Author Tochi Onyebuchi says that a majority of space stories he's come across favor those in power. Rich white people get to escape in spaceships, whereas less affluent Black and brown people are left behind on an increasingly inhabitable Earth. His new science-fiction novel Goliath gets at this power imbalance, and the author spoke to Juana Summers about how it tells us so much about racial and economic disparities right now.
Amanda Holmes reads Lasse Söderberg’s poem “The Fig Tree.” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you’ll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman.
This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch.
In the aftermath of the Mexican war for independence, a new bride finds herself alone in a haunted house surrounded by people who don't believe her. It's the plot of Isabel Cañas' debut novel The Hacienda, where she blends romance, terror, and the supernatural to tell a story highly embedded with Mexican culture. In an interview with Weekend Edition Sunday, Cañas told Ayesha Rascoe about the themes she wanted to explore in her novel – colonialism, social status, the syncretism of Catholicism and indigenous practices – and her own fear of darkness.
