This week for What We’re Reading, Audio Editor Rebecca Fortuin tells us all about what’s at the top of her listening list right now – In Search of Black History with Bonnie Greer.
What’s it about?
In Search Of Black History with Bonnie Greer brings you face-to-face with the people you never knew existed. People whose stories tell us a different tale about who we all are. From the earliest glimmerings of modern humanity, up to the present day, Bonnie Greer uncovers the lives of people of African descent that don’t fit with the accepted history of Western Civilisation we’ve traditionally been taught. From saints, to philosophers, to warrior women and king’s heralds – these people’s lives have been lost, hidden and distorted down the centuries. We’ve lost the full richness and complexity of our shared histories – it’s time to fill in the gaps.
In this eight part series, playwright and former Trustee of the British Museum, Bonnie Greer, travels with us through the ages, meeting the academics and experts who are uncovering these stories at the cutting edge of historical research, and she brings their subjects’ lives to life – with an imaginative re-telling of their stories.
What did Rebecca think?
“With conversations around historic erasure being so prevalent right now, In Search of Black History with Bonnie Greer really stood out to me. In just eight episodes Bonnie Greer weaves a rich tapestry of history I was completely ignorant to. My favourite historical figure featured was Pauli Murray, a civil rights activist so radical her work was downplayed in order to push more acceptable activists as the poster women of the movement.”
If you liked this, we think you’ll love:
Roaring Girls by Holly Kyte
Roaring Girls tells the game-changing life stories of eight formidable women whose grit, determination and radical unconventionality saw them defy the odds to forge their own paths.
From the notorious cross-dressing thief Mary Frith in the seventeenth century to rebel slave Mary Prince and adventurer, industrialist and LGBT trailblazer Anne Lister in the nineteenth, these diverse characters redefined what a woman could be and what she could do in pre-twentieth-century Britain.
Bold, inspiring and powerfully written, Roaring Girls tells the electrifying histories of women who, despite every effort to suppress them, dared to be extraordinary.
