Ep. 335 This Thing Called Satisfaction with Eve Dunbar

Written By Megan Caballero

English professor Eve Dunbar is here to discuss her forthcoming book, Monstrous Work and Radical Satisfaction: Black Women Writing under Segregation. Eve shares how libraries played a pivotal role in her childhood relationship to reading, and how that love of reading eventually led her to focus her academic work on African-American literature. We also delve into resistance and satisfaction as a way to fight white supremacy, and the book she most loves to teach.

The Stacks Book Club pick for September is Jazz by Toni Morrison. We will discuss the book on September 25th with Eve Dunbar returning as our guest.

 
 

Everything we talk about on today’s episode can be found below in the show notes and on Bookshop.org and Amazon.

To support The Stacks and find out more from this week’s sponsors, click here.

Connect with Eve: Twitter
Connect with The Stacks: Instagram | Twitter | Shop | Patreon | Goodreads | Substack | Subscribe

To contribute to The Stacks, join The Stacks Pack, and get exclusive perks, check out our Patreon page. If you prefer to support the show with a one time contribution go to paypal.me/thestackspod.

The Stacks participates in affiliate programs. We receive a small commission when products are purchased through links on this website.

TRANSCRIPT
*Due to the nature of podcast advertising, these timestamps are not 100% accurate and will vary.

Traci Thomas 0:09

Welcome to The Stacks. A podcast about books and the people who read them. I'm your host, Traci Thomas, and today we are joined by Eve Dunbar. Eve is a professor of English at Rice University whose work and teaching focus on late 19th century and contemporary African American literature and culture, with a particular emphasis on black feminism, labor, segregation and politics. Her forthcoming book is Monstrous Work and Radical Satisfaction: Black Women Writing Under Segregation. It is an academic exploration of radical feminist resistance through writing today. Eve and I talk about how she came to literature and wanting to be a professor, the book she loves to teach most, and what it means to write and work in opposition to white supremacy. Eve will be back for our discussion of our September book club. Pick jazz by Toni Morrison, which is a beautifully complex novel set in the Harlem Renaissance. Make sure to read the book and listen along with us on September 25 quick reminder, everything we talk about on each episode of the stacks can be found in the link in the show notes. And listen if you like the show, if you want inside access to it, if you want to support the work that I do to make this independent podcast every single week, head to patreon.com/the stacks and join the stacks. Pack. It's just $5 a month, and you get to be part of one of the best bookish communities that has ever existed in the history of human beings. Fact check me, by joining this fax pack, you get to be part of our Discord. You get to come to our monthly virtual book club meetups. You get to hear a bonus episode every month. And you also get to know that by joining you're making it possible for me to make this show. Another fun perk of the snacks pack is getting a shout out on this very podcast. So here's a huge thank you to some of our newest members, Christine l Whitney, Karen H Brown, ethylene Whitmire, Erica, Adams, Allison jelly and Daniel Hanbury. Thank you all so much. And for those of you who love the show and want to support it, but maybe don't want to be part of a community like that, but still want to know what I think about books, pop culture and whatever else is going on. Head to Traci thomas.substack.com and subscribe to my newsletter. All right, now it's time for my conversation with Eve Dunbar.

All right, everybody. I'm so excited. I am joined today by a professor and author. Her latest book, which comes out in November, is called Monstrous Work and Radical Satisfaction: Black Women Writing Under Segregation. I am joined today by Eve Dunbar. Eve, welcome to the stacks.

Eve Dunbar 2:37

Thank you. Thank you, Traci, I'm happy to be here.

Traci Thomas 2:41

I'm so excited to have you. I have to tell you I started your book. Oh no. And was literally like, holy shit. Eve might be the smartest person alive right now. I was blown away by the book. It is so thoughtful. I have so many questions for you about, like, how you organize your thinking and how you think about reading. Because as I was reading it, I was like, oh my god, she is, like, doing so much with every idea, and the book is so short. And I was just like, so I was so impressed. So anyways, we're gonna talk about how smart you are today.

Eve Dunbar 3:23

Yeah, I don't know how much criticism you read, but I yeah, I don't know. I don't feel like extra smart, but I do love to read and and think about black women's lit. So okay,

Traci Thomas 3:42

we'll get to how smart you are in the book. We're gonna start sort of in a less intense intro, which is just, even though you told me you hate doing this, so sorry. But can you just tell folks a little bit about yourself, like where you're from, maybe, like how you came to love reading, how you came to love literature.

Eve Dunbar 3:59

You know, I I'm from all over the place, in the northeast, so I'm, like, born in New Hampshire, but spent a good bit of my childhood in Hartford, Connecticut. My mom died when I was really young, and so I kind of moved a bit after she died. Lived with some family in Massachusetts, and then kind of went to high school, late middle school in a little tiny town in rural Pennsylvania. And I write about this in the intro to Monstrous Work. Kind of, why rural Pennsylvania? Because my family's not from there. But one of the things that my grandparents would do, because they weren't from that town, is drop my brother and I off at the library child care. Yes, it does. So we would be in the library for like hours, some when they had things to do, and so I just got really comfortable being around books. I. Um, as care providers, if you will. Also I had this really clear sense for myself that I wanted to go to college, and I thought that, and that was, I can remember, there was this little pamphlet in the lobby of the library that was, like the 100 books you should read before college, or something. And, you know, I made my way through, I don't I remember reading or checking out, like Shakespeare, Midsummer Night's Dream, and, like, not understanding any of it. I was like, Okay, so I'm working towards this thing. And so that's kind of the origin, but in terms of when I learned to love books, I and this is like cliche, but also really true. I read Jane Eyre, and like fell in love with that book, this Victorian novel, for no good reason. I guess it was meant to be, as somebody who identifies as female, as a woman, or as a girl, like that was a rite of passage for me. And so that's when I really, like got into reading novels. And then I just went through all these Victorian novels, like weathering heights, all of the ones that you would read as, like a young girl, yeah,

Traci Thomas 6:25

yeah. Did you? Did you when you went to college? Did you study English? Is that your major?

Eve Dunbar 6:30

I did. But even that I, you know, I'm first gen my mom, my dad, my grandparents, didn't go to college, so I didn't really have any models for like, anything, which was great, because then I didn't have any expectations. I went to school on a scholarship, and I didn't feel compelled to, like, be a doctor. You know what I mean? Like nobody was like, you must go to medical school or you have to become an engineer. So when I applied to undergrad. I applied because I was taking an economics class in high school, and I was like, Oh, I like econ, you know, I like playing the stock market. I was like, this would be a great life. And so I applied to do econ. But when we had to do, like, first year writing, and they put us in these, like three courses that were one of these, like retention things that they do for first gen, you take three classes with all the same people, and then blah, blah, blah. So I chose this class. The primary class was a philosophy class that was like American pragmatism. I don't know why I chose it, but I also then was in this women's studies course that was just intro to women's studies, and then we were in a poli sci course. And the whole idea was that you would have these three courses, and you'd have a group of people, because I went to Penn State, a big state school, you'd have these, this core group of people who you could kind of work with throughout your first year or your first semester. So at the end of the year, I had to write this paper for my philosophy course, which I guess would have been my first year writing course in philosophy. And I wrote about Their Eyes Were Watching God as a kind of pragmatic, a pragmatist text, right? Because Hurston is like, you've got to go there to know there, like that. You have to do the thing in order to know and understand the thing. And so I, I wrote this paper, and I remember that the teacher was like, You're a really good writer. And I was like, oh, that must mean I should be an English major philosophy professor telling me, I was like, oh, then I'll be an English major, and then that's what I did.

Traci Thomas 8:48

Okay? And when you were coming up in the in your library, boot camp, education, child care services, all the library is great because it is all things to all people. It is everything,

Eve Dunbar 9:00

all of that. For a lot of people, librarians are not happy to know that people are dropping their kids off.

Traci Thomas 9:07

They definitely know it's not a secret.

Eve Dunbar 9:10

It's a safe place. Well, in a small rural town, it's a safe place. I think in larger cities it might, because of the population, it might be a little bit less safe, I don't know, but for us, it was a safe place.

Traci Thomas 9:22

I love that you talked about Jane Eyre withering heights. At what point did you come to African American literature?

Eve Dunbar 9:28

You know, I actually didn't come to that until graduate school. I remember I took this as an undergrad. I took an AFAM lit course with a professor who was definitely not about teaching undergrads. He was definitely always late to class. Sometimes he wouldn't show up, like he could not be literally could not be bothered.

Traci Thomas 9:54

I love that for him, African American literature. So that was like

Eve Dunbar 9:57

my early AFM, lit and. Education. I then, like, went on to be a research assistant for him over the summer. And he was wonderful. And kind of just really, his name was Bernard bell. He really was completely clued in, like, oddly enough, he had a Rolodex on his desk. He was interesting, because he came to school probably after he had fought in the Korean War, and so I think he was like a vet. He was a vet, and then got his PhD. But anyway, he still had a Rolodex. And on his Rolodex he had Toni Morrison's, like, name information in the Rolodex, a flex, yeah, well, but like, not even a flex, because nobody would have known except somebody who was in his office, like typing stuff, like me, and there was another student. So he sort of modeled something for me, about AFM lit, but it wasn't really until I went to graduate school and was just in writing my dissertation, then I was like, actually, I really want to think about race in the United States, and for me that was predominantly through, like, Through black lit, or through the racial passing narrative. That's what I ended up writing a dissertation on. So thinking about the flexibility of like blackness and what it could mean and what it didn't, did and didn't mean throughout the 20th century, right?

Traci Thomas 11:36

Let's talk a little bit about this new book, Monstrous Work and Radical Satisfaction. I want you to sort of just tell since people won't have had a chance to read it by the time this is coming out, but we will be dropping pre order links in the show notes people. And it's really good. It's short and really exciting and interesting stuff, though I'm not familiar with a lot of the work that you write towards. So I want you to just kind of set it up for people explain sort of what the idea is behind it, and then the four authors that you use to kind of make your point, etc,

Eve Dunbar 12:06

yeah. So it's, um, a study of what we would call mid 20th century, so between, like, the 30s and the 60s, of black women writing. So I write about Gwendolyn Brooks, who's a poet. I write about Alice Childress, who's a playwright, but she writes a set of kind of newspaper articles that get put into compilation. I write about Anne Petrie, who's probably best known for the novel The Street, and then a writer named Dorothy West, who was part of the Harlem Renaissance, but very young during the Harlem Renaissance, so she kind of moves into this 30s, 40s, 50s period. She comes of age during that time. So I'm writing about them as models for how black women were thinking about their identity as Americans in a time where the possibility for citizenship, full citizenship was being dangled by the state as accessible through like integrative or integration. And so I'm thinking about them not as writing towards integration, but writing against integration. And that's not to say writing against equality, right? But looking for something that does not require black people to model whiteness, but blackness to be sufficient in and of itself, and that's what I say, is kind of the monstrous work that they're doing, which is to write against integration in the moment when we all should be kind of looking towards integration as salvation, as kind of being proximate to white people, as the way that we get what we want, right? And they're going to say, you don't have to do that necessarily. And instead, there's this other thing called satisfaction, right? That that this is the radical work of black women, which is to be satisfied in and of yourself. And here are different ways that you can do it. I

Traci Thomas 14:24

love it. I just, I think that like, what you've kind of like distilled even just through the title alone, which you obviously like, unpack deeply in the book. But it's just a totally different way to say a thing that I feel like people say all the time, which is, like, I don't want to, you know, work within the confines of white supremacy, or, like, I want to be seen outside of the white lens and all of this stuff. But like, by reframing it as monstrous work and radical satisfaction, there's something so like, juicy about those words. I don't, I don't know, like, what? I don't know how to say what it feels like, but I'm doing like, a lot of shoulder wiggles and like grabbing with my fingers, like there. It just feels like there's more to cling on to. Thinking about it as like work, as like monstrous work, it just feels so much more actionable. Yeah, and I

Eve Dunbar 15:20

think that for me, when I started writing the book, I just kind of finish up, finished up a stint, like in my institution, working in administration. And I think people who probably work in the corporate world probably feel this like, dang, you know, I tried to tell these people like, you can't do this. But nobody listens to me. That's crazy. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, where your perspective is not valued or listened to. And like, I think we, you know, you have language like, oh, that person sold out, right? There's, there are ways of being in institutions. You can toe the line of the institution, or you can go against the line of the institution. And so for me, I was thinking about, Okay, what does it mean to go against the line of the institution that feels it feels really dangerous. You know, there's a better paycheck if you toe the line, like there's upward mobility if you do the thing that you're supposed to do in the ways that you're supposed to do it. And so I was really deep into thinking about that kind of like, what does that mean? How do you do your job when, in theory, we're all supposed to be like, if you are a particular type of liberal, if you're kind of, whatever you want to call yourself, anti establishment. It's all discursive. But when you're actually doing it right, feels really dangerous. Or it can feel like you're giving up a lot, and I think and you are. And so I was really deep in that monstrous like, what does it mean to go into you know, how do writers? How have writers? And that's where I always go. How have, like, black writers? Have they talked about this feeling before? Have they talked about how you do it. How do you resist, and especially as a black woman, how do you resist, right? Without the like support networks that many people have, the financial support networks, the political inclusion, the social standing, all of that stuff, it's got to be risky, like you know. So let me go to the sources that I know to see how it's been done. And so I was looking for that, but what I realized when I was looking is that there's this whole other realm that they're offering, which is satisfaction, or that joy, that feeling of completeness that comes not just not from the loss, not from the monstrous work, but right also, in addition to the loss, this other fullness. And so I began to think of them in tandem together, as modeling, kind of, yeah, how we should, how we could be in the world, what we can get, and

Traci Thomas 18:00

like the looking back, like I was reading this book of the week of the Democratic Convention, right? So like looking back, and then like looking ahead, or like even just being present in this moment and thinking about this and also thinking about the ways that, like black women, can be doing the monstrous work in one moment and then in the next moment, totally be toeing the line. Yeah. I think this idea of like pushing up against white supremacy, or like being outside of the white gaze is, in our minds, feels like a pure Yeah, 100% of the time, at your job in administration or whatever, you are always fighting against white supremacy. But the truth is, it's never that. It's always like, this one little moment of resistance, or this one pet project, like, I'm gonna go all in on this one little thing, but like, I do have to toe the line here or there, or, like, it's not worth the fight. And I think, like, it's just so interesting to be thinking about the women who were doing this work in their writing in the 30s and 40s and 40s and 50s and 60s, and then here in 2024 looking at Kamala Harris on that stage giving that speech, and being like, this is all of a line, yeah.

Eve Dunbar 19:12

And I think that it's tough, right? Because, you know, you want to think that I liked what you said, which is it's a kind of give and take or pushing a pull, and maybe it's the small work that you can do, but then ultimately you got to get paid, and you need your health care, and you know, people are depending on you, so you maybe can't live a Life a full, radical separation and all of that jazz. And that's what I liked about the writers that I'm I wrote about one they reconceive of the radical and in the moment that I'm thinking about in like, the 5040s, 50s, yeah, 60s. That's like the Cold War, and it's the kind of you. The left, the in the US is is present more so than it is for us. Now, like a particular kind of communist bent, socialist bent, left is way more powerful than it is for us at this moment, thinking about people, I guess the big critique of Kamala from Trump is that she's a socialist, or she's a pianist.

Traci Thomas 20:24

I wish,

Eve Dunbar 20:27

no, she, she's a national, an American nationalist. But that said for these women, there was this thing called the the strong radical left, and but what I, what I began to be interested in, and they were all kind of slightly affiliated, right? Lots of black people in the writing world were, even though it's also McCarthyism is happening, so you can't, you know. So all of that stuff gets brushed under the carpet, but anyway, they're influenced by but they're also thinking about the reality that of what you just said, like that women, the stakes are higher, perhaps, or the stakes are high for all of us. And so you have to find these other smaller ways to be radical. It's not going to look like ideological radicalism, necessarily. And this is to for me, it's like, I don't want to say the ideological is irrelevant. It's absolutely relevant. But we also have to have a capacity to see the work that people are doing interpersonally. It's not the same as like being a card carrying member of the Communist Party, and if that's the only way you register radicalism, a lot of women, black women, in particular, are going to be left out because they couldn't carry the card right, right? Because the party wasn't really capable of seeing them right so that it, for me, opens up a way of thinking about, like radicalism as inviting and, you know, and more sumptuous, more juicy, less less static and less kind of rigid and much more flexible. And I think that's inviting, perhaps,

Traci Thomas 22:24

yeah, this is sort of a shift within the book. But how did you pick the four women that you decided to use? Were you, were you thinking of the idea and sort of just reading and these people fell into your lap? Or were you thinking of these women and then the idea came like, how does the actual form kind of come to you,

Eve Dunbar 22:42

yeah, you know, it started with somebody who fell out of the book, so with Zoran and Kirsten and her work, and she's problematic for a number of reasons when you're talking about radicalism or communism, because she was an anti communist. But it started with her, and thinking about her kind of, it literally started because she has this ethnography called Tell my horse. And she, in that ethnography, she takes a photograph of a woman who she says is a zombie. She's doing research in Haiti at the time. And so I was like, that's weird. She's taking a picture of and she's like, this is the only real, true photograph that's ever been taken of an actual zombie. It's a weird, I won't even get into it, but they're like, monstrous. I was like, Oh no. And she has, like, and I've written about this, she has a vexed relationship to the profession of anthropology and the experience of it and doing that work, and nobody validated her work, really, when she was alive, doing that work. And so kind of thinking about, like I said earlier, like, how do you do work when nobody sees the work that you're doing? You do it anyway. And this is what it looks like. So that's the beginning. And then it's a matter of, yeah, like, I have the idea, can I find other writers who are doing it? And I also like to write about, oftentimes, what for African American Lit, are canonical writers, or like writers that you might know, you might know Gwendolyn Brooks, you probably We Real Cool. You probably read that like in high school, somebody made you read We Real Cool. So, you know, I'm also thinking about like, people that people actually are interested in thinking about and reading and like, what can I add to what you know, or what you think you know about writers that you've encountered before?

Traci Thomas 24:43

Yeah, I have two more questions then we'll sort of get into your reading tastes. But one is about Toni Morrison, so we're gonna do jazz you and I at the end of the month, I'm so excited. I've never read it. You've read it.

Eve Dunbar 24:56

Oh yeah, you haven't read it.

Traci Thomas 24:57

I haven't read it. I had never before. I started this. No, I'd never read Toni Morrison. No, never. So what happened when we started in 2018 is we started with The Bluest Eye, and I did it with someone, and then I was like, it would be fun to just do a different Toni Morrison every year. So every episode we've ever done on Toni Morrison is my first time with the book. Wait, and it's been great. I mean, like getting to talk about a mercy with Imani Perry is like, Are you kidding me, or beloved with Damaris B Hill, like, yeah, it's, I'm always just, like, absorbing and learning so much. And we've done some that have been, like, you know, we did tar baby last year with Minda honey, and that was really fun, because that, that book is, like, so juicy. And like, it's like a play. It's just like, messy people, and Minda loves mess and so, like, that was really fun, too. And so, you know, I'm excited to do this one, because I've heard a lot of I've heard a lot of chatter. People like it. People don't like it. It works. It doesn't work. And up until this point, I felt like they've all worked. But now I'm sort of getting into the novels that are less people's favorites. Like, less people tell you love is their favorite. Toni Morrison, you know what? I mean, it's like, I'm getting, I'm starting to get to the ones that people are like, not as excited about. But I feel like jazz and Paradise are sort of the last two that we haven't done that are still people love them.

Eve Dunbar 26:14

Ah, people love paradise. I don't know

Traci Thomas 26:17

some people do. I've heard people say it's their favorite one? Wow. Okay. I mean, that's what I'm saying. I'm getting to the ones that are, like, a little questionable.

Eve Dunbar 26:27

I think jazz is going to be great because you'll love it. Well,

Traci Thomas 26:31

maybe you won't. You might not. There's a murder in it, I'm told so. And I love a murder mystery. It's a we love a murder. Well, it's not

Eve Dunbar 26:38

even a mystery, but there is a murder, and you have to figure out, like, what's gonna what's gonna happen, but it is some of the best like lines that are descriptions of people's, like psyches, even like, not even like what they look like, but where their souls are. Yeah, Morrison is good for just like creating a vivid image of a soul.

Traci Thomas 27:07

So it'll be great. Okay, I'm so excited. And then here's my last little question for you. You're a professor, you teach literature. What's your favorite book to teach?

Eve Dunbar 27:16

Ooh, that's a good one. There are too many. I teach a class, speaking of Morrison, that is probably one of my favorite little classes. It's not even a full semester, it's just what like a six week course. I call it slow or slow and close, and we read one Morrison novel over six weeks, and we read Song of Solomon. And so recently, I've read that book every year for like, the past four years really slowly. And I love that book because it teaches so well. There's so much in it to unpack, from the line, from, like the esthetics to the actual story arc to the characters, it's just really rich. So I like teaching that in theory. I like teaching Huck Finn Twain, okay, in a really long time, okay. Love that book, okay. Like, in terms of, like, canonical American literature that I like Huck Finn is, like, so bad, but also so smart and so good, and like, what he's doing with Jim and Huck on the river together, and then the way that Tom Sawyer comes in and ruins everything, like it just is such a good book that I think, you know, lots of people used to read it. I think in, like, middle school, high school, I don't know if they read it anymore.

Traci Thomas 28:56

I think some people do. I never did. I've never read it.

Eve Dunbar 28:59

We but I mean, it's got all the N word like problems, and maybe that's why people stopped reading it. It's a problem. I heard they reissued it with a clean version.

Traci Thomas 29:10

Yeah, I've heard they do that. And I've also heard, though there's, like, teachers who teach it, where they tell the students you can or cannot say it up to you. I'm like, what

Eve Dunbar 29:18

see, I'm terrible because I teach black lit and the N word is, like, all over, it's all in it. I pretty and it's to mix classes, right? I'm like, we're not going to say it, because I don't. I don't feel comfortable when people say it, when, like, white people say it. It's not a word that I necessarily use in my real life. I'm not opposed to people using it. Some of my best friends use it all the time. But you know, that said, I feel like, I don't think you can give people

Traci Thomas 29:48

a choice like you gotta, you gotta be in charge. If you're the teacher, yeah,

Eve Dunbar 29:52

you're causing trouble. You're, you're you're causing something. But anyway, Huck Finn is a book that, in theory, I would like to teach, but Morrison is more. Song is the book that I like have taught a lot lately, and love teaching it's, have

Traci Thomas 30:06

you read James yet, the new Percival, and I want to read that so good, I would love to know what you think about it, especially knowing that you have feelings about Huck Finn. Because I've never read Huck Finn. I just read James and just was, like, this book is brilliant, like, it is a brilliant retelling, because it stands fully on its own two feet. But I think if I'm sure when read it,

Eve Dunbar 30:30

yeah, what's out, maybe I'll read it before, Okay, before we talk again, yeah, yeah.

Traci Thomas 30:37

It's so good. You know, I'm currently this year, especially like reading a lot of like, canonical texts that I'd never read before. And I, last night, just finished The Handmaid's Tale, which I'd never read. And I am, I think if I was a teacher, I would love to teach that book. Have you read?

Eve Dunbar 30:54

I didn't watch the series. I

Traci Thomas 30:56

had watched the series, but I totally forgot most of it as I was reading it, a lot of things. I was like, Oh, yes, that is what the salvaging is, or whatever. Like, stray from the book they do. They have, like, four seasons. I think I stopped after season two. The first season is, seems pretty close to what I read, but I don't. I barely remember the show.

Eve Dunbar 31:19

That's so I never watched the show, because I was like, Do you need a show about this book? This book is pretty clear. The book is pretty

Traci Thomas 31:25

clear, yeah, but I liked it. I was surprised by how much I liked it as a book. I liked it as a book, but as soon as I started thinking about it, like, the moment that I closed the book and was like, thinking about what she had done, I was like, this is icky, yeah? Like it is, you mean, like, she basically just took the experiences of black and indigenous women in America and were like, okay, white ladies, like, what if this happened to you? And I just, I wish that she had interrogated that more, because it could have made the text richer, yeah. And also, like, the version that I had had this, like, forward, where she talks about Soviet, um, Germany, because that's where she was, I guess for a little bit she was, or she was in West Berlin, yeah, during, like, during the wall being up. And obviously she was born in 1939 so World War Two was formative in her life. And she gives those two things a lot of credit in the writing of the book. And I just was sort of like, okay, but also like, you didn't think at all about American slavery. Like you didn't think like, and that annoyed me, because I'm like, I can see all of these things in your work, and I just wish you would be either more reflective of what you've done, or more open about it, instead of trying to pretend like this is just about the Soviets, when I think that that shows up very clearly in a lot of the stuff with the men, but with the women, I'm like, That's they weren't doing that.

Eve Dunbar 32:53

Yeah. You know, that's so interesting. I mean, I hate to bring up Morrison again, but she has like, a book called playing in the dark, where she basically says, you know, the and I guess isn't at what a Canadian, but she is Canadian. Well, pretend she's an American writer, but Morrison's argument in playing in the dark is like, the problem with American literature is it is haunted by these africanisms. She calls Africanism, like, this kind of blackness that it doesn't know what to do with, and it can't see. And so what you're saying is basically, yeah, like, there's this whole history. And add to that indigenous, like, you know, there's this whole misuse of women's bodies. Yeah, that is part and parcel of the American settler colonial slave experience that people, many writers, pretend they don't know, yeah. Even though Yeah, it informs the whole it informs the nation. It's the foundation of the nation. The experiences are foundational to whiteness, but like, whiteness can't ever see it,

Traci Thomas 34:07

right? Anyway. So that's a book that I would like to teach. I feel if I was a teacher, I feel like,

Eve Dunbar 34:12

yeah, that would be a great book to teach. Yeah, there's so many good books to teach, yeah, actually, and and students, if they're open and having real, kind of real first time experiences. That's why I was, like, it's so cool that you haven't read jazz, because you're going to have, like, a real and it's sometimes hard to I mean, a second third reader is great. You have different experiences, but the first read is, like, a real, visceral, like, reaction.

Traci Thomas 34:38

Yeah,

Eve Dunbar 34:40

those are valuable.

Traci Thomas 34:41

Okay, we're gonna take a quick break, and then we'll be right back. Okay, we're back. We do a thing here called Ask the stacks. Someone writes in with a question, and then we have to give them a book recommendation. And I picked this before I even read your book, so I'm really. Excited, because I think it's gonna be a good one for you. It comes from Megan. And Megan says My mom is a fairly liberal white lady, but mostly reads mainstream fiction. Think Jojo Moyes and Frederick Bachmann, she's expressed interest in wanting to diversify her reading. Any suggestions for good books to help ease her into branching out of her comfort zone and maybe even a dip her toe into a nonfiction or two. Thanks in advance. So I came up with three. You can come up with anywhere between one and three. I can go first if you want. That would be great. Okay, so the first one I'm gonna pick, because this is a book about moms, and a book that I read with my mom, and I watched the movie with my mom, and I love this book, though I have not revisited it, and it might be a mess, but I think it's a great one. Is the Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan. I love that book. It's about four moms and their four daughters, and the moms are all immigrants from China, and it flashes back to like, their family's history, and then the daughters are all born in America, and it's like about them trying to be American in San Francisco, and the moms and the clashing and the first generation, blah, blah, blah, but they're almost like interconnected short stories. I actually think she originally wrote them short stories, and then they made her make it a novel. Anyways. So that's my first recommendation, a classic. I love it. My second recommendation is a book that I actually, personally do not love, but a lot of people do, and I think it might be a good ease in to reading books by I don't know about because I'm interpreting the question as, like, she wants to read books maybe about race, but, like, not about race. That's sort of how I interpret it. So I'm gonna go with Homegoing. By, yeah, Jesse, yeah.

Eve Dunbar 36:45

That's a great one. I really liked it.

Traci Thomas 36:47

I didn't it was a little 101, for me, it felt like very ya. To me, it's like Forrest Gump does, like transatlantic slave trade. To me, as a person who loves history and reads about, like, real books about American child slavery and history and like, all that stuff. It just felt a little bit like Disneyland does this, which might be great for MEGAN'S MOM. It's not a bad book. It just for me. I was a little bit like, Wow, guys, this is life changing for you. I don't know. So it's, I don't dislike the book. It's just not my favorite. And then for my nonfiction, I love this book, how the word is passed by Clint Smith. I think it's very approachable nonfiction about, like, how we honor, slash, memorialize history in this country. This one is specifically about American chattel slavery. But he goes to these different sites of, like, historic sites. So he goes to Angola prison and talks about, like, what, what it's like you can take a tour, and what that feels like. And he goes to a Confederate reenactment day, and, like, talks to people there. And he goes to some of the or one of the former slave markets in New York City. And, like, talks about, like, how, you know, slavery was in the north, and it's just like a really interesting book. It's really well written, very, a very smooth, easy read, not too challenging, but still, like, packed with history. So those would be my picks. What do you have?

Eve Dunbar 38:22

Huh? This is a tough question, I think, but I'm inspired by your Joy Luck Club to meet you with. And I always get her first name wrong. I want to say Paul Marshall. And the novel is called Brown Girl, brown stones. I don't know this, and it's, it's a really, it's like, probably from the what is it 70s or 80s, or something like that, but it's about immigrant experience right in to New York, and it's all about the tensions between being first generation and having parents as immigrants. And I think a lot of people can relate to that experience, if they and because this person is identified as white, they probably, I don't. I'm presuming that they came here, not on the Mayflower, but even that was a boat. You know that immigrant experience is probably close at hand, and I find, like, you know, mainstream white people like to read immigrant experiences. Yeah, that would be one. And then, as you were talking, I'm not great with nonfiction, but I was thinking of Colson Whitehead's nickel boys, which is really depressing. I love that book, but, yeah, but also, I think, especially if you're suggesting something to a mom, to kind of really, to have an emotional read. But also. Have, like, the historical reality of race and incarceration and child incarceration, and it brought to the fore, that's a great book for that. Yeah, I would recommend that. I

Traci Thomas 40:15

love that. That's a good I need to reread that. My book really took my breath away. I remember reading that and being like, holy shit, yeah,

Eve Dunbar 40:22

because it's based on a true story, you're just like, oh my god, America sucks

Traci Thomas 40:28

the worst.

Eve Dunbar 40:31

But, and it's sad, you have to be so resilient like that. We require young people to become so resilient, and or not, and, and, you know, like, yeah, that would be, I feel like that could make for good conversation between, you know, mother and and daughter. Yeah,

Traci Thomas 40:49

okay. I love it. Megan, tell us what your mom thinks. You have to let us know if she reads any of these. Everyone else, if you want to have something read on the air, email, ask the stacks at the stacks podcast.com and we will do this with our next guest. All right, Eve, now it's time to talk about your the books of your life, two books you love, one book you hate. Oh,

Eve Dunbar 41:10

two books I love, yeah, well, just because I've been reading it all the time and I've grown to love it is more since Song of Solomon, and the other book that I love is a little book, and I write about this Gwendolyn Brooks's novella novel. It's a tiny little book, Maud Martha, which is just really a sweet rendering of this young black girls growth from childhood to womanhood as she kind of navigates what it means to come of age and be dark. She's dark skinned, the dark skinned, smart black girl, and face the limits of that, but also, like I said, be resilient and kind of thrive and live within the kind of small space of life afforded you. How do you make that your own? And I just find that really, not just inspiring, but also, yeah, just heartwarming. So those are two books that I love.

Traci Thomas 42:13

What about a book you hate? You know, this

Eve Dunbar 42:16

one is a I like. I tell my students, you know, I can read anything, right? Give me something terrible, and I'll still have something to say about it. So, actually hard, but I like Searching the Depths of my experience remembering a book. And I say this because I will start books and then just stop reading them, and maybe that's it's not always because I don't like them. It's just they, I don't have time. They don't stick for me. But a book that I had like a real reaction to when I read it for the first time was, oddly enough, Benjamin Franklin's autobiography.

Traci Thomas 42:56

Really, what was it that?

Eve Dunbar 42:58

Oh my god, I hated that book, and I hated the presumption of Benjamin Franklin, like, who, if you've ever read it, it's, I had to read it for college in an American Lit course. But he starts by saying, you know, I'm basically, I'm a pretty famous guy, and never heard of me. He's writing it supposedly to his son. And he's like, and so, you know, because I've had this great life, I feel like I have things to teach everybody, and you about, like, how to live a great life. And, you know, and this is how it starts. And I remember, like, being in class, and just like, my arm goes up as soon as the professor, like, opens conversation, and I'm basically like this, he sucks. How dare he think that the only people who have worthy stories are successful white men, basically, or just, the only thing that makes a story worthy is success, right? And, you know, it's kind of an up from the bootstraps narrative, but the the rationale of writing was so offensive to me, so I would say that's the kind of book I hate where there's no kind of ability on the part of the writer to recognize other people's experiences, and what makes other people's experiences, even if they lack, like, fiscal, political success, worthy of telling and us listening to that really, like, makes me want to vomit.

Traci Thomas 44:36

I love, I love this book as I hate. This is a good one. What's the last really great book you've read.

Eve Dunbar 44:42

You know, I might should be embarrassed to say this, but the last book that I like. I mean, I read many good books, but one of the books that really stuck with me was tarte's goldfinch.

Traci Thomas 44:58

I don't Oh, I never read that. That one's super polarizing.

Eve Dunbar 45:01

I know I like, I really loved it, and I consider it outside of my readings zone, which, you know, everything I read is good and important, but it's one of those books that I think about a lot still, like I have a whole reading of of what's the Biden Hunter Biden that's based on, on the goldfinch.

Traci Thomas 45:28

Have you read Hunter Biden's memoir? No, okay, so I never, ever thought I would ever read it. I had no idea he had one. I didn't either. But last year, when I did my like live tour, Samantha Irby talked about how incredible it is. She's like, it is so fucking crazy and, like, so good and so compelling. So it is on my list of books to read. Wow. She, like, talks about how he has like, this, like, relationship with this woman, but it's basically like, they're in a relationship because of their addiction. And it's like, all, I don't know she, she really sold it to me, and I have to go back and read it. And, yeah,

Eve Dunbar 46:04

that's yeah, I can only imagine. I Yeah. I mean, who would publish it? But of course, they publish it. Of

Traci Thomas 46:11

course they would. They'll publish anything.

Eve Dunbar 46:13

I know, so, yeah, that's wild. I had no idea. I'll have to, like, I don't know if I can bring myself to read it.

Traci Thomas 46:20

I'll read it and let you know. But if you have a whole Hunter Biden Biden theory, it might be enlightening too, because it might add so you can really grow your theory so that next time you're at a dinner party, you can, like, really spin it out. You know, yeah, it'll be a good performance piece for you. That's what I like to do. I like to come up with theories and then read things to try to reinforce my theory, so that when I'm out in public, I can, like, have something to talk about,

Eve Dunbar 46:42

make it work, yeah, test

Traci Thomas 46:45

it on an audience. What are you reading right now? And can you read multiple books at a time? And do you listen to audiobooks?

Eve Dunbar 46:55

I am reading all fours right of July, yeah. And I'm like, maybe a third of the way through, so I haven't gotten it's just starting to get a little raunchy, okay? And, and the reason I'm reading it is because I was listening to another podcast and they were recommending it. And so I which

Traci Thomas 47:20

podcast? VOD, check. Oh, yeah, of course, yeah, those, all three of those guys have been on the show, like, Yeah, this is a raunchy book. And I was like, Sam loved it,

Eve Dunbar 47:32

so that's why I'm reading it. And I do listen to audiobooks. I love audiobooks. And one of the reasons I do love audiobooks is because during the school year, I'm reading what I'm reading to teach so I can read. I'm paid to read multiple books because I'm teaching multiple classes. I'm always reading multiple books at the same time. But I love listening to audiobooks because they allow me to keep up with like popular fiction or what's what's contemporary fiction, whatever is out now, when my reading for work is not is not contemporary. So it allows me access to whatever's happening in the moment in like literary culture. So I love them. And I don't know if you have this do you listen audiobooks? I do, yeah, you find like, because I grew up reading hard book covers, I kind of think spatially so I can remember, Oh yeah, that happened in the first book, or that happened in the middle, or that was on the left hand side of the page, or that right hand. So I can orient myself in a really physical way with a physical book, and I find like I have no idea where I am, no clue, no idea. Yeah, that's the only downside

Traci Thomas 48:52

I have, that I can't really do fiction on audio. Fiction is really hard for me on audio nonfiction, like if you give me a memoir on audio. I'll do it in a day. I'll just buckle down and just listen to the whole thing, because it's like someone's talking to me with fiction. Sometimes, I'm like, Wait, who said that? Wait, what was that person again? Because I have no frame of reference, because it's not a real person, whereas, like with the memoir, I'm like, Okay, this is the author. This is the author's mom. Like, I can orient everything around this one person, or like I can do like history or real life events and stuff too. But I really struggle with fiction on audio, unless it's like a very small cast, very tight, close to life story. But I also have the thing where I could I I'm pretty visual, and so having a book, like, I can tell you exactly where on the page a thing happened, or, like, I don't even always use a bookmark. Sometimes I just remember, like, the page, like, I'll just remember the page number and I'll just remember the paragraph. I would love

Eve Dunbar 49:53

to read a study or hear somebody talk about that, that, yeah, what? What makes some. People kind of relate to the physical copy of the book in that way, in a way everybody do that. I

Traci Thomas 50:05

don't know. I don't know. I'm so curious. I hope people will tell me, if you do this, people listening, DM me or whatever, let me know I'm very curious, because I've always done it, but I've never heard anyone else mention it. So I just thought I was weird. No, I'm

Eve Dunbar 50:18

like, for a minute, when I was a kid, I was like, I must have a photographic memory.

Traci Thomas 50:22

That's what I thought, Oh my gosh. Well, the reason I organized my books by color is because I used to not and then when I started the shop, I was getting so many books in, and I couldn't remember authors names or titles, but I could remember what a book looked like. So sometimes I'd be like, oh, oh, the titles, whatever. And then I'd be like, but I have no clue who writes it like, and it's just easy, like, oh, but that book was hot pink. Like, I remember it was that hot pink book. Or like, oh, it was that gray book. And it's easier for me to find things this way than it is alphabetically, because I can't, I can't remember all these people

Eve Dunbar 50:55

well, you know, I I have a more chaotic book organization than yours, because I do separate my books by, like, fiction or kind of creative, and then critical, that's the that's my separator on my and then a loose alphabetical, but, like, not really, because who can be bothered right? So it really is like, Okay, I remember I put that on the top shelf or that somewhere in the middle, and then I'm just looking color coding might be

Traci Thomas 51:27

useful. Color works for me, but then people always treat me like I've never like. They treat me like I'm illiterate. They're like, people are so mean to people who organize by color. I'm like, You know what? Fuck you. They're my books. I would never tell you to organize your like a public library by color. That's crazy, but, like,

Eve Dunbar 51:45

referencing this library, then it works for me. But I'm, like, I have a chaotic method that's, like, I said, really dependent on critical versus, yeah, creative. And then that makes

Traci Thomas 51:58

sense. No, that makes a lot of sense. Um, what's a, what's the last really good book someone recommended to you,

Eve Dunbar 52:04

the last really good book that I got recommended? I mean, I want to say all four, because the last book that and I like, it's interesting to me. It wasn't recommended just to me, right? But I would probably say, oddly, home going was a book that a colleague of mine really liked and recommended, and I read and enjoyed. I think your critique is, is a good one. Now, of that, of that novel,

Traci Thomas 52:41

thank you. Nobody agrees with me, or nobody ever compliments my critique.

Eve Dunbar 52:45

I think maybe I liked it because I thought I could teach this. This would be to teach because of, you know, it would be easily accessible and tied to historical like, yeah,

Traci Thomas 52:55

yeah. Do you have a favorite bookstore?

Eve Dunbar 52:57

Um, you know, yes, I really like book people in Austin, mostly because that was a when I was in graduate school, that was the bookstore. But you know, the reality is, I go to Barnes because I live in a small city, and that's they don't have a

Traci Thomas 53:17

indie. Yeah, yeah. What's the last book that made you laugh? Quang,

Eve Dunbar 53:23

yellow face. I really liked that book.

Traci Thomas 53:28

A lot You did. I was medium on it.

Eve Dunbar 53:30

I don't know what I was coming off of. I was like this. This is such interesting storytelling, right in terms of writing from that perspective, yes, of a thief, really, yeah, and like, compelling you to kind of Yes. I had to catch myself all the time and say, But wait a minute, she's done this terrible thing. Yes, like, I do want her to get caught. Or, you know, like, I don't want her to get, you know, like, just, it was, it was, for me, really interesting challenge for not just ethics, but like as a reader, like, yes, hold your narrator at a distance, like an unreliable, you know, whatever narrator. And like the when somebody can really capture a reader as an unreliable narrator, it's amazing. Yeah,

Traci Thomas 54:32

I agree. What about a last book that made you cry?

Eve Dunbar 54:37

Oh, I keep saying Song of Solomon. But the only thing that's funny about this is, like, I taught it maybe last fall, and I we were, I was in class, and I started crying in class, which is like the worst. And I was just like, Guys, I'm so sorry. We were. Reading the there's a funeral scene for a character, Hagar, and one of the main characters gives what amounts to a eulogy, and it's about Hagar being loved, and she was and she just repeats this line, and she was loved, and she was loved. And like, I just started class, and I realized after the fact, which is always awkward, crying in public, yeah, and people having to see you cry in public, not good. And it took me a while to get over it. And I kept texting my friends whenever they would say this bad thing happened to me. I was like, but at least you didn't cry in your spirit. And everybody had to shake

Unknown Speaker 55:47

their head, like, that's the worst. You win.

Eve Dunbar 55:49

You win. But that particular scene is just so, like, powerful, and I had been up all night grading papers, so like, the thin membrane between emotional life and the classroom was, like threadbare

Traci Thomas 56:07

I'm obsessed with this. What's a book that brings you joy?

Eve Dunbar 56:14

I think that the book that I always go back to in love, and perhaps just because I'm thinking about Morrison, is Morrison Sula, which is, yeah, I just, it's so sad, but it's also so wonderful about the possibility of friendship. And, you know, how do you come back around and what, what's lost if you can't and like what it means to be present for somebody in your life and bound to them, you know. So I just love that book it. I don't know if joy is the right word, but love is the right word.

Traci Thomas 56:57

I like that. Are there any books that you're embarrassed that you still have not read.

Eve Dunbar 57:04

You know, my whole life is based on trying to make sure I read the things that embarrass me. So most recent one that I was embarrassed I had not read was Nabokov's Lolita, simply because, like everybody's always making like, comments about Lolita. This is like, Lolita. This is like, Lolita. And so for a long time, I don't know why I never read it. I just never read it. And, like, maybe a summer or two ago, I was like, I'm going to read Lolita. And

Traci Thomas 57:34

you did it.

Eve Dunbar 57:35

I did read it. I did you like it. You know, it's another I think I'm, like, susceptible to unreliable narrators. I

Traci Thomas 57:43

love an unreliable narrator. Yeah?

Eve Dunbar 57:45

I mean, he's terrible, and yet you read and you read and you read and so, yeah, I did. I did enjoy it, even though I know, as a feminist and as a woman and as a human like, he's despicable, yeah, and I'm compelled by writers who can make you keep reading despicable people. I love

Traci Thomas 58:07

that. Do you speaking of despicable people? Do you have a problematic favorite?

Eve Dunbar 58:10

You know, for me, in my subfield of literature, at some points in time, the problematic favorite is Richard Wright, who wrote Native Son. And I like him. I think that book is problematic. What he does to black women is terrible, kind of but I think he's capturing what America does to black women. But what I like about that novel, up until the last book, the first two books are just so, like, he understands plot driven, yeah, yeah. And so like that plot is moving, and there's a murder and, you know, murder face, yeah, it's just got all the elements.

Traci Thomas 58:51

Can I tell you that I was assigned that book and read that book in middle school? Isn't that insane? Yeah, I didn't even realize I've never gone back to it. But I remember the first book. I remember part one being like, this is the greatest thing I've ever read in my entire life. I don't remember parts two and three, or whatever. So there's a chance I never finished. You

Eve Dunbar 59:13

might not, if you you, you might have finished two, because that's when he's on the lam on the road. I definitely

Traci Thomas 59:19

read that. Yeah. And then I don't remember

Unknown Speaker 59:25

running into I vaguely remember

Traci Thomas 59:27

that in my brain, it's two parts, the part I liked and then the end. But it's insane to have seventh graders read that book.

Eve Dunbar 59:36

That's inappropriate, isn't that crazy? I

Traci Thomas 59:39

know I was just telling a friend the other day, I was like, I'm pretty sure we read this in middle school. I remember it being middle school because I was at a different school than I was in high school, and I remember reading it on that campus.

Eve Dunbar 59:49

That's crazy. It's like, no murder.

Traci Thomas 59:52

Really crazy. Yeah,

Eve Dunbar 59:54

double murder. Yeah, yeah. That's a lot. I mean, I feel that. Way about more since beloved. I have students who have read more assigned more since beloved in in high school. And I just feel like, unless you have somebody, and some of them have had, they're like, We had a great teacher, and we read it over, like a term or whatever, like, fine. But I think you I don't know if you assign I couldn't

Traci Thomas 1:00:18

read it as an adult. I don't know that I'll ever be able to do it, like, I mean, like, I just don't know that I'm smart enough for it. It just was, like, it's a lot, it's not

Eve Dunbar 1:00:27

smart, but it's a it's a lot. And I do think I just don't know how you give teenagers that book. There's so many books like that, though, there's,

Traci Thomas 1:00:35

I mean, especially for that one, because it's like, there's no it's, I think it's probably really hard for teenagers to relate to Seth, that at all, yeah, like, it's like, you're not a mom, you've never been enslaved, like you've never had to make those kinds of choices. That's true. And I just think that, like, sometimes for young people, it's nice to have a point of entry, like, there's just no point of entry to that book for a lot of young people, I would assume I read it before I was a mom, and I really struggled with it. Like, I think that, and not that you couldn't read it if you're not a mom, certainly, but like, I just think having had some life experience probably helps with I

Eve Dunbar 1:01:19

am I read it. I think I was assigned it in college, and I remember hating it, you know, like I thought Morrison was showy, but, but I had a terrible teacher of that novel. And I think it requires, like, real teaching. And I think all of Morrison's work requires real Yeah, yeah.

Traci Thomas 1:01:41

But I think some of them are, like, Sula is a much easier entry point for young people,

Eve Dunbar 1:01:49

like experienced and probably the most intense friendships you have are when you're in

Traci Thomas 1:01:54

at that age exactly, or like The Bluest Eye. There's an entry point for that for young people, I think beloved feels like a reach for a 15 year old or an 18 year old even like, it's just like, how,

Eve Dunbar 1:02:07

yeah, I had no capacity for it, and then had to go back after like, yeah, I don't even know, not living. I read it before kids too, but not living right, yeah,

Traci Thomas 1:02:17

yeah. I don't think kids. History, history, yeah, history. I don't even think it's kids. I think it's more just like having to have made difficult choices, having to be in a situation where you feel that, like the weight of the world is on your shoulders, and there's no like feeling stuck, like all of I think, I don't know. Anyways, okay, we went way over. I have one more question for you, and then we're done. Sorry. I didn't even realize the time. Okay, I this from the New York Times by the book. But if you could require the current president of the United States to read one book, what would it

Eve Dunbar 1:02:50

be the current president?

Traci Thomas 1:02:51

Yeah, Joe.

Eve Dunbar 1:02:53

Joe. Hmm, I think that I would probably, you know, I would like to see Joe Biden read, and I'd like to talk to him about Their Eyes Were Watching. God, I feel like his whole spiel that they keep kind of rehashing is his relationship to loss and and how that makes him an empath, empathetic person, and I would like to see how far that runs for him. And I feel like Their Eyes Were Watching God is a book that would challenge not the limits of empathy at all, but like would could produce maybe a good conversation about what it means to kind of really see black women, I feel like, especially now with Kamala taking the reins, all of the discourses about, like, how he has been this book, and this president who ushered in Barack Obama and brought us, yes, Kamala and so there's, like, this real, like, discursive push to see him as this great white savior, yeah, great white like, ushering the nation into their race era. Like, okay, let's see how that looks like. What? What would you do with with a book that's about, like, not even about white people at all, but about black people falling in love and out of love. Like, what do you have to say? What, where? What are the limits of your empathy? What, Where does How do you relate?

Traci Thomas 1:04:32

Oh, my God. Okay. This is a brilliant idea. We will record this for the stacks you and Joe, and we will release it as a bonus episode. You can book

Eve Dunbar 1:04:39

it. I would love to, okay,

Traci Thomas 1:04:42

he's gonna be retired very soon. Maybe in February, he'll want to take a break. Maybe come spring, we'll be able to put this that would be hilarious.

Eve Dunbar 1:04:52

I would love, I would love to see him talk.

Traci Thomas 1:04:55

Would actually be such an amazing podcast to have. Of like, perfect, like. Professors and writers doing book clubs with politicians.

Eve Dunbar 1:05:04

Oh my gosh, it would probably be infuriating. It would

Traci Thomas 1:05:07

probably be infuriating for you, but it would probably be such an incredible listening experience for like, you'd have to sacrifice your we would rotate. It would be like a different a different literary person, a different politician. You have to, you know, it's a service to the country to do these episodes, but I would listen like think about you could do something incredible on like immigration with Barack Obama. What

Eve Dunbar 1:05:31

was like with Trump? What would you have Trump read? So

Traci Thomas 1:05:34

what's interesting about this podcast is I've been doing it since the Trump presidency and so early people all the way through 2020, into 2021, they were recommending books for Trump, and now it's Joe Biden, and hopefully it'll be Kamala. And I'm curious to see how those recommendations change next year. If that's the case, a lot of the Trump answers were sort of like flip like, Can he even read? I'd have him read the Constitution, whatever. You know, I think, I think I might want to do a book about, like, grief with Trump.

Eve Dunbar 1:06:08

I don't, can he prop can you? I don't

Traci Thomas 1:06:10

know that. I don't know. Yeah, or else, or else. Maybe I would do like, the total flip and do something like American Psycho with him, and like, see how he interprets a con man, scam artist, murderer, crazy like, I might go to totally, like, lean into, like, all the things that we think that he is, and see if he can see it and how he interprets it.

Eve Dunbar 1:06:36

Love to i that would either be really eye opening, or very short. I would love to, could be

Traci Thomas 1:06:43

a micro pod. I would love to listen to that conversation

Eve Dunbar 1:06:46

because, I mean, he just issued some crazy, well, some statement about how he used, like, he's hot and so, I mean, and I've not read American cycle, but I watched the movie. I

Traci Thomas 1:07:00

loved that book that's also unreliable narrator. Oh, really, I'm pretty sure it's told from his perspective. I read it years ago. I read it like 15 years ago, so I can't quite remember, but I'm in my mind, it is, it's, it's really good. I know that he's a problem, but I guess, but it's good book. Yes, I don't know much about him. I know people don't like him. Yeah, I'm like, you know, I come to this work not as, like, deep into the literary world. It kind of some like, I just loved reading. I was like, let's make a podcast. So I don't know a lot of, like, canonical texts. I don't know a lot of history about a lot of the authors like and I sort of like it that way, because then I can read the thing and try to understand why it's a thing. I know people hate him now. I think he's an asshole and, like, has really bad, like, poor white man politics, right? Isn't he the one who's, like, white people can't write anything anymore, like, he's got that whole thing. But back before he was doing that, when he was writing American Psycho, it was working for him, because it dropped him right into Patrick Bateman, I think is a character's name, and Christian Bale was so hot in that movie. That's

Eve Dunbar 1:08:05

what I'm saying. Like, I feel like Trump would watch the movie and then talk about how he and Christian Bale are similarly

Traci Thomas 1:08:13

and that would be an incredible podcast episode, and I would die to listen to that. So we've got a new show on our hands. Eve, I love this for us. First of all, thank you everybody. We have to pre order Monstrous Work and Radical Satisfaction because it comes out November 5. I will, of course, remind you all when that book comes out, but we need to pre order it to support Eve's work and thank her for coming on the show before the book is out. But she will be back on September 25 for our discussion of jazz by Toni Morrison, there will be spoilers, people, so read it. You've got four weeks. Come back ready to talk. It's a short one. It's only like two something. So you can do this. A lot happens. A lot happens. Thank you so much. Eve. This was awesome. Thank you, Traci. Have a great day, and everyone else, we will see you in The Stacks.

All right, y'all that does it for us today. Thank you so much for listening, and thank you again to Eve Dunbar for being our guest. I'd also like to say a huge thank you to friend of the show, kiase layman, for helping to make this conversation possible. Don't forget to listen on September 25 when Eve Dunbar returned to discuss our September book club, pick jazz by Toni Morrison, if you love the show and want inside access to it, head to patreon.com/the stacks and join the stacks. Pack and check out my sub stack. Traci Thomas, dot sub stack.com. Make sure to subscribe to the stacks. Or if you listen to your podcasts, and if you're listening through Apple podcasts or Spotify, be sure to leave us a rating and a review for more from the stacks. Follow us on social media, at the stacks pod on Instagram, threads and Tiktok and at the stacks pod underscore on Twitter, and you can check out our website at the stacks podcast.com this episode of the stacks was edited by Christian Duenas, with production assistance from Lauren Tyree and Megan Caballero. Our graphic designer is Robin Mccright, and our theme music is from tigeragis. The stacks is created and produced by me, Traci Thomas.

Megan Caballero
Previous

Ep. 336 Blackness is the Ingredient with Danzy Senna
Next

Ep. 334 Master Slave Husband Wife by Ilyon Woo — The Stacks Book Club (Jay Ellis)