I Am America

In Elizabeth Strout’s “The Walk,” an aging father ponders his life as he strolls through his small Maine town late at night. Strout is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Olive Kitteridge, which was adapted into a television series starring Frances McDormand. Other works include as The Burgess Boys, Abide with Me, Amy and Isabelle, and My Name Is Lucy Barton, which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and has recently been adapted into a play by Rona Munro. Stout’s most recent novel is Anything is Possible. Her short stories have been published in The New Yorker, O: The Oprah Magazine, and many other periodicals, and she has been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize in England.

“The Walk” is read by Ellen Burstyn, whose illustrious sixty-year acting career encompasses film, stage, and television. She is the winner of the Academy Award for “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore;” the Tony Award for “Same Time, Next Year;” and two Emmy Awards for “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” and “Political Animals,” among her many nominations. Her film and television credits include “The Last Picture Show,” “The Exorcist,” “Resurrection,” “Requiem for a Dream,” “Big Love,” “Flowers in the Attic,” “Interstellar,” “The Age of Adaline,” “House of Cards,” “Nostalgia,” and “The Tale.” On stage, she most recently appeared in the Classic Stage Company’s revival of “As You Like It.” She is the author of a memoir, Lessons in Becoming Myself.

Next, Susan Minot’s “Listen.” The many overhead voices, performed by Jennifer Ikeda and Khris Lewin, might be guests chewing the (socio-political) fat at an outdoor barbeque, but might also be the whole country muttering under its breath. Minot is the author of the novels Monkeys, Folly, Evening, Rapture, and Thirty Girls, as well as the poetry collection Poems 4 A.M. and the short story collection Lust and Other Stories. She was honored with a Pushcart Prize, and her stories have appeared in the Best American Short Stories, the O. Henry Prize Stories, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Atlantic, Grand Street, Fiction, and Swink, among other publications. Minot has taught writing at New York University, Stony Brook Southampton, and Columbia University.

Jennifer Ikeda’s stage appearances, both on and Off-Broadway, include “As You Like It,” “Seascape,” “Top Girls,” and “Titus Andronicus” at the Public Theater. She has also been featured in the television shows “Smash,” “Blindspot,” “Elementary,” and “Madam Secretary,” and the short films “80/20,” “Advantageous,” and “Swing,” among others. Ikeda has narrated dozens of audiobooks, most recently for the young adult fantasy series “A Court of Thorns” and “Roses and All Souls.”

Khris Lewin recently appeared in “Personnel Best” at the Secret Theatre in Long Island City. Additional New York theater credits include Horatio in the world premiere of Boris Akunin's “Hamlet,” “A Version,” at the Theatre at St. Clements, “Private Life of the Master Race,” with the Roust Theatre Company, “Oliver!” at Harbor Lights, “Richard II” with Fight or Flight, “Fêtes de la Nuit” with the Ohio Theatre and “Extreme Whether” at La Mama ETC.

Our final work from It Occurs to Me That I Am America is Julia Alvarez’s memoir/essay “Speak! Speak!” in which she recalls facing prejudice as a recent immigrant from the Dominican Republic, and finding her authentic voice as a writer. Alvarez is a poet, essayist, and fiction writer best known for her novels How the García Girls Lost Their Accents and In the Time of the Butterflies. She has published numerous collections of poetry and works of non-fiction, most recently The Woman I Kept to Myself and A Wedding in Haiti: The Story of a Friendship. In addition to her adult works, she has written many books for young readers, including Tía Lola Stories series, Before We Were Free and Where Do They Go? She is a recipient of a 2013 National Medal of Arts among many other awards and honors.

Reader Selenis Leyva is best known for her work in the television series “Orange Is the New Black.” Additional film and television credits include featured roles on “Law & Order,” “Blue Bloods,” “Girls,” “Madam Secretary,” “Veep,” and “Spider-Man: Homecoming.” Leyva appeared in the 2017 production of “Tell Hector I Miss Him” with the Atlantic Theater Company.

While our first three works are by established contemporary writers, an important contribution to America’s sense of itself also comes from the past, in this case, the voices of African American women writers of the 19th century. Their many works in fiction, non-fiction poetry, and prose have been gathered by the scholars Henry Louis Gates and Hollis Robbins in the anthology The Portable Nineteenth-Century African American Women Writers.

We’re featuring three stirring pieces on this program. “Lines to Ida B. Wells” is a poem authored by Katherine Davis Chapman Tillman, a prolific writer whose poems, short fiction, plays, and journalism appeared in The Christian Recorder, American Baptist, Our Women and Children, and theIndianapolis Freeman, among other periodicals. Her fiction includes Beryl Weston's Ambition: The Story of an Afro-American Girl's Life, Clancy Street, and the historical plays Thirty Years of Freedom and Fifty Years of Freedom. She often celebrated other ground-breaking African Americans, in this case one of the founders of the NAACP.

Reader Crystal Dickinson has appeared on Broadway in “Clybourne Park” and “You Can’t Take It With You” and recently starred in “A Raisin in the Sun” at the Two River Theater. Dickinson’s film and television credits include “House of Payne,” “I Origins,” “This Is Where I Leave You,” “The Good Wife,” “Feed the Beast,” and “Collateral Beauty.”

Our second work from the Gates/Robbins anthology is an excerpt of a speech by one of the most famous figures in African-American history, Sojourner Truth. A former slave, Truth became an abolitionist orator, famous for her speaking tours across the North in the 1850s in support of equal rights for emancipated persons, women’s rights, and desegregation. We’re featuring her best-known speech, which was delivered extemporaneously, in 1851, at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio. It became widely known during the Civil War by the title "Ain't I a Woman?" and over a hundred years after she first uttered it, you can hear our present day audience’s appreciation for Truth’s salty and candid language.

The speech is read by Kaneza Schaal, a New York City-based theatre artist who has worked on stage with Elevator Repair Service, The Wooster Group, Richard Maxwell/New York City Players, Jay Scheib, Claude Wampler, and New York City Opera. On camera, she has worked with Kathryn Bigelow, Marya Cohn, Josephine Decker, Chelsea Knight and the “Law & Order” team, and she will appear in the forthcoming film “The Indiscernables.” Schaal directed “Go Forth,” which premiered at Performance Space 122’s COIL Festival, and is currently at work on “Jack & Jill,” a multimedia performance piece.

Schaal is also the reader of the final work on this program, Mary E. Ashe Lee’s bold poem “Afmerica.” Lee imagines looking back on her ancestors from a position of triumph. She shares the news of black, female empowerment after centuries of oppression, and the way in which these women come to embody the country itself. Lee was widely read and praised in her time for her emotionally resonant and culturally rich verse. Her works recount the distinct historical experience of the archetypal African American woman of the era.