SEASON 5

Three years have passed since Hanif Abdurraqib's essay collection Little Devil In America tackled the subject of Black performance in American culture. In his newest release, There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension, Hanif asks readers to sit with the idea of the common enemy, one which he defines as a person who might interrupt the affection of anyone we love.
Hanif presents us with a love story for his home state of Ohio, basketball, and frames it within the window of success and interruption. Woven within the stories of basketball greats and unknowns who fall short of obtaining victories, readers wrestle with the conversations that beg to ask, "What does one do with the grief and loss of a dream?"

Yuri Kochiyama was a revolutionary! The legacy of her life's work as a civil rights activist has been beautifully documented in a children's picture book written by Kai Naima Williams, Harlem-born poet, artist, and Yuri's great-granddaughter. The Bridges Yuri Built: How Yuri Kochiyama Marched Across Movements walks readers through her origin story of becoming one of the country's most important advocators for Asian American rights.
In our interview with Kai, she pinpoints the early beginnings of Kochiyama's life when her family was imprisoned in the Japanese-American Concentration camps during World World II. This horrific moment in America's history set in motion Kochiyama's push to live a life committed to ensuring the freedom of all minorities through social change. We also talk about Kochiyama's friendship with Malcolm X, and how that relationship encouraged her to become a freedom fighter.