The Plot: Conversations on Writing

For this episode I’m excited to be joined by author and cook Jessica Tom for a conversation on food fiction. Tom is the author of the novel Food Whore: A Novel of Dining and Deceit, set in the cutthroat restaurant world of New York City. She has also been a recurring presence on Food Network, including winning Food Network Star in 2018. Tom’s website jessicatom.com is a wealth of both recipes and writing advice, so in the spirit of cooking I’m going to change up my interview format a bit and prepare one of her dishes in the process. With me again is my friend and cohost Lauren McCrimmon, and we will be making Tom’s coconut peach resin pudding with mango. If you’d like to try it yourself, you can find the recipe here. I will note that, since this show was recorded in my kitchen and not in my usual recording space, it might sound slightly different from listeners are used to. We got the louder things like blending out of the way first, but you will hear some ambient sounds of the pudding-making process as we discuss the intersections of both writing and food culture.

How did Tom navigate the long road to publishing her first novel? How has winning Food Network Star shaped her career as both a chef and an author? And what exactly is a food whore? We’ll dig into these questions, and a terrific summer dessert, in this special food-themed episode of The Plot.

Follow Jessica Tom:
Twitter: @Jessica_Tom
Instagram: @Jessica_Tom
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Sean Douglass: @_SeanDouglass_
The Plot: @ThePlotPodcast

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For this episode I am joined again by my friend Lauren McCrimmon for part two of our conversation on the literary canon. If you haven’t heard part one yet, I would encourage you to listen to that first, as this show picks up where that one left off. But just to recap, we are looking at the list of the most-assigned literary texts in colleges, as documented by opensyllabus.org, to ask: how do we decide what gets to be included in the literary canon, and what major texts do we feel get over or underrepresented by our education system? In the last episode we discussed many of the most-read books from the list, like Frankenstein, The Canterbury Tales, or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and so for part two we’re going to focus more on what changes we would make to how the caught in taught. What books or works do we want to see receive more attention, and how would we make room for them? We also consider how the canon could be more generous in its inclusion of other genres, like science fiction or fantasy, and how to bring more writers from other countries into our classrooms.

This episode is a bit on the shorter side, and serves as more of a coda to part one, but there’s still plenty to discuss on James Baldwin, Haruki Murakami, and even the role journalism can play on course syllabi. Where we last left off in part one, we had just been starting to look at what we’d want to see taught more often. I had suggested replacing some of Shakespeare’s massive presence across syllabi with more Chekhov, and the ball is in Lauren’s court. So let’s pick up from there, starting with her thoughts.

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Sean Douglass
@_SeanDouglass_

The Plot
@ThePlotPodcast

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For this episode of The Plot I am joined by my friend Adam Segal. Adam is active with social justice work in Portland; his background is in creative writing, but he is also a cook and food distributor, and he currently facilitates small groups of fellow white people working to address white supremacy on behalf of Portland's chapter of Showing Up for Racial Justice. Most relevant to this episode, however, is that he is also the founder of New Masculinities Group, a four-year-old project to engage men and people of all genders in difficult, yet necessary conversations about masculinity, gender, and sexuality, work he has begun to do professionally as a men’s accountability consultant.

In our discussion today, Adam examines how cultural narratives shape our understanding of gender—often without us even being aware of it—and the dangerous ways they can impact our concept of masculinity or expectations of what men are and how they should act. We’ll look at several examples from pop culture, from The Sandlot to Star Wars, to analyze their messages about boyhood and manhood. Then we’ll turn to how notions of masculinity intersect with social and political issues, like consent, food, and even prison abolition. These can be heavy subjects, but Adam expertly breaks them down in words that are clear, approachable, and encouraging. While we’ll acknowledge a variety of dangerous stereotypes, this is not a show about criticizing men, but rather a much more positive message, as Adam invites us to ask who we would be if there were no one telling us who to be. And while we’ll focus on the ways men confront that question, it’s also a question all of us, whether we are men or another gender, can learn to ask ourselves.

To Learn more about New Masculinities Group, you can follow it on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NewMasculinitiesGroupPDX

You can also follow this podcast on Twitter at @_SeanDouglass_ and @ThePlotPodcast

For more on the issues raised in this podcast, Adam has also provided a reading list:

"Books for men who want to get started in working against patriarchal masculinity:
The Will to Change, by bell hooks
I Don't Want to Talk About It, by Terrence Real
Women, Race, and Class by Angela Davis
Men Explain Things to Me, by Rebecca Solnit
Amateur by Thomas Page McBee

Articles and Resources for a Healthier Conversation about Consent and Sexual Communication:
From #MeToo to #WeConsented, and The Pleasure Dome: Use Your Words by Adrienne Maree Brown
https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/the-pleasure-dome/me-too-reclaiming-consent

https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/the-pleasure-dome/use-your-words

Sex Toys Will Never Be Able to Do the Hardest Work For You, by Fancy Feast
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/fancyfeast/sex-toys-education-consent-positivity-gender

In The No, by Radiolab and Kaitlyn Prest
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/projects/no

Articles for learning about Abolition Feminism:
Against Carceral Feminism by Victoria Law
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/10/against-carceral-feminism/

Aching for Abolition by Camonghne Felix
https://www.thecut.com/2020/10/aching-for-abolition.html

Who Wins When We Incarcerate Brock Turner? by Erika Lynn and Lily Zheng
https://stanfordpolitics.org/2016/06/10/who-wins-when-we-incarcerate-brock-turner/?fbclid=IwAR0X9NkQiTaRr3a7oCd4L3jYDnwJQV9NSYBqbgjzr-6Uy6Go9X7GQp7FzEw

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Today I am joined by playwright Eleanor Burgess for a conversation on her hit play The Niceties. The Niceties is everywhere this season—I just saw it last week in Milwaukee, but you can also find it in other major cities across the US and in London—and it is chock full of things to discuss.

For anyone new to Burgess and her work, she grew up in Brookline, Massachusetts, studied history at Yale College, and has her M.F.A in Dramatic Writing from NYU. Her other plays include Chill, Start Down, These Dying Generations, and Mocha, and she is also writing for HBO’s upcoming Perry Mason. But today we’ll be talking about The Niceties, and if you don’t know the play, that’s okay. We won’t really be talking about the play itself (which is better left unspoiled anyway), but about the subjects it covers, like race, history, and American progress—as well as the tremendous uncertainty that exists in any conversation on deep moral subjects like these.

The Niceties tells a story about a white history professor meeting with an African American student at an unnamed prestigious university. As the professor challenges the conclusions of a paper the student has written, the women are soon swept up in an intense debate rooted in their vastly different perspectives on American history. I won’t give away more about it than that, but I will say that it is such an accessible, yet excitingly intellectual play that I actually found it a bit trickier than usual to form interview questions on it. It’s not that doesn’t invite questions, but rather, it poses so many, and digs so directly into them, it was hard to know to begin without simply summarizing much of the play in the process. What we ended up with was a discussion focused on questions more than answers, and the importance of humility and understanding in a culture that so often prioritizes the loudest, most uncompromising voices. If you’re feeling the fatigue of living in a country with a very polarized and often combative political climate, I think Burgess’s openness and hope for more understanding will resonate with you. Is incremental progress something to celebrate or reject? Is the story of America one of great achievements or great injustices? And for a new parent like Burgess, how do you raise a child in such a morally complex world? We don’t have all the answers, but Burgess serves as an excellent guide through these conundrums of American life.

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Eleanor Burgess
eleanorburgess.com
@eleanorjburgess

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seandouglass.com
@_seandouglass_
@ThePlotPodcast

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For this episode we’ll be looking back on the legacy of Toni Morrison with Nambi E. Kelley. Kelley is an actor, playwright, and screenwriter. As an actor she’s appeared in numerous onstage roles with leading regional theaters, as well as in TV shows like Search Party, Madame Secretary, Elementary, and The Beast opposite Patrick Swayze. Her writing career has included plays like Xtigone, For Her as a Piano, and, perhaps most prominently, an acclaimed adaptation of Richard Wright’s novel Native Son, which has been widely produced and is currently running Off-Broadway in a production by The Acting Company. Her latest play, however, is an adaptation of Toni Morrison’s novel Jazz, written at Morrison’s request. Given Morrison’s recent passing, this seemed like a perfect opportunity to reflect on her literary impact, as well as to catch up with Kelley on her busy artistic life—which now also includes writing for the third season of Showtime’s series The Chi.

If you’re a fan of either of these writers’ work, I think you’re going to enjoy this conversation on what it was like for Kelley to spend the last few years delving into Morrison’s writing, including the unexpected phrase she found that, to quote her, “blew her mind.” But in addition to discussing her adaptation of Jazz, she also shares an inside look at how she got her new job in television, and somehow this interview even ends with her father’s advice on relationships. So if you wanted some TV and dating tips thrown in with your coverage of the late Toni Morrison’s Nobel Prize-winning legacy, this show has you covered.

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Nambi E. Kelley--
Website: http://www.nambikelley.com/
Twitter: @NambiKelley

This show--
The Plot: @ThePlotPodcast
Sean Douglass: @_SeanDouglass_

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