Grief, Sisterhood & Becoming an Athlete: Chetna Maroo, WESTERN LANE & Black History Month: Ta-Nahisi Coates, THE BEAUTIFUL STRUGGLE

We speak with Chetna Maroo about her debut novel, Western Lane. It’s a beautifully written coming of age story about a young girl and her British Indian family who are trying to come to terms with the recent death of the family matriarch.

Then, for Black History Month, we hear my 2008 interview with Ta-Nahisi Coates about his first book, The Beautiful Struggle: Between the World and Me.

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Chetna Maroo
Chetna Maroo’s debut novel Western Lane is about sisterhood, family and recovery from loss.

After her mother’s death, 11-year old Gopi and her father bond on the squash court, where she discovers her love of the game and her own strength and capacity for renewal. Her older sisters support her as she moves beyond traditional expectations for a girl in her British Indian family.

The tale is told in Maroo’s deeply evocative prose, disciplined and precise to achieve for the reader an extraordinary intimacy with the characters.

Chetna Maroo’s stories have appeared in anthologies and literary magazines. She won the 2022 Plimpton Prize for Fiction.

Ta-Nahisi Coates
Black History Month always affords a great opportunity to rummage around in the Writer’s Voice archives for good material to re-air.

Ta Nahisi Coates on “respect”:
On the news, you know, whenever you hear about people talking about Black youth and their “respect killings” — you know, somebody got shot over respect — people look at these folks like they’re crazy. In fact, respect is what people lean on when they have nothing else. It’s just true of everyone. Now, I’m not defending that, obviously. But if you feel like you have nothing else to live with, that’s all you got when your back is to the wall.

This time, we go way back to 2008 to a terrific interview Ta-Nahisi Coates gave Writer’s Voice after he’d just published his first book, The Beautiful Struggle. In the intervening years, he’s gone on to become one of the most celebrated contemporary figures for his writings on race in America.

The post Grief, Sisterhood & Becoming an Athlete: Chetna Maroo, WESTERN LANE & Black History Month: Ta-Nahisi Coates, THE BEAUTIFUL STRUGGLE appeared first on Writer's Voice.

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