroit Jazz city. In the book Jazz from Detroit Marc Stryker profiles Marcus Belgrave and 7 younger musicians he helped including saxophonist Kenny Garrett violinist Regina Carter and drummer and hip hop producer Karim Reagan's some great proteges then took up educating young musicians themselves professors like Gerry Allen or bassists Bob Hirst and Rodney Whitaker as ever striker squeezes in concise appraisals of key recordings and he notes changes to an artist's sound over time he's got big ears and can turn a phrase his method echoes the great jazz chronicler Stanley dance who in classic books like the world of Duke Ellington used interview bass profiles to assemble a mosaic portrait of a larger scene. That's what Mark Stryker Dawson jazz from Detroit he tells a lot of individual stories that add up to one big. Kevin Whitehead writes for point of departure and the audio he reviewed the new book Jazz from Detroit by Mark Stryker. Tomorrow on Fresh Air My guest will be Randy Rainbow who writes and performs political song parodies mostly about President Trump rainbow writes original lyrics set to melodies of show tunes and pop music hits his videos go viral on You Tube and next month he'll go back on tour I hope you'll join us. As executive producer is Danny Miller our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Salat from us Meyers Sam Briger Lauren Krenzel Reese and Madden moods 80 and Seth Kelly I'm Terry Gross. Support for n.p.r. Comes from this station and from Dana Farber Cancer Institute with more than 1200 cancer clinical trials in progress physician researchers are working to unlock the cancer code more it Dana Farber dot org slash beat cancer. And from Progressive Insurance comparing car insurance rates from multiple insurers so shoppers can evaluate options in one place now that's progressive comparisons available at progressive dot com or 1800 progressive. 'd So you have a speaker who's saying you know that's not what they're about and at the same time you have a president who's essentially confirming what they're always saying that you know he needs to be confronted in an aggressive way that matches his own tactics I'm Michael That's today on the daily from the New York Times 530 this afternoon right after crosscurrents here on 91.7 k l w San Francisco it's a minute before 10 o'clock. Farm at the Commonwealth Club speakers focusing on current events technology and culture educating entertaining and aging audiences. At 29. Editor in Chief of the youngest and condé Nast 107 year history she sits down with artist singer songwriter Jonathan Singletary on her wildly successful career until hopefully inspire a new generation of trailblazers. Tuesday night at 7 pm here at 91.7. It was once thought that if you didn't learn empathy in your earliest years you'd probably never acquire a Tuesday night in deep neuroscience expert Jamil Zaki says not so he brings along research and real life victories of empathy that make his point. With his book The War for kindness on in deep with Angie Quero Tuesday night. Recorded live at Kepler's books in Menlo Park. The new documentary sea of Shadows is an urgent call to action to save the of Akita there are less than 15 left in the Sea of Cortez when Mexican drug cartels and Chinese traffickers poach the rare fish those nets also killed of a key to whales dolphins and other marine life the latter is considered a delicacy and China and has sold for tens of thousands of dollars sea of Shadows follows an incredible team as they put their lives on the line to save the va Kita on today's your call we will be joined by 4 of them join us after the news. Hello Marion Marshall with the b.b.c. News members of the European Parliament are holding a secret ballot to decide whether the outgoing German defense minister or sort of underlying will become the 1st woman to run the European Commission she's pitch policies designed to offer something to all sides Damian Grammaticus reports from Strasburg to try to win leftwing votes she's promised that e.u. Under her direction will legislate for minimum wage and for gender quotas on company boards to attract greens she said the e.u. Should do more to reduce carbon emissions to attract liberal votes she's promising protections for the rights of refugees and tougher monitoring to ensure countries like hungry and Poland comply with e.u. Democratic values but those policies may cost her votes among euro skeptic and hard right wing parties if it's on the lane is rejected the e.u. Will face a new period of deep political uncertainty President Trump says that progress has been made in efforts to deescalate tensions between the u.s. And Iran he didn't go into any details but his secretary of state Mike pump air said the Iranians were prepared to negotiate on the issue of their ballistic missile development program the u.s. Wants to rein this in Tehran hasn't yet responded. U.s. Federal prosecutors say they will not press charges against any New York police officer involved in the death of the black man which led to the black lives matter movement 5 years ago Eric gonna died after he was put in a choke hold during his arrest for allegedly selling untaxed cigarettes in Staten Island Richard Donahue's the u.s. Attorney for the District of eastern New York after an exhaustive investigation the Portman of Justice has reached the conclusion that insufficient evidence exists to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the police officers who arrested Eric Garner in Staten Island on July 17th of 2014 acted in violation of the federal criminal civil rights act 30 of the incident which showed Eric Garner gasping I can't breathe played a key role in protest against excessive use of force by police confronting black men 50 years after the 1st manned mission to the moon was launched events to began in the United States to commemorate the Apollo 11 program one of the 3 astronauts Michael Collins who never set foot on the moon was in Florida to describe his experiences our correspondent there Jane O'Brien listen to his account when he said he was leery of how the Stage 2 part of the rocket detachment would work you can imagine him fitting in that tiny little thing thinking well is it going to work is it going to work I found that absolutely incredible can take hear him actually describe that moment that was quite incredible and really gives you a sense of just how extraordinary this anniversary is Jane and Brian reporting world news from the b.b.c. The Congolese authorities say that a pastor it was the 1st confirmed victim of a boat in the crowded eastern city of Goma has died the provincial governor called for calm saying that the case had been detected quickly and isolated immediately and the passengers on the past his boss have also been identified. A broadcasting regulator in Belgium has opened an investigation into a t.v. News report about tourists who said their holidays had been spoiled by the bodies of dead migrants washing up on the beach the comments were made by Belgian citizens on holiday on the Tunisian island of jabber Here's our Europe regional editor Mike Sanders reports on a francophone television channel cut straight to the chase a bad start to the holiday for Charlotte from the edge of the reporter she just arrived in Tunisia and she found a body on the beach similar tales of ruined vacations ensued the tone triggered condemnation on social media and complaints to the regulator one newspaper decried the revolting asymmetry between those from the north who can travel at leisure and those from the south who risk their lives to do so it said the report had dehumanised migrants replacing humanity with unbridled selfishness 10 Turkish sailors have been taken hostage by armed pirates off the coast of Nigeria their ship which was not carrying freight was sailing from Cameroon to Ivory Coast when the pirates boarded 8 other sailors managed to escape piracy in Nigeria has become common over the past decade but there's been a recent drop in the number of incidents International Maritime Bureau warns that Nigerian waters remain risky. The final season of the popular television series Game of Thrones has received a record breaking 32 nominations at the annual American t.v. Awards the Emmys the mediæval fantasy series or set the record the most nominations given to any show in a single year the Emmy Awards ceremony will take place in September in Los Angeles b.b.c. News. Well . And this is your call the new documentary sea of Shadows is an urge.

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