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
76: Jennifer Cumming on Carrie Soto is Back
We learn about mental skills athletes use to compete at the highest levels. Dr. Jennifer Cumming, former competitive athlete and now sports psychologist and professor, describes techniques for building mental skills. She trains professional and recreational athletes,...
75: Carrie Soto is Back
Carrie Soto is Back, by best-selling novelist Taylor Jenkins Reid, plunges us into the world of professional tennis. We meet retired phenom, Carrie, who decides to return to the circuit to defend her Grand Slam titles record. Carrie's singular focus on her tennis...
74: Dr. Sara Brenneis
We take an incredible journey through Spain's 20th century, the setting of this month's book, The Shadow of the Wind, with our guest Sara Brenneis, an Amherst professor specializing in this era. Delving more deeply into Spain's social, political, religious, and...
73: The Shadow of the Wind
In post-civil war Spain, young Daniel is cast into danger when he refuses to sell his rare copy of a Julian Carax novel to a mysterious cloaked man intent on destroying all copies of the author's books. Over a ten-year period, Daniel uncovers old resentments, past...
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.