PODCAST · history
THE SUITCASE: DISCOVERING ELY GREEN
by April Alvarez, Hannah Huber, and Sam Worley
THE SUITCASE is a new podcast about the life and autobiography of Ely Green, a biracial man forced to flee his home in the mountains of Tennessee, a witness to 75 years of American history. Writing and rewriting his life story, he returns home to publish an autobiography, an epic saga entitled Too Black, Too White, that takes us from the dust of Reconstruction to the rise of the modern Civil Rights era. On the surface his story is steeped in adventure and romance, but it belies the complex and dangerous experience of a man caught between worlds and finding a way to write about it. Digging deeper, questions arise about how his work was edited, how readers and critics accepted it, and why such a cinematic story was never made into a movie. THE SUITCASE investigates Green’s original manuscripts, talks with his descendants, and tracks down the places and people that shaped the many twists and turns of this biracial autobiography. Join us to discover Ely Green.
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Intro: Who Is Ely Green?
Who Is Ely Green? And why did he return to the southern mountain town he’d fled 50 years earlier?
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Episode 1, The Suitcase
It’s 1964. The audience is introduced to Ely Green, a biracial man born in 1893. He is returning to Sewanee, Tennessee, where he was raised, and from where he fled 50 years earlier. He brings his handwritten autobiography to a man he’s never met. His book, a tour-de-force of the biracial experience in America, will be published four years later.We meet Patricia Ravarra, his granddaughter, who only finds out about his book—and more about the grandfather she never met—many years later.In episode 1, we hear excerpts from his manuscript read by a voice actor, Bruce Manuel. The audience hears about Green’s two families, the one that brings him up, the one that does not claim him, and how both the Black and white communities in this small town both leave him without a space to fit in. He learns to be a mountain man from his independent Black grandfather, making his living off the forests surrounding Sewanee, and describes it in beautiful detail. We check in again with Patricia, to learn more about her knowledge about Green, and a little about his memoir, Too Black, Too White.The audience learns that some things in the book, including the name of his father and possibly even the fact that he was born in Sewanee, are not true. Who changed the names? And why did Ely return to tell his life’s story? Who is Ely Green? And what other secrets are in that suitcase?
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
THE SUITCASE is a new podcast about the life and autobiography of Ely Green, a biracial man forced to flee his home in the mountains of Tennessee, a witness to 75 years of American history. Writing and rewriting his life story, he returns home to publish an autobiography, an epic saga entitled Too Black, Too White, that takes us from the dust of Reconstruction to the rise of the modern Civil Rights era. On the surface his story is steeped in adventure and romance, but it belies the complex and dangerous experience of a man caught between worlds and finding a way to write about it. Digging deeper, questions arise about how his work was edited, how readers and critics accepted it, and why such a cinematic story was never made into a movie. THE SUITCASE investigates Green’s original manuscripts, talks with his descendants, and tracks down the places and people that shaped the many twists and turns of this biracial autobiography. Join us to discover Ely Green.
HOSTED BY
April Alvarez, Hannah Huber, and Sam Worley
CATEGORIES
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