1 hr 1 min
Keenan Norris in Conversation with Crystal Sykes MoAD SF
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- Arts
Listen to a conversation about race, class and geography with Keenan Norris and Crystal Sykes. Winner of the 2012 James D. Houston Award, Keenan Norris’s first novel is a beautiful, gritty, coming-of-age tale about two young African Americans in the San Bernardino Valley—a story of exceptional power, lyricism, and depth. Erycha and Touissant live only a few miles apart in the city of Highland, but their worlds are starkly separated by the lines of class, violence, and history. In alternating chapters that touch and intertwine only briefly, Brother and the Dancer follows their adolescence and young adulthood on two sides of the city, the luminous San Bernardino range casting its hot shade over their separate tales in an unflinching vision of black life in Southern California.
Keenan Norris teaches English and African-American Literature and helps conduct the Affirm program at Evergreen Valley College. His work has appeared in the Santa Monica, Green Mountains and Evansville Reviews, Connotation Press, Inlandia: A Literary Journey Through California’s Inland Empire and BOOM: A Journal of California. He is also the editor of Scarecrow Press’s upcoming collection of critical essays, Street Lit.
Crystal Sykes is a writer, photographer and blogger residing in San Francisco, California. Graduating from San Francisco State University with a degree in Magazine Journalism, her first feature story, "The Black Exodus" won the award for Best Feature in Xpress Magazine. Most recently, her feature story "I'm Not Your 'Black Friend'" remains one of The Bold Italic's most read story of the year for it's commentary on privilege and ironic racism.
Listen to a conversation about race, class and geography with Keenan Norris and Crystal Sykes. Winner of the 2012 James D. Houston Award, Keenan Norris’s first novel is a beautiful, gritty, coming-of-age tale about two young African Americans in the San Bernardino Valley—a story of exceptional power, lyricism, and depth. Erycha and Touissant live only a few miles apart in the city of Highland, but their worlds are starkly separated by the lines of class, violence, and history. In alternating chapters that touch and intertwine only briefly, Brother and the Dancer follows their adolescence and young adulthood on two sides of the city, the luminous San Bernardino range casting its hot shade over their separate tales in an unflinching vision of black life in Southern California.
Keenan Norris teaches English and African-American Literature and helps conduct the Affirm program at Evergreen Valley College. His work has appeared in the Santa Monica, Green Mountains and Evansville Reviews, Connotation Press, Inlandia: A Literary Journey Through California’s Inland Empire and BOOM: A Journal of California. He is also the editor of Scarecrow Press’s upcoming collection of critical essays, Street Lit.
Crystal Sykes is a writer, photographer and blogger residing in San Francisco, California. Graduating from San Francisco State University with a degree in Magazine Journalism, her first feature story, "The Black Exodus" won the award for Best Feature in Xpress Magazine. Most recently, her feature story "I'm Not Your 'Black Friend'" remains one of The Bold Italic's most read story of the year for it's commentary on privilege and ironic racism.
1 hr 1 min