Episode 9: Cara Meredith & Josina Guess

Cara Meredith is a writer, speaker, and activist. She is the author of The Color of Life: A Journey Toward Love and Racial Justice, which released in 2019. As a white woman, Cara journeys toward understanding the racial realities of individual and systemic racism through falling in love with the son of a black icon and raising two mixed-raced sons. Cara, a former high school English teacher and outreach director, lives with her husband and two sons in Oakland, California.Josina Guess is the assistant editor of The Bitter Southerner. She has contributed to an anthology called Fight Evil with Poetry as well as to a forthcoming book called Rally: Communal Prayers for Lovers of Justice and Jesus. Josina grew up in Washington, D.C., and now lives in northeast Georgia in an old farmhouse with her husband, four children, and lots of animals.Cara and Josina join Jen to talk about the reading life in our cultural moment. They bring a wide range of recommendations, especially for following writers of color. They also recommend some fantastic children's books!Books Mentioned in this Episode:Fight Evil with Poetry edited by Micah Bournes and Chris CampbellThe Color of Life: A Journey Toward Love and Racial Justice by Cara MeredithUnmarriageable: A Novel by Soniah KamalWrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston by Valerie BoydGathering Blossoms Under Fire: The Journals of Alice Walker by Valerie Boyd (forthcoming)The Color of Compromise by Jemar TisbyNew Kid by Jerry CraftBrown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline WoodsonOrdinary Light: A Memoir by Tracy K. SmithThe Light of the World: A Memoir by Elizabeth AlexanderReal American: A Memoir by Julie Lythcott-HaimsHunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxanne GayBetween the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi CoatesMother to Son: Letters to a Black Boy on Identity and Hope by Jasmine L. HolmesGuidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys Into Race, Motherhood and History by Camille T. DungyCitizen: An American Lyric by Claudia RankineA Place to Land: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Speech That Inspired a Nation by Barry Wittenstein and Jerry PinkneyLoving: Interracial Intimacy in America and the Threat to White Supremacy by Sheryll CashinReconciliation Blues: A Black Evangelical's Inside View of White Christianity by Edward GilbreathMartin's Big Words: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by Doreen Rappaport and Bryan CollierChildren of God Storybook Bible by Archbishop Desmond TutuManna and Mercy: A Brief History of God's Unfolding Promise to Mend the Entire Universe by Daniel ErlanderThe Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. edited by Clayborne CarsonFarming While Black: Soul Fire Farm's Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land by Leah Penniman and Karen Washington