Interview With Randall Robinson

Democracy NOW Interview    January 13, 2012

“Memory is the Active Agent of Collective Social Progress”: Randall Robinson on His New Novel Makeda

“Makeda,” the new novel by TransAfrica founder Randall Robinson, is set at the dawn of the civil rights era. The book follows a young man coming of age in segregated Richmond, Virginia, who discovers his roots in Africa through his blind grandmother. “Sometimes when we think of slavery, we calculate the economic consequence of it,” Robinson says. “But we have not calculated the psychosocial consequence of it, unless we factor in the loss of memory, which was occasioned by a deliberate and systematic program imposed by those who controlled us.” [includes rush transcript]

 

Filed under Author Interviews, African-American History, civil rights

LEAVE A COMMENT

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.