Let's Grab Coffee

WYXR

Join SunAh, University of Memphis professor, author, goal setting coach, and coffee lover, as she catches up with experts from across the country, who are investigating our most pressing social issues and common curiosities. Each week she invites a different thought-provoking guest to grab a cup of coffee and chat about their motivations, inspirations, and what they know about the world around us.

  1. 07/15/2024

    Asian American History in the South: Chinese Owned Grocery Stores in the Delta with Shaolu Yu

    Episode Notes Currently there are over 22 million Asians across the US representing a range of ethnic groups originating in East Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Indian subcontinent. Yet, oftentimes, the ways we think of Asian American history is tethered to the East and West Coasts. But Asians in America have a long history in the Deep South, a history that has garnered growing attention. Documentaries like “Far East, Deep South” and “Blurring the Color Line: Chinese in the Segregated South” follow the filmmakers as they explore their personal family histories. How does knowing these histories help us have a fuller and richer understanding not only of Asian Americans but also the South? And how might these histories be shaping our shared present and future? Today I sit down with Dr. Shaolu Yu, whose work examines these questions and more.   Dr. Shaolu Yu is an Associate Professor of Urban Studies and the Chair of Asian Studies at Rhodes College. Trained as an urban geographer in an interdisciplinary background and participating in projects in urban studies in China, the U.S., and Canada, she has developed a comparative and global perspective and a mixed method approach in her research on cities. Her papers have been published in the journals Annals of Association of American Geographers, The Professional Geographer, Urban Geography, Geographical Review, and The Journal of Transport Geography.

    47 min
  2. 07/08/2024

    A Different Shade of Justice: Asian American Civil Rights in the South with Stephanie Hinnershitz

    Episode Notes A key part of Memphis history is its role in the Civil Rights Movement, particularly with the Sanitation Workers Strike that brought Dr. Martin Luther King Jr to Memphis and his untimely death. Like the city itself, the story of Civil Rights activism is often presented through a Black-White lens. Yet, Asians and Asian Americans have been in the South since at least the late 1700s and in Memphis since the late 1800s. How then do Asian Americans fit into the history of civil rights? And how does knowing that history then change how we think about race, rights, Asian Americans, and the South? To answer these questions and more, today I’m joined by Dr. Stephanie Hinnershitz, author of A Different Shade of Justice: Asian American Civil Rights in the South. She shares some of the complexities of Asian American legal cases during the 1880s to late twentieth century and reflects on some of the cases that didn’t make it into the book but still offer important insights into civil rights.     Dr. Stephanie Hinnershitz is an Assistant Professor of Security and Military Studies at the Air Command and Staff College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. She is the author of Race, Religion, and Civil Rights: Asian Students on the West Coast, 1900-1968 (Rutgers University Press), A Different Shade of Justice: Asian American Civil Rights in the South (UNC Press), which won the Silver Nautilus Award for Journalism and Investigative Reporting, and Japanese American Incarceration: The Camps and Coerced Labor in World War II (University of Pennsylvania Press), which won the Philip Taft Labor History Award from the Labor and Working Class History Association and Cornell University Labor Relations School.

    56 min
  3. 05/20/2024

    What's in Your Cup? A Special Coffee Conversation featuring The Cxffeeblack Podcast

    Episode Notes I love a good cup of coffee, but if I'm being honest, I never really gave much thought to where my coffee came from or the history of this delicious beverage itself. That was until I learned about Cxffeeblack, a Memphis-owned coffee company, and its associated Anti-Gentrification Coffee Club. Founded in 2019, by husband and wife team, Bartholomew Jones and Renata Henderson, Cxffeeblack is a community-oriented, multi-disciplinary, education-based coffee company that’s centered around reclaiming coffee’s Black roots. Coffee originates in Ethiopia, but because of trade and colonialism, there are now coffees that we’ve come to associate with various parts of the world, like Moka from Yemen or Java from the Indonesian island of Java. Although each of those countries or regions have their own coffee histories, we lose something when we only know history in part. We become disconnected from ourselves and one another. Today I’m excited to share a very special episode of the Cxffeeblack podcast where host Bartholomew Jones sat down with Martin Mayorga of Mayorga Coffee & Sahra Nguyen of Nguyen Coffee Supply to discuss how they honor their roots through their coffee enterprises. As a bonus, I'm including a few snippets from previous Let's Grab Coffee episodes with Bartholomew Jones (Ep 108) and Renata Henderson (Ep 131). Watch the award-winning "Cxffeeblack to Africa: documentary and the video episode of The Cxffeeblack Podcast on Bartholomew Jones' Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@bartholomewjones5450

    1h 1m

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
6 Ratings

About

Join SunAh, University of Memphis professor, author, goal setting coach, and coffee lover, as she catches up with experts from across the country, who are investigating our most pressing social issues and common curiosities. Each week she invites a different thought-provoking guest to grab a cup of coffee and chat about their motivations, inspirations, and what they know about the world around us.