Mpr News With Kerri Miller

When Oscar Hokeah set out to write a multi-generational novel about a Kiowa and Cherokee family in Oklahoma, he was writing what he knew.Hokeah grew up in Tahlequah, Okla., a member of both Cherokee Nation and the Kiowa Tribe. He saw the intertribal dynamics that play out when 39 different tribes live in close proximity. He knew the generational trauma caused by colonization and forced migration. He felt the defiance of encountering injustice and watching youth struggle to find a path of honor, even on a road littered with hardships.So his novel, “Calling for a Blanket Dance,” follows the life of a young Native man, Ever Geimausaddle, as he walks many of the same roads. But because Hokeah also knows the way of redemption lies through community, he tells Ever’s story through 12 different perspectives, ranging from his grandmother to his adopted son. The result is a coming-of-age tale that is uniquely Kiowa and Cherokee, and that celebrates connection, family and honor.On this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, h

N. Scott Momaday draws inspiration from his Native American heritage, the grandeur of the New Mexico landscape and his world travels. Novelist Oscar Hokeah shares the sentiment. He calls on the collective wisdom and voices of his Kiowa and Cherokee community in Oklahoma to bring to life a multi-generational family drama in his new book, “Calling for a Blanket Dance.” You’ll hear Hokeah’s conversation with Miller on this Friday’s Big Books and Bold Ideas show. In the meantime, enjoy Miller’s similarly themed discussion with Momaday, from the special 2021 Talking Volumes series that centered on race. Guest: N. Scott Momaday is an internationally renowned poet, novelist, artist, teacher, and storyteller whose works celebrate and preserve Native American heritage.To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.Subscribe to the MPR News with Kerri Miller podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or RSS.Subscribe to the Thread newsletter for the latest book and author news and must-read recom

Many Americans don’t know that the histories of the United States and Mexico are inseparably intertwined. But historian Kelly Lytle Hernández says you cannot fully understand one without the other. We fought wars over the same territories, influenced each other’s politics, and remain deeply connected economically. Our stories circle around each other, shaping immigration policies and policing. And if we don’t know how we got here, says Hernández, we won’t know how to move forward.Her new book, “Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, And Revolution In The Borderlands” tells the true story of a Mexican band of rebels, the magonistas, who helped launch the Mexican Revolution in 1910 and whose actions still affect the borderlands today. She talked about what she learned while researching her book and why she believes the U.S. ignores its history with Mexico at its own peril with host Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas.Guest:Kelly Lytle Hernández is a professor of history, African-American studies and urban

This week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas features a conversation with historian Kelly Lytle Hernandez about her new book, “Bad Mexicans.” It tells the dramatic and often overlooked story of the magonistas, the migrant rebels who sparked the 1910 Mexican Revolution from the United States, and how their escapades threatened to undo the rise of Anglo-American power, on both sides of the border, and created the world of fraught immigration we live in today.To prepare for that discussion, here’s a selection from the archives — a 2017 “Indivisible” conversation Miller had with Eboo Patel and Tamar Jacoby that examines how America’s history as a land of immigrants can be maintained under then President Trump’s divisive immigration policies.Guests: Eboo Patel is the founder and president of Interfaith America (formerly Interfaith Youth Core) and the author of several books, including “We Need to Build: Field Notes for Diverse Democracy.”Tamar Jacoby is currently the president of Opportunity America. At the time of this r

For more than 170 years, Caleb Wilde’s family has served their Pennsylvania community by facilitating funerals. He has walked beside countless grieving people as they say goodbye, memorialize and weep. He’s attended thousands of funeral services, filled with comforting messages about heaven and future reunions. But despite that — or maybe because of it — Wilde says he’s skeptical about life after death.“I have become a fundamentalist of doubt,” he writes eloquently in his new book. “Death is so sudden and so final that in order for humans to cope with mortality, they make up a place that is immortal and eternal — the afterlife.’ That book, “All the Ways Our Dead Still Speak,” is a thoughtful reflection of Wilde’s experiences as a funeral director. He no longer believes in heaven or hell — at least not in the traditional sense. But he also cannot dismiss the experiences and even conversations some grieving families have with their dead loved ones. Friday, on Big Books and Bold Ideas, host Kerri Miller spoke

Fifty-seven years ago this week, on Aug. 6, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the landmark Voting Rights Act, with Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders looking on. It was a turning point in American history. At the time, Pres. Johnson called it “a victory of freedom for the nation.”Thursday morning, in a special edition of Big Books and Bold Ideas, host Kerri Miller examined whether the commitment of that milestone legislation still holds all these years later, particularly as the Supreme Court takes on one case that could upend state election laws and another that challenges a key section of the Voting Rights Act. Her guide was Professor Carol Anderson, one of the nation’s foremost scholars on equity and voting and the author of “One Person, No Vote.” Guest: Carol Anderson is a professor of African-American studies at Emory University and an accomplished author. To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.Subscribe to the MPR News with Kerri Miller podcast on Apple

Even though Americans are living longer — the share of the U.S. population 65 and older has more than tripled over the last century — we are still profoundly uncomfortable with dying. In fact, the end of life is so medicalized, death is often viewed as a failure, rather than accepted as a fundamental stage of life.Sunita Puri wants to change that. Her book, "That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour," is a masterful memoir of helping people to die — and live — well. It chronicles her journey of becoming a palliative care doctor near the end of her medical school training after she realized medicine had little to say about patients' suffering and mortality.It mirrors thoughts shared by author and sixth-generation funeral director Caleb Wilde in his new book, “All the Ways Our Dead Still Speak.” Wilde’s tender and personal reflections on what it’s like to grieve loved ones and grapple with death will be the conversation on this Friday’s installment of Big Books and Bold Ideas.Until t

Twins Mun and Chuluun are 23 years old when Quan Barry’s new novel opens, but in almost every other way, their lives are the opposite. Chuluun lives and studies at a Buddhist monastery in the countryside of Mongolia. Mun wears Western clothes and lives in the capital city, where he enjoys technology, tattoos and women. But the brothers share a constant connection — a sort of mental telepathy that means they share thoughts with the other in a running stream. And each twin wants the other out of his head. They come together when they are tasked with traveling the country to find a tulku, the reincarnation of a great spiritual leader. So they set off on a road trip, a quest that will take them to vistas both inner and outer, on a journey to find the elusive real. Barry was inspired to write the book after her own travels to Mongolia, she tells MPR News host Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas. Listen to the conversation for more about this road novel with a supernatural twist. Guest:Quan Barry i

Quan Barry is a poet, a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a published author. But she finds that travel is just as important as writing when it comes to her work. Her 2014 novel, “She Weeps Each Time You’re Born,” was inspired by time spent in Vietnam, the land of her birth. Similarly, her new novel, “When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East,” explores Mongolia, as telepathic twin brothers travel the country, seeking the reincarnation of a Buddhist master. MPR News host Kerri Miller talks with Barry about her latest book on this Friday’s Big Books and Bold Ideas. While you wait, enjoy their 2015 conversation about “She Weeps Each Time You’re Born.” Guest: Quan Barry is a writer and professor of English at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her latest book is “When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East.”To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.Subscribe to the MPR News with Kerri Miller podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or RSS.Subscribe to the Thr

When Ann Hood was a flight attendant in the late 1970s, airlines were only a few years past using blatant sex appeal to sell tickets. But the recent college graduate didn’t see that at the time. She just saw the glamour and freedom that could be hers, if she could complete the training, follow the rules and maintain her original weight. In her new memoir, “Fly Girl,” the novelist writes, “I worked in one of the most demanding, sexist, exciting, glorious jobs a person can have. I was a flight attendant.” This week, Hood joined MPR News host Kerri Miller on Big Books and Bold Ideas for a conversation about her years traveling the world in a small silver tube, and why she didn’t recognize the sexism of the industry when she was in it. Guest: Ann Hood is the New York Times best-selling author of several novels. Her newest book, “Fly Girl,” is a memoir about her years as a flight attendant. To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.Subscribe to the MPR News with Kerri Miller podcast on