NPR's Book of the Day

This week, we're celebrating National Poetry Month by revisiting some of our favorite conversations with poets. In 2020, Kwame Alexander was feeling the weight of being Black in America and didn't know how to make sense of his feelings. So, he made sense of them through his book of poetry, Light For The World To See: A Thousand Words On Race And Hope. It's three poems on three historic events: the murder of George Floyd, Colin Kaepernick's protests, and Barack Obama being elected president. Alexander told NPR's Rachel Martin he wrote this as a call for Black people to remember their humanity.

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This week, we're celebrating National Poetry Month by revisiting some of our favorite conversations with poets. When Raymond Antrobus was 6 years old, he learned he was deaf. His memoir The Quiet Ear describes living in a world of in-betweenness, straddling intersections of race, class, hearing and deafness. In today’s episode, Antrobus joins NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly for a discussion that touches on his connection with the creative deaf community in London, his dad’s DJ sets, and differences between British and American Sign Language.

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This week, we're celebrating National Poetry Month by revisiting some of our favorite conversations with poets. Joy Harjo, who was the U.S. poet laureate from 2019 to 2022, says she has always been drawn to healing ever since she was little. She even studied pre-med in college. But it wasn't until Harjo heard Native poets that she realized "this is a powerful tool of understanding and affirmation." She shares her poetry and story in the book, Poet Warrior.

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This week, we're celebrating National Poetry Month by revisiting some of our favorite conversations with poets. Ocean Vuong's collection, Time Is A Mother, is about his grief after losing family members. Vuong told NPR's Rachel Martin that time is different now that he has lost his mother: "when I look at my life since she died in 2019, I only see two days: Today when she's not here, and the big, big yesterday when I had her."

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Two figures who defined ‘90s culture are out with new memoirs. First, Brandy Norwood is a Grammy-winning singer and made history as the first Black actress to play a Disney princess on screen. In today’s episode, she speaks with NPR’s A Martínez about her memoir Phases, her beloved roles in Rodger & Hammerstein’s Cinderella and Moesha, and collaborations with Whitney Houston and Monica. Then, Arsenio looks back at The Arsenio Hall Show. In today’s episode, Hall chats with NPR’s Michel Martin about creating must-watch TV – and standout interviews with Magic Johnson and Bill Clinton.

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