Front Porch Book Club Podcast
Grab your book and iced tea and join the Front Porch Book Club, your no-commitment, casual, and eclectic podcast about books. We examine the relationship between characters, the worlds they live in, and what that means to us.
Latest Episode
112: Taiwo Bello
Today we interview Dr. Taiwo Bello about the historical and contemporary contexts of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's HALF OF A YELLOW SUN. Nancy loves this interview because neither she nor Linda knew anything about the Biafran War. Linny likes that we then talk about...
112: Taiwo Bello
Today we interview Dr. Taiwo Bello about the historical and contemporary contexts of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's HALF OF A YELLOW SUN. Nancy loves this interview because neither she nor Linda knew anything about the Biafran War. Linny likes that we then talk about lessons we can learn so we don’t repeat those mistakes.
Taiwo Bello is an Assistant Professor of African History and an affiliate faculty member of the Africana Studies Centre at Oklahoma State University. His research and teaching interests encompass gender and women's history, war and society, violence and conflict studies, the history of crime, law, and punishment, Black and diaspora studies, genocide, human rights, and humanitarian histories, as well as global and transnational history. He serves on the Editorial Review Boards of the AFRICAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION journal, HISTORY IN AFRICA, published by Cambridge University Press; and the CANADIAN ASSOCIATION OF AFRICAN STUDIES journal, the CANADIAN JOURNAL OF AFRICAN STUDIES, published by Taylor & Francis. He is a founding editor of SCHOLAR’S CORNER, a subsidiary blog of the journal, GENOCIDE STUDIES INTERNATIONAL, published by University of Toronto Press.
He is revising his second book entitled SOLDIERS ON RAMPAGE: GENDER, BLOCKADE, VIOLENCE AND RESISTANCE IN BIAFRA DURING THE NIGERIAN CIVIL WAR, 1967-1970. The book examines the impact of the wartime violence between the Nigerian and Biafran soldiers on Biafran women and their families, and the women's responses to wartime atrocities. The book demonstrates how food was central to the constant violence unleashed on women in the heartland of Biafra.
His forthcoming book, INVENTING ORDER: CRIME, LAW, AND PUNISHMENT IN NIGERIA AND THE DIASPORA, adopts a multidisciplinary approach to examine the evolution of crimes (armed robbery, immigration fraud, financial fraud, drug trafficking) in Nigeria and their local and global implications.
About Front Porch Book Club
I honestly was blown away by the deep dive Nancy and Linny did into SPARKS LIKE STARS and really appreciated the personal perspectives they brought.
Nadia Hashimi, Author
Every month the Front Porch Book Club features two episodes on our selected book. In the first episode Linda and Nancy introduce the book and discuss their thoughts. In the second episode, Linda and Nancy are joined by the author or an expert to delve deeper into the book. Our book selections are eclectic: fiction, autobiography, history, memoir, investigative journalism, and classics. They are books that give us insights into how we may be more intentional, creative, and loving.
Recent Episodes
85: Empire of Pain
In this investigative non-fiction book, Patrick Radden Keefe reveals the role of the Sackler family in the prescription opioid epidemic that has decimated communities and families since the 1990s. Empire of Pain is an unflinching and horrifying account of how the...
84: Dr. Karen Roggenkamp
We wanted to learn more about mystery as a genre after reading Richard Osman's The Thursday Murder Club. Lucky for us, Dr. Karen Roggenkamp, professor of Literature and Languages at Texas A & M-Commerce, was available to stop by the Front Porch to talk about...
83: The Thursday Murder Club
Murder comes to the Front Porch. But don't worry... this is a cozy murder, so we aren't too concerned that unsavory characters are killed. We are introduced to the members of The Thursday Murder Club: four seniors living in a retirement community who try to...
82: The Song of Achilles Part II
Linny and Nancy delve into commentary about Achilles and Patroclus, the main characters in Madeline Miller's retelling of the Iliad in her novel, The Song of Achilles. Miller was inspired to write this book to better understand Achilles' terrible rage when hearing of...
Meet The Hosts
Growing up, Nancy always had her nose in a book. She never remembers not loving to read books. Linda, on the other hand, hated libraries and spent her childhood trying to lure Nancy away from books into some other activity that she thought would be way more fun. That’s right – we’re sisters. Nancy was more of an introvert and Linda was more of an extrovert. But, somewhere along the way, Linda started loving books and Nancy started loving talking about books. Nancy is a recovering academic in Nebraska who writes and Linda is a licensed counselor in Pennsylvania.