Episodes 38 - 27  |  Episodes 26 - 14  |  Episodes 13 - 1   ​ 
 
Release Date: December 18, 2017
​Length: 57:33 
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Episode 38: Season Finale
with Monica Trinidad and Page May 

In the final episode of the first season, Monica and Page reflect on a year of the Lit Review podcast! They share some of their favorite episode excerpts from conversations in Season 1 with Joey Mogul, Andrea Ritchie, Bill Ayers, and Debbie Southorn. 

They also make a surprise phone call to a very dear abolitionist friend and mentor, Mariame Kaba, who recently moved to New York City. Together, they reflect on the podcast's significance. Apologies for the audio issues! 
 
Release Date: December 11, 2017
​Length: 1:02:04
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Episode 37: This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed
with Mia Henry

When we are taught about the civil rights movement, the narratives of communities trained up in armed self-defense and grandmas with guns sitting on their porch are definitely left out. In Charles E. Cobbs Jr.’s book, This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible, we are face-to-face with the vital role that armed self-defense played in the liberation and survival of Black communities.

Monica and Page sat down with educator and social justice activist, Mia Henry. Mia is one of the many founders of the Chicago Freedom School and also runs Freedom Lifted, a small social enterprise that hosts Civil Rights Movement tours in the deep South.

Key Questions: What is the significance of armed self-defense during the Civil Rights movement? What is nonviolence? What is it not? During the civil rights movement, how does Charles talk about the difference between community organizing and direct action?
 
Release Date: December 4, 2017
​Length: 43:00 
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Episode 36: Octavia's Brood
with Tanuja Jagernauth

In Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements, co-edited by adrienne maree brown and Walidah Imarisha, we are gifted twenty short stories exploring the connections between radical speculative fiction and movements for social change.

​For this episode, Monica and Page sat down with Chicago-based playwright, dramaturge, and ceramic artist Tanuja Jagernauth to discuss one of her favorite books. 

Key Questions: ​What is a radical imagination? And what does fiction have to do with it? How can we look towards non-organizers, like Octavia Butler, for guidance to utilize in our organizing spaces? 
 
Release Date: November 27, 2017
​Length: 55:10 
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Episode 35: Resistance Behind Bars
by and with Victoria Law

Did you know that the first mass clemency won in 1990 for 25 domestic violence survivors incarcerated for self-defense happened because of incarcerated women organizing themselves on the inside? Or did you know that in the 1970's, a California women's prison cancelled a Christmas visit with incarcerated women & their children with no explanation. The women then broke windows, dragged Christmas trees outside into the yard, set them on fire, and refused to go back inside in protest! 

Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women provides much-needed documentation of collective organizing and the daily struggles inside women's prisons. For this episode, Monica and Page sat down with the author of this book, activist Victoria Law, and discussed her process in compiling these important, hidden stories of resistance and survival of incarcerated women in the U.S. ​​

Key Questions: What is clemency? How do prison systems respond to organized resistance inside prisons? How did people resist within solitary confinement? 
 
Release Date: November 20, 2017
​Length: 53:44
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Episode 34: Pedagogy of the Oppressed
with Hilda Franco

​There is a role for people who know things that others don’t, but how has our relationship with education and the teacher-student dynamic been shaped by colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy? In 1968, Brazilian educator Paulo Freire wrote Pedagogy of the Oppressed, proposing a new relationship between the teacher, the student, and society. 
​
​In this episode, Monica and Page dive deeper into this influential book with Pilsen-based youth worker Hilda Franco!

Key Questions: Why do we need a pedagogy of the oppressed? How does this book inform the importance of youth-led organizing? What does it mean to “center those most directly-impacted” in our organizing work?
 
 
Release Date: November 13, 2017
Length: 44:18 
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Episode 33: Transgender History
by and with Susan Stryker

With the 2nd edition of Transgender History by Susan Stryker just released, it was a good time to revisit the book, see what’s changed, and touch on parts that didn’t get covered in an earlier conversation on this book in episode 4 with Benji Hart.

Monica met up with professor, author, and filmmaker, Susan Stryker, to discuss the new edition of her book, which gives an introduction to transgender key terms and concepts, along with an overview of trans history, transphobia, trans resistance, and trans liberation.

Key Questions: What were trans issues in the 1980s? What did resistance look like? What is the pathologization of trans people? Why should organizers read this book?
 
Release Date: November 6, 2017 
Length: 1:22:32
Intro Song: Brujas by Princess Nokia 
Audio Tech: Sarah Lu
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Episode 32: Earthseed Series
with adrienne maree brown

Do you have your “go bag” ready? Are you ready to lose everything and everyone in order to get free? Aren’t these intense questions?? These are just some of the themes that are explored in Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, a two-book series of dystopian, science fiction novels by the late Octavia E. Butler, where society has collapsed due to climate change, capitalism, and Christianity, and people, many strangers, have to create community in order to survive.

For this special live audience episode, Monica and Page are joined by writer, facilitator, Octavia Butler-scholar, pleasure activist and doula, adrienne maree brown. adrienne is the author of Emergent Strategy and co-editor of the anthology, Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction for Social Justice Movements. 

Key Questions: Who was Octavia Butler? What does it mean to shape chaos? What can people do to practice radical compassion and empathy? What does it mean to practice humility and create space for everyone when it might also mean that we let in potentially harmful people?
 
Release Date: October 30, 2017 
Length: 57:13
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Episode 31: Assata
with Pat Frazier & Imani Council

A former member of the Black Panther Party and political prisoner, Assata Shakur's intensely personal and political autobiography continues to be a landmark text in many young Black peoples' politicization.

For this episode, Page interviews two young Black people about the ongoing lessons they have learned from Assata. Pat Frazier and Imani Council are organizers with Assata's Daughters. At the time of the recording, they were both members in Assata University, a year-long political education program for Black teens in & around Washington Park.

Key Questions: What experiences and conditions led Assata to become the revolutionary we know & love today? Where does the "it is our duty to fight for our freedom" mantra come from? What can we learn from Assata's life and struggles to apply to our current movements?
 
Release Date: October 23, 2017
Length: 41:09
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Episode 30: The Sympathizer
with Van Huynh

For this episode, Page turns to fiction as a way to more fully understand the stories and truths of immigration, war, and identity.

Page sat down with Van Huynh, an immigration attorney & community organizer in Chicago to discuss Viet Thanh Nguyen's Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Sympathizer, a blistering exploration of identity and America, a gripping espionage novel, and a powerful story of love and friendship.

Key Questions: What are the long-term, lived impacts of the Vietnam War and it's displacement of Vietnamese people? How do we push members of our communities to think through their personal lives as politically relevant?
 
Release Date: October 9, 2017
Length: 44:01 
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Episode 29: From Deportation to Prison
with Arianna Salgado

From Deportation to Prison: The Politics of Immigration Enforcement in Post-Civil Rights America by Patrisia Macías-Rojas unpacks how the incarceration of over two million people in the United States gave impetus to a federal immigration initiative—The Criminal Alien Program (CAP)—designed to purge non-citizens from dangerously overcrowded jails and prisons.

In this episode, Monica and Page talk with Organized Communities Against Deportations (OCAD) organizer Arianna Salgado about this history and its daily implications.

Key Questions: Why have criminal prosecutions for immigration increased so dramatically in the past 20 years? How is the right-wing backlash to the Civil Rights movement connected to immigration enforcement? What is the history of ICE?
 
Release Date: October 2, 2017 
Length: 48:44
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Episode 28: Demand the Impossible
by and with Bill Ayers

A manifesto for movement-makers in extraordinary times, Demand the Impossible! urges us to imagine a world beyond what this rotten system would have us believe is possible.

Monica and Page sat down with insurgent educator and activist Bill Ayers to talk about his book and envision strategies for building the movement we need to make a world worth living in.

Key Questions: How do the questions we ask about problems impact the demands and solutions we imagine? What does it mean to demand the impossible? How can activists and organizers evaluate and template their work?
 
Release Date: September 25, 2017
Length: 38:43
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Episode 27: The Warmth of Other Suns
with Walter May

From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. In this epic, beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of Black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life.
​
In this episode, Page sits down with Walter May, her 84 year-old grandfather, to talk about one of his favorite books and how it relates to his own life and beginnings.

Key Questions: What was the Great Migration? What conditions caused people to leave the South for the North? How did they survive?
Episodes 38 - 27  |  Episodes 26 - 14  |  Episodes 13 - 1 >>  ​ ​