NPR's Book of the Day

Today's interviews are about transporting you to different places. The first is with cousins Tricia Elam Walker and Ekua Holmes who wrote a children's book, Dream Street, about the neighborhood where they grew up in Roxbury, Mass. They told NPR's Scott Simon and producer Samantha Balaban that the characters in the book were inspired by people in their lives. Our next interview is with writer Clint Smith, who traveled to different locations across the country for his book on slavery, How the Word is Passed. He told NPR's Mary Louise Kelly he wanted to talk about places that still exist because slavery wasn't that long ago.

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Actress Sharon Gless, who starred in the 80s cop procedural, Cagney and Lacey, is out with a new memoir: Apparently There Were Complaints. The book looks back at her life and career, both the good and the not-so-great moments, like her struggles with alcoholism while filming the show. Gless told NPR's Rachel Martin that she is very strong despite it all: "I have good stuff in here. And I can survive it all."

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Almost a year ago today, supporters of President Trump attacked the Capitol in an attempt to overturn the election. ABC White House correspondent Jonathan Karl has chronicled the final days of the Trump administration and the events leading up to the January 6th insurrection in his new book, Betrayal. Karl told NPR's Steve Inskeep that he believed in the end Trump was laying the groundwork to be un-checkable.

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Author and social activist bell hooks died a couple of weeks ago, so we at Book Of The Day thought it would be nice to revisit one of our favorite interviews of hers. In 2000, she discussed her book All About Love: New Visions with NPR's Cheryl Corely. They talked about how most people misunderstand love and the many forms it can take and how transformative and powerful real love can be in all spheres of life.

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Every time the new year rolls around, many of us start trying to "better ourselves." Maybe you decide to read more or clean out your entire house only to find yourself falling short. Author BJ Fogg wrote a book about how not to do that called Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything. Fogg told Life Kit's Maria Godoy that everyone should try and lower their expectations. It's actually much easier to accomplish goals you set for yourself if they are much, much smaller. Say, instead of cleaning out your whole house, start with one room.

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Planet Money's Stacey Vanek Smith has reported on business and the economy for over 15 years now. She told NPR's Guy Raz that over that time, she's seen the same barriers blocking advancement for women in the workplace again and again. Recently, she's started to recognize that a lot of tools to move past those barriers can be found in the work of Italian philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli. Vanek Smith lays out these solutions in her new book, Machiavelli for Women: Defend Your Worth, Grow Your Ambition, and Win the Workplace.

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Both our interviews today deal with the pressures we put on ourselves. First, Olympic runner Alexi Pappas on her memoir, Bravey. On the outside, Pappas was living what looked like a great life; she was breaking Greek Olympic records and her movie got a distribution deal. But, she told NPR's Ari Shapiro, she was still deeply sad. Next, an interview from early in the pandemic when women were disproportionately feeling the burden of our new reality. Glennon Doyle, author of Untamed, told former NPR host Lulu Garcia-Navarro that "every woman on earth needs to lower her expectations for herself."

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Poet and author Kwame Alexander was feeling the weight of being Black in America last summer 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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William Shakespeare had a son, Hamnet, who likely inspired one of his most famous plays and who died when he was 11 years old. Novelist Maggie O'Farrell was disappointed that more people weren't familiar with him, so she set out to fix that with her book, Hamnet. O'Farrell wanted to reimagine Hamnet's life, his death, and William Shakespeare's family life. But, she told NPR's Mary Louise Kelly, she had a much harder time writing this book than she thought she would.

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Dwyane Wade's new memoir is not a traditional one. He wanted to show the reader a lot of his cherished memories instead of just writing about them. His new photographic memoir, Dwyane, visually wraps up his basketball career with a series of pictures from his time at Marquette to his 16 years with the Miami Heat. Wade talked to Here & Now's Tonya Mosely about when he knew it was time to step away from the game he loves.

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Author Emma Straub has written a book about family dynamics and the mess and love that comes with them in All Adults Here. It's no secret that families are complicated. Straub argues a lot of our familial relationships are watching each other grow up and whether or not you allow those you love to grow and change. She told NPR's Scott Simon though that even the bits that aren't perfect are worth loving.

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It's the holiday season so we at Book Of The Day wanted to bring you two of our holiday favorites. The first is David Sedaris' Santaland Diaries, which first aired on Morning Edition in 1992 and has been an annual NPR tradition ever since. It's a hilarious recounting of his time as a department store elf named Crumpet. The second is some of our staff here at NPR reading the poem A Visit from St. Nicholas, which you might know as The Night Before Christmas. Happy holidays "...and to all a good night!"

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In the novel Agatha Of Little Neon, a young woman, Agatha, is in need of direction after she loses her mother and finds it in the church. When Agatha and her fellow nuns are reassigned to a half-way house, they start to look inward and reevaluate their own lives. Author Claire Luchette told NPR's Scott Simon that this is a book about finding yourself, but also finding out about the darker side of the church: "My goal in writing this book was not to write a loss-of-faith story but almost a falling-out-of-love story."

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Do you love what some people would consider 'low-brow culture?' Things like The Cheesecake Factory or the band Creed. Well then do we have the book for you! Author Rax King has written a collection of essays that are kind of like love letters to the things that give her pleasure, including but not limited to The Jersey Shore, in Tacky. She told NPR's Sam Sanders she thinks a lot about who gets to be tacky and the value of art and entertainment that might fall into the category.

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When author Suleika Jaouad was first diagnosed with leukemia, she felt isolated and like she didn't have control over anything. She told Life Kit host Beck Harlan that creative practices, namely journaling, helped her regain a narrative control of her own life. Jaouad details that struggle and her coping mechanisms in her book, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of Life Interrupted.

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When you think of an epic, what comes to mind? The Iliad, The Odyssey, maybe Beowulf? Well author Honoree Fanonne Jeffers points out that epics are almost always about white men. She told former Morning Edition host Noel King that she didn't want to tell that story because that story has already been told...many times. So, Jeffers set out to write a different kind of epic about heroic Black women in The Love Songs of W.E.B Du Bois.

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The US Postal Service has played a key role in much of American history - from the Declaration of Independence to more recent mail-in voting. It was conceived of by the founders as the way to create a united, informed and effective American democracy. But today, the postal service's future is in danger. Winifred Gallagher spoke to NPR's Rund Abdelfatah about how the postal service created the United States and the case for investing in this pivotal institution.

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Today, two takes on stories we tell to make ourselves feel better and the consequences of believing them. First, author Danielle Evans' short story collection, The Office of Historical Corrections. The title story is about a fictional agency that fact checks in real time but, as she told former NPR host Noel King, it's less powerful than you might think. Then, the story of a Black woman's decision to pass as white and the decades-long fallout of that choice, in The Vanishing Half. Author Brit Bennett told NPR's Mary Louise Kelly that the point of the story isn't to moralize.

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art is the most recent public institution to announce that they are taking the Sackler name off of seven of their spaces due to their involvement with the opioid crisis. Author Patrick Radden Keefe wrote a book profiling the Sackler family called Empire of Pain: The Secret History Of The Sackler Dynasty that was one of the biggest of the year. It profiles the family that founded Purdue Pharma and their promotion of the drug Oxycontin.

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Have you ever wanted to get stranded on a beautiful island? Maybe at the end of a vacation when you think you never want to leave. Well, that's what happens to the protagonist in Jodi Picoult's new novel, Wish You Were Here. It's a little less glamorous than what you might be picturing. It's March of 2020 and the coronavirus pandemic traps Diana O'Toole in the Galapagos Islands with very little wifi or cell service. Picoult told NPR's Scott Simon that this extreme isolation forced her main character to reevaluate how she really wanted to live her life.

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Legendary rapper and integral member of the Wu-Tang Clan, Raekwon, is out with a new memoir called From Staircase to Stage. Born Corey Woods in Staten Island, Raekwon takes a look back at hating school, watching his neighborhood decline during the crack-cocaine epidemic, and then finding success with the Wu-Tang Clan. Raekwon told NPR's Steve Inskeep that success came with both big highs and deep lows.

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Author Dave Eggars has written a new book, The Every, satirizing technology and it's ever-expanding hold on us. While publishing and distributing the book, which also happens to be about a tech giant overextending its reach, he tried to keep it out of the hands of one of today's tech giants. It proved to be a difficult task, Eggars told NPR's Audie Cornish, "...[it's] like taking not just the back roads but taking the dirt roads off the back roads off the highway."

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From creating vertical gardens to breeding pigeons, the people living in the Azraq refugee camp in Jordan manage to "carve out a life worth living." Artist and architectural historian Azra Aksamija co-edited a book that looks at the ingenuity found within that camp called, Design To Live: Everyday Inventions From A Refugee Camp. Aksamija told NPR's Scott Simon that even though camps are supposed to be a temporary solution, lots of families end up staying for years at a time, so they find ways to make themselves at home in a place that's not meant to be hospitable.

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Author Darcie Little Badger has her protagonists, Nina and a cottonmouth snake named Oli, tackle big, real world problems in her new Young Adult novel, A Snake Falls To Earth. She told NPR's Leila Fadel that young people are feeling climate anxiety acutely, so it was important to her to make it a part of this story, even though it takes place in a fantastical world. She does have a PhD in oceanography and a bachelors in geo-science, so understands the stakes really well. But, she doesn't want her readers to walk away feeling hopeless.

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Not all history is learned - or taught - in school. In today's first interview, Robert Jones Jr. tells NPR's Scott Simon that he wanted to be 'a witness to [those] testimonies that have not made it into the official record.' His novel, The Prophets, is about enslaved Black queer people in America. The second interview is about the seemingly mundane day-to-day that makes up a person's history in Zorrie. Author Laird Hunt told NPR's Scott Simon that just because someone's story seems unremarkable doesn't mean it isn't rich.

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Author Huda Fahmy brings us a fictionalized look back on her teenage years in her new graphic novel. The cleverly titled Huda F Are You? is about a girl growing up in Dearborn, Michigan trying to figure out, well, who she really is. Fahmy told NPR's Scott Simon that her own journey of self discovery often left her feeling like a fraud

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German Chancellor Angela Merkel is stepping down after 16 years. Author and former NPR correspondent Kati Marton has written a new biography of Merkel titled, appropriately, The Chancellor. Marton told NPR's Sarah McCammon that Merkel's upbringing in East Germany before the wall fell prepared her for a future as a politician. But it also created some blind spots in her governing; allowing the far right movement, centered in former East Germany, to gain a foothold in the German Parliament.

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There are all different kinds of ghost stories and types of ghosts. Maybe the ghost is a malicious spirit out for revenge, or a marshmallow man parade float come to life, or maybe it's truly a friendly ghost — Casper, here to be pals. In today's first featured interview, Here & Now's Robin Young talks with Louise Erdrich about her novel The Sentence which is set in a haunted bookstore in Minneapolis. Then NPR's Ailsa Chang interviews Kevin Brockmeier about his book of short spooky stories The Ghost Variations.

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Camilla Pang talks with NPR's Short Wave host Emily Kwong about her award-winning memoir, An Outsider's Guide to Humans: What Science Taught Me About What We Do And Who We Are. Diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder at age 8, the scientist and writer pairs her favorite scientific principles with human behavior and navigating daily life.

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All That She Carried is the history of a single bag. Historian and author Tiya Miles used what few historical records she could find to tell the stories of three generations of Black women with ties to that sack dating back to 1850. Miles' journey started because of a simple message embroidered on the bag by one of its owners, Ruth Middleton. She told Here & Now's Scott Tong that people have emotional reactions to seeing the sack, because it means the families survived to pass it down to future generations.

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Claire Oshetsky's new novel Chouette is... pretty strange, but also kind of wonderful? Oshetsky says the story is a parable about motherhood, in which a woman gives birth to an owl baby. The mother finds this strange not because the baby is an owl, but because she only had intercourse with the owl parent in a dream, and that owl was a woman. Still with us? Good. Oshetsky talked with NPR's Danielle Kurtzleben about how her own daughter consulted on writing the book, and what she learned from raising an autistic child.

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Cookbook author and chef Bryant Terry edited and curated the new book, Black Food: Stories, Art, and Recipes From Across The African Diaspora. His goal was to preserve Black American recipes and their complex stories, but he uses more than just food to tell those stories. The book is also full of essays, art and music. Terry told Here And Now's Scott Tong that the cookbook is a "communal shrine to the shared culinary histories of the African Diaspora."

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Our beloved friend and colleague Petra Mayer died suddenly a few weeks ago. This episode is for her. First, a conversation with NPR's Scott Simon and Sir Andrew Motion on The Folio Book of War Poetry, edited by Motion. Among her many nerdy interests, Petra was a self avowed "WWI poetry dork." The poetry is dark and moving, conveying universal feelings around loss. Then, a few quintessentially "Petra" pieces that capture her work and who she was. A conversation with romance author Beverly Jenkins and Petra talking about one of her favorite comfort reads, The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison.

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This Thanksgiving, we're bringing you an author whose narrative likely runs counter to what you learned in school. Tommy Orange's novel, There There, is a brutal, remarkable, and necessary Native history. It's also a story of the shameful way America still treats its Native people. Orange was not comfortable with his new rising fame back in 2018. But he told NPR's Lynn Neary it was important to him to pave the way, spotlight and all, for young Indigenous writers.

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Authors JR and Vanessa Ford read the one book they could find about transgender kids to their child but skipped over the word 'transgender.' When they finally used the word, their child felt empowered by finding the right language to describe themselves. So the Fords set out to help more families with their children's book, Calvin. JR and Vanessa Ford told NPR's Audie Cornish that they are still learning as they go.

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Author Elif Shafak struggled at first with how to write her new book, The Island of Missing Trees. The story she wanted to tell is about a family from Cyprus, a Mediterranean island that was the center of a conflict in the 1970s, but she didn't want the story to be about tribalism or nationalism. Which is why, Shafak told NPR's Steve Inskeep, much of the story is told from the perspective of a fig tree

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The working world looks a lot different today than it did nearly two years ago, when the coronavirus pandemic sent many office staff to work from home indefinitely. Writers Anne Helen Peterson and Charlie Warzel take a look at what work, and our relationship to it, will look like going forward in their new book, Out of Office. NPR's Rachel Martin spoke with Peterson about why so many companies want their employees back in person. And, spoiler alert: it's not about productivity.

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This Friday, we're featuring two thrillers. First, astronaut Chris Hadfield talked with former NPR host Lulu Garcia-Navarro about his novel The Apollo Murders, which is set in the 70's around, you guessed it, the Apollo missions. It's got Soviet spies and secret space stations with machine guns mounted to the top. What more could a book need? Then a 2015 interview with NPR's Robert Siegel and author Anthony Horowitz about his James Bond novel Trigger Mortis, and what it's like giving a classic a 21st century twist.

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The National Rifle Association is being sued. The nonprofit at the heart of the gun lobby is accused of diverting money from its charitable mission. NPR investigative journalist Tim Mak has been following the paper trail, much of it tracing back to Wayne LaPierre, longtime leader of the NRA. NPR's Steve Inskeep talked with Mak about his new book, Misfire, detailing congressional investigations, and what the New York state attorney general has identified as tens of millions of dollars of corrupt spending on private jets and six figure suits.

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Living as an undocumented immigrant means living in the shadows, says Qian Julie Wang. Her memoir Beautiful Country tells the story of her family's life in New York after fleeing China in 1994. Her mother worked menial jobs in terrible conditions. Her father struggled with his status as a man in a country that equated being Asian with weakness. They couldn't even seek out regular medical care for fear of being deported. Wang joins NPR's Scott Simon in today's episode to talk about how those experiences shaped and shamed her, even as she became a Yale Law graduate and successful attorney.

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Questioning religion can be a pretty common identity crisis. But what if your faith is based on... yourself? When Kalki is born with blue skin and black blood, he is believed to be the reincarnation of Vishnu. But when he fails to heal a girl brought to him in distress, he questions his divinity, which means questioning everything. In today's episode, SJ Sindu talks to NPR's Scott Simon about how her novel Blue Skinned Gods was an attempt to better understand her own family's urge to believe.

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You're probably at least a little familiar with the WNBA, and even if you never actually seen A League of Their Own, everyone knows there's no crying in baseball. But did you know there was a whole professional women's football league in the 1960's? NPR's A Martinez spoke with Britni de la Cretaz about their book Hail Mary: The Rise and Fall of the National Women's Football League, which they co-authored with fellow sports writer Lyndsey D'Arcangelo. And, disappointingly, but perhaps unsurprisingly, de la Cretaz says it was homophobia and sexism that undermined the league's success.

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In today's double episode, both books center people who have died. And they aren't just tributes to those who've passed, but to the people who remember them. First, Steven Roberts remembers his late wife, journalist Cokie Roberts, with NPR's Steve Inskeep. His book Cokie is full of interviews with her friends, family, and colleagues. Then, poet Victoria Chang talks about past and future generations of her family and what she wants to pass on to her own daughters in her book Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief with NPR's Rachel Martin.

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Trying to decrease your carbon footprint can be complicated. You use metal straws, recycle your paper, and bring your own grocery bags to the store, but everything you buy is part of a supply chain that's simply way out of your control. That lack of control is central to Amitav Ghosh's retelling of an ancient Bengali myth of a nature goddess setting calamity after calamity on a merchant who's only concerned with money. In today's interview, Ghosh tells NPR's Ari Shapiro that writing his 2019 novel Gun Island based on old legends allowed for a full response to the scope of climate change.

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Grady Hendrix LOVES horror movies, especially those old 80's slashers. And his new book is a tribute to that "final girl" at the end of so many of them. The one who doesn't necessarily survive by being smarter or stronger, but simply makes it to the end alive by not giving up. NPR's Audie Cornish interviewed him about his novel Final Girl Support Group, which is about exactly what it sounds like, a support group for women who survived psycho murderers — except it seems like someone's starting to hunt them down... again. As Hendrix says, what's the scariest thing for a "Final Girl?" A sequel.

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We've all heard talk about "the new normal," whatever that even is. CNN's chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta has his own ideas, and despite the harsh realities of nearly two years living through a pandemic — quarantines, hospital staffing shortages, massive loss of life — he remains optimistic. In his new book World War C, he says, COVID is something we'll likely live with... forever. But that doesn't mean it has to control our lives. He sat down with NPR's Rachel Martin to talk about it in today's episode.

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In Elizabeth Strout's new book, a familiar character - Lucy Barton - returns when ex-husband William asks for her help unraveling a recently discovered secret, one that forces him to reevaluate what he knew about his family. Even though it's been decades since they split, the two embark on a trip to uncover the truth. Because, whether you like it or not, sometimes your ex is the only person who really knows you. In today's episode, Strout joins Here and Now's Robin Young to talk about the complexities of the ties that bind us.

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There was a time when the kind of music you listened to could fully define the kind of lifestyle you led, says Dawnie Walton, author of The Final Revival of Opal and Nev. It's less restricting now, but your taste in music can still say quite a bit about who you are. In her book and in Tiphanie Yanique's novel Monster in the Middle, music plays at the center of its characters' stories, as they wrestle with figuring out who they are in their relationships, with significant others and their families. NPR's Scott Simon talks with each author about it in today's episode.

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Parks and Rec actor Nick Offerman is famous for playing an outdoorsman on TV, but it turns out he actually is one in real life, too — albeit considerably less gruff than his character Ron Swanson. NPR's Scott Simon met up with him in the wilds of Central Park to discuss Offerman's new book Where the Deer and the Antelope Play. A testament to the pastoral takes a philosophical look at the vast wilderness of America and how open lands affect our approach to recreation, conservation, farming, and more.

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Poet Laureate Joy Harjo says she loved poetry as a kid, but didn't feel like it belonged to her. "It wasn't until I heard Native poets," she tells NPR's Michel Martin, "that I realized that, wow, this is a powerful tool of understanding and affirmation. And I don't know, I just started writing." Harjo had been studying medicine, she says, and she knew her people needed doctors — but what about poets? Her new memoir Poet Warrior is a chronicle of pain and injustice, of growing up poor with an abusive stepfather — but also of poetry and discovery, of taking that pain and using it to make art.

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