Watch more Left of Black: fhi.duke.edu/e...
Author Nabil Ayers, born from the union between a white, Jewish, former ballerina and American funk, soul, and jazz musician Roy Ayers, joins the Webby Award-nominated podcast “Left of Black” for a special in-person event to discuss his new critically acclaimed memoir, "My Life in the Sunshine: Searching for My Father and Discovering My Family." Ayers paints the portrait of a loving single mother who doted over her son while acknowledging the childhood pain from his celebrity father’s intentional absence all while navigating a mixed-race identity through the 70’s & 80’s.
Cleveland Review of Books states, “…Ayers achieves a tenor that few memoirs do, fully embracing and speaking to the old adage ‘the personal is political.’”
Learn more about Nabil Ayers here: www.nabilayers...
You can purchase his book here: www.penguinran...
“Left of Black Presents: Small Talk at FHI,” is a new event sub-series inspired by the legendary jazz poet Gil Scott-Heron’s first album, "Small Talk at 125th and Lenox." It is an attempt to recreate the same type of intimacy ever present in Scott-Heron’s groundbreaking work. Named after famed African American historian John Hope Franklin, the FHI became the institutional home of the web series in 2019 during its 10th season.
Left of Black is the Webby Award-nominated series featuring interviews with Black Studies scholars, created and hosted by the James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of African and African American Studies Dr. Mark Anthony Neal. From 2010-2020, it was produced by the John Hope Franklin Center for International and Global Studies. In 2020, the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute took over production, with funding support from Trinity College of Arts & Sciences.
Directed & edited by Eric Barstow, M.F.A.