Kia Corthron in Conversation With Robin D. G. Kelley

An exploration of NYC and America in the burgeoning moments before the start of the Civil War through the eyes of a young, biracial girl, Moon and the Mars (Seven Stories) is the highly anticipated new novel from Kia Corthron, winner of the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize. Set in the impoverished Five Points district of New York City in the years 1857-1863, we experience neighborhood life through the eyes of Theo from childhood to adolescence, an orphan living between the homes of her Black and Irish grandmothers. Throughout her formative years, Theo witnesses everything from the creation of tap dance to P. T. Barnum’s sensationalist museum to the draft riots that tear NYC asunder, amidst the daily maelstrom of Five Points work, hardship, and camaraderie. Meanwhile, white America’s attitudes towards people of color and slavery are shifting — painfully, transformationally — as the nation divides and marches to war. As with her first novel, The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter, Corthron’s use of dialogue brings her characters to life in a way that only an award-winning playwright and scriptwriter can do. As Theo grows and attends school, her language and grammar change, as does her own vocabulary when she’s with her Black or Irish families. It’s an extraordinary feat and a revelation for the reader. Corthron will be joined in conversation by Robin D. G. Kelley, Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in American History at UCLA, and author of Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original and Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination.

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