Dr. Margaret Jacobs joins us on the front porch to investigate how the US has forcibly removed children from their parents, a policy expanded in Celeste Ng’s Our Missing Hearts. In Our Missing Hearts, a Choctaw grandmother reminds Noah’s mom that taking children away from their parents is not unprecedented in US history and she alludes to indigenous child removal, as well as the separation of children from their parents who have illegally crossed the country’s southern border. In this episode, we learn about the reality of these past policies and also Indigenous and Non-indigenous people working together to forge a reconciliation over these past wrongs.
To what lengths would you go to protect your child? In Our Missing Hearts, Celeste Ng introduces us to Bird, a 12-year-old boy whose mother has left him and his father years earlier. His father disavows her and her poetry that is being used by resisters standing up against an authoritarian government in the United States. When Bird receives a mysterious letter, he goes on a journey to find his mother.
It’s Mother’s Day as we record this episode about Far From the Tree by Andrew Solomon. This nonfiction book explores the differences that separate children from their parents, often in damaging ways. Solomon believes that parents have children to perpetuate themselves and when the children are different from them, parents often react negatively. Six chapters deal with categories of difference that have been long-classified as illnesses: children who are deaf, those who are dwarfs, and those who have down syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, other disabilities. Four chapters deal with more socially-constructed difference: children who: are prodigies, the product of rape, commit crimes, and are transgender.
Nadia Hashimi joins us to discuss her bestselling book, Sparks Like Stars. This book is the darling of book clubs. The story of Sitara, a privileged young girl living in Kabul, draws you in as the 1978 coup strips everything away from her that she loves. Nadia tells us about her inspiration for Sitara, her family’s experience leaving Afghanistan and the nostalgia they still experience for a Kabul that has disappeared. We also learn Nadia’s opinion about whether Shair pulled the trigger.
Director of the Center for Afghanistan Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, Sher Jan Ahmadzai tells us his remarkable story: fleeing Afghan as a child, returning to work for the President of Afghanistan, and eventual immigrating to the United States. He expands our understanding of historical and current day Afghanistan, the setting for this month’s book, Sparks Like Stars by Nadia Hashimi.
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