The Absolute
Before there was Rachel Dolezal, there was Martin Wilkerson.
Picture this profile. Wilkerson: Baltimore resident and booster, businessman, father of twins.
Also, former white man turned black, pioneer and promoter of racial reassignment surgery … and protagonist of Jess Row’s 2014 novel, Your Face in Mine.
On this week’s episode of WNHH radio’s “Book Talk,” I was able to speak with Row about how the concept of the novel came to him, his reaction to the Dolezal controversy, and what his book has to say about race in America.
I was also joined by former Obama staffer Ian Solomon and Yale adjunct English professor Shifra Sharlin. “The whole notion that we can define someone to a category that tells us anything of any value about them, their personality, their capacity, their interests, is fictional,” shared Solomon, “and yet it has real consequences for employment, chances of getting stopped by the police, rates of incarceration.… But what this book lays bare is we have a lot of choices within that … many parts of our lives and how we think about our families or what we want to believe in that we get to choose.”
To listen to the episode, which includes NHFPL librarian Martha Brogan’s heralding of the Windham Campbell award winners, click on the audio above, or find the episode in iTunes or any podcast app under “WNHH Community Radio.”