{"id":37471,"date":"2014-09-24T20:13:10","date_gmt":"2014-09-24T20:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=37471"},"modified":"2014-11-19T20:48:23","modified_gmt":"2014-11-19T20:48:23","slug":"at-least-we-talk-about-race-in-the-usa-zadie-smith-on-writing-race-and-color","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=37471","title":{"rendered":"At Least We Talk About Race in the USA: Zadie Smith on Writing, Race and Color"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/myamericanmeltingpot.com\/2014\/09\/22\/at-least-we-talk-about-race-in-the-usa\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em><strong>At Least We Talk About Race in the USA: Zadie Smith on Writing, Race and Color<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/myamericanmeltingpot.com\" target=\"_blank\">My American Meltingpot: A Multi-Culti Mix of Identity Politics, Parenting &amp; Pop Culture<\/a><br \/>\n2014-09-22<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/loritharps.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Lori L. Tharps<\/strong><\/a>, Associate Professor of Journalism<br \/>\n<em>Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&#8230;Last week Wednesday I skipped out of work as early as possible so I could get a front row seat at the University of Pennsylvania\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/humanities.sas.upenn.edu\/14-15\/zadiesmith.shtml\" target=\"_blank\">Speaker\u2019s Series on Color<\/a> featuring one of my all-time favorite authors, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Zadie_Smith\" target=\"_blank\">Zadie Smith<\/a>. I\u2019ve read (and own) almost all of Smith\u2019s fiction, but I am also a big fan of her critical essays, especially those dealing with race and culture. I like her writing and I love her mind.<\/p>\n<p>So, my biggest takeaway from the almost sold-out event, is that not only is Zadie Smith absolutely brilliant (and gorgeous, and taller than I expected), she\u2019s also got a terrific sense of humor. Rather than present a formal reading of her work, Smith sat \u201cin conversation,\u201d (which is clearly a thing now.) with Penn English professor, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.english.upenn.edu\/People\/JedEsty\" target=\"_blank\">Jed Esty<\/a> who peppered her with questions about her books, her upbringing as a Mixed child in London and her process as a writer. She answered every query with honesty and held none of her opinions back, even when they may have insulted the vast majority of the mostly White audience.<\/p>\n<p>I found myself nodding in agreement with so much of what Smith said regarding the difference between being Black in the USA vs, the UK&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/myamericanmeltingpot.com\/2014\/09\/22\/at-least-we-talk-about-race-in-the-usa\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At Least We Talk About Race in the USA: Zadie Smith on Writing, Race and Color My American Meltingpot: A Multi-Culti Mix of Identity Politics, Parenting &amp; Pop Culture 2014-09-22 Lori L. Tharps, Associate Professor of Journalism Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania &#8230;Last week Wednesday I skipped out of work as early as possible so I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1649,12,1196,8,10,20],"tags":[17955,17956,17954,1344],"class_list":["post-37471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropology","category-articles","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-uk","category-usa","tag-lori-l-tharps","tag-lori-tharps","tag-my-american-meltingpot","tag-zadie-smith"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37471\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}