Episode 52: Halsey Street by Naima Coster

Halsey Street is where Penelope Grand grew up, with her father, Ralph, who ran a locally famous record shop, and her mother, Mirella, who cleaned houses. It is the street from which she moved away, to try to forge her own life as a painter, and the street to which she returns, in her late 20s, to care for her father after her mother leaves him and moves back to the Dominican Republic. It’s a street that has suddenly become home to gourmet markets and sushi bars, a street that doesn't look the way it used to anymore. It's the place where Penelope has to figure out if or how she belongs, and who she is -- the place where she has to, in her mother’s words, "find her life."

Host Cyd Oppenheimer talks with author Naima Coster about "the kinds of distance and intimacy that can exist between people across lines of class and race," "figuring out how to find freedom without running away," and "not wanting to write a book in which nobody raised their voices."

Guest readers Emily Moore and Sophfronia Scott join Oppenheimer to discuss object studies, returning home, and what it means to be the woman in the attic.

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