Ep. 161 The Tradition by Jericho Brown — The Stacks Book Club (Reginald Dwayne Betts)

On today’s episode of The Stacks we’re talking with poet, lawyer, and activist, Reginald Dwayne Betts about The Tradition by Jericho Brown for The Stacks Book Club. We discuss poems as fact or fiction, what happens when you hear a poem out loud, and the ways different poems can take on different meanings to different people.

Donate to Million Book Drive as part of The Stacks $50,000 fundraising drive.

The Stacks Book Club selection for May is Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, we will discuss the book on Wednesday May 26th.

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Everything we talk about on today’s episode can be found below in the show notes. You can also find everything we talked about on Amazon.

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The Stacks Book Club — April 2021

April is National Poetry Month so we’re going all in with an award winning poetry collection.

The Tradition by Jericho Brown won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for poetry and is our book club pick for April. This collection examines the many intersections of life, safety, ancestry, and Blackness. Brown’s collection has range and moves between the power of the past, the intimacy of the personal, and the strength of the collective. In under 100 pages, Brown is able to ask questions around queerness, Blackness, fatherhood, trauma, legacy, and so much more. It is also worth nothing that this collection shows diversity not only in the content of the poems but in the style choices and form each poem takes one. The Tradition is not to be missed.

We will be discussing The Tradition on Wednesday, April 28th. You can find out who our guest will be by listening to the podcast on April 6th. If you’d like even more discussion around the book consider joining The Stacks Pack on Patreon and participating in The Stacks’ monthly virtual book club.

Order your copy of our March book on Bookshop.org or Amazon.


To contribute to The Stacks, join The Stacks Pack, and get exclusive perks, check out our Patreon page (https://www.patreon.com/thestacks). We are beyond grateful for anything you’re able to give to support the production of The Stacks.

The Stacks participates in affiliate programs. We receive a small commission when products are purchased through links on this website, and this comes at no cost to you. This in no way effects opinions on books and products reviewed. For more information click here.