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This bonus episode features my recent conversation with Clarence "Divine Eye" Maclin from the latest release from A24 Films, SING SING.

About SING SING
Divine G (played by Colman Domingo), imprisoned at Sing Sing for a crime he didn’t commit, finds purpose by acting in a theatre group alongside other incarcerated men, including wary newcomer (Clarence Maclin), in this stirring true story of resilience, humanity, and the transformative power of art, starring an unforgettable ensemble cast of formerly incarcerated actors. In SING SING, Mr. Maclin plays a younger version of himself and his time participating in the Rehabilitation Through the Arts' theatre program. The film gifts us with a very intimate, inside look into the process of theatre-making and the transformative power of RTA.

Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) helps people in prison develop critical life skills through the arts, modeling an approach to the justice system based on human dignity rather than punishment. Founded at Sing Sing in 1996, RTA works with professional teaching artists to lead year-round workshops in theater, dance, music, creative writing, and visual arts. The RTA model provides an intensive, comprehensive arts program in prison that builds critical life skills so that people can meet the challenges of connecting with family and community when released.

RTA demonstrates that an approach based on human dignity is vastly more successful than one based on punishment. Less than 3% of RTA members return to prison, compared to the national recidivism rate of 60%.

To learn more about Rehabilitation Through the Arts, please visit their website at rta-arts.org.

To find your local screening of SING SING, please visit https://tickets.singsing.movie/.

For folx based in Western MA/Northern CT, I highly encourage you to see the film at Amherst Cinema where Nicole is a proud member. The film opens at Amherst Cinema on Friday, August 23.

Special thanks to Mr. Maclin for making time to chat with Black Writers Read and the Allied Global Marketing and A24 for all of your hard work to make this interview happen!

Find A24's film, SING SING on Instagram: @singsingmovie
Find Rehabilitation Through the Arts on Instagram: @rta_arts
Find Rehabilitation Through the Arts online: https://rta-arts.org/

Find Black Writers Read online: https://blackwritersread.com/
Find Black Writers Read on Instagram: @blackwritersread

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Today, August 2, 2024, is African American essayist, novelist, poet, cultural critic, orator and activist James Baldwin’s (1924-1987) centennial birthday. In this retrospective, we take a look back at conversations with poets whose work performs the task of "bearing witness", like that of Baldwin's writing.

Baldwin's canon of work explored fundamental questions about the experiences of African Americans, particularly issues pertaining to class, race, religion, masculinities, sexuality and social acceptance. Documenting the world and society as it was manifesting around him, Baldwin delivered the news to his readers as a way to advocate for change. Nicole highly recommends folx to read Baldwin's essay, Letter for My Nephew, which first appeared in The Progressive magazine in 1962.

Included on this bonus episode are:

Jason Montgomery's, or "JRM" (Writers Across the Margins, S4 E4) work engages the cross-section of Chicano/Indigenous identity, cultural hybridization, post-colonial reconstruction, and political agency. They served as one of the 2021-2023 Poets Laureate for Easthampton, Massachusetts, serving with their partner, Alexandra Woolner.

Nandi Comer (S4 E14) is the Poet Laureate of Michigan. She is the author of American Family: A Syndrome (Finishing Line Press, 2018) and Tapping Out (Triquarterly, 2020), which was awarded the 2020 Society of Midland Authors Award and the 2020 Julie Suk Award.

Lynne Thompson (S4 E15) served as the 4th Poet Laureate of the City of Los Angeles. Her most recent poetry collection, Blue on a Blue Palette (BOA Editions, 2024), reflects on the condition of women—their joys despite their histories, and their insistence on survival as issues of race, culture, pandemic, and climate threaten their livelihoods.

M. Nzadi Keita (S4 E16) Migration Letters (Beacon Press, 2024), reflects on Black working-class identity and culture in Philadelphia, taking a closer look at what it means to be Black in America just after the Civil Rights and Black Power movements.

Aaron Dworkin (S4 E2), a 2005 MacArthur Fellow and Emmy-award winning filmmaker, originated the terminology “poetjournalism”, which he defines as “journalism in which a news story or other event is presented in poetic form incorporating elements of emotion, opinion and creative illustration.”

In Protection from Erasure (Jaded Ibis Press, 2023), Samuel "Sami" Miranda (S4 E1) aims to capture and celebrate a life lived and lives encountered. Through observations and conversations, we're reminded that mundane events and minute moments in our everyday lives can and should be memorial

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In this bonus episode, I’ll be sharing my thoughts on the book, Queenie (2019) by Candice Carty-Williams and its streaming television series adaptation.

The novel Queenie, published in 2019. is about the life and loves of its lead character, Queenie Jenkins. A 25-year-old British-Jamaican woman living in the UK, we follow her journey through a year from hell. Queenie Jenkins is a 25-year-old Jamaican British woman living in London, straddling two cultures and slotting neatly into neither. She works at a national newspaper, where she’s constantly forced to compare herself to her white middle class peers. After a messy break up from her long-term white boyfriend, Queenie seeks comfort in all the wrong places…including several hazardous men who do a good job of occupying brain space and a bad job of affirming self-worth.

The television adaptation of the book was released in early June 2024 and is available to stream on Hulu, Disney+ and Star+.

For those of you who are new to this platform and my work, I’ve always been extremely interested in spectatorship and what draws us to the things we watch, read, and consume. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be posting bonus episodes where I talk about some of the books written by Black women that I’ve read recently that have been adapted for film and television. I really appreciate these types of formats as it makes work accessible to various audiences as some folx prefer to read while others prefer to watch a narrative interpretation of the thing.

Check out the trailer for the series, Queenie.

Find Black Writers Read on Instagram: @blackwritersread

Find Black Writers Read online: blackwritersread.com

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