Black Enough: Stories of Being Young & Black in America
edited by Ibi Zobio read by Bahni Turpin and Ron Butler
Short stories by Justina Ireland, Varian Johnson, Rita Williams-Garcia, Dhonielle Clayton, Kekla Magoon, Leah Henderson, Tochi Onyebuchi, Jason Reynolds, Nic Stone Liara Tamani, Renée Watson, Tracey Baptiste, Coe Booth, Brandy Colbert, Jay Coles, Ibi Zoboi, and Lamar Giles explore what it means to be a contemporary teen as experienced through the lens of racial identity: self acceptance, coming out, parental expectations, friendships, dating, loss. Bahni Turpin and Ron Butler alternately narrate these seventeen obsidian gems. Their nuanced performances in Black Enough: Stories of Being Young and Black in America give added meaning to the term #ownvoices. |
Listen Up
Butler reads a portion of Black Enough by Varian Johnson. You can hear the voice of a young man raised in an affluent white community, trying to fit into a very different culture in South Carolina. Note the exchange between the high school debater and his Nigerian mother in Tochi Onybuchi's "Samson and the Delilahs." Listen to Bahni Turpin read Ibi Zobio's introduction to the anthology and a brief snippet of Renée Watson's "Half a Moon." |