In these days of restrictions, the quieter, slower pace of the world is a good time to reflect on how our yesterdays have created what we are today. From the personal trials of overcoming prejudice and creating ground-breaking, often lonely, paths, to the political decisions to stand up for equality and make visible that which has been hidden, these are stories of being ‘not quite right’ that need to be shared. Each piece gives us pause for thought as we learn just how much personal and public histories can teach us.
In forty short stories, poems and essays — by turns wry, gentle, furious, humorous, passionate, analytical and elliptical — these forty writers, new and established, speak volumes, invoking their experiences of outsiderness and their defiance against it.
In this episode we’ll hear ‘I’m Quite Right With That’ by Olive Senior; ‘Sisyphus, Deformed, Looks Back Over His Shoulder’ by Andy Jackson; and ‘A Cruel Nakedness’ by E. Ethelbert Miller. Our guide is author and Professor of English Minoli Salgado.
Not Quite Right for Us is a stellar new anthology which explores the many ways we’ve all been made to feel ‘not quite right’ at some time or another.
Recorded in collaboration with Speaking Volumes.
The anthology is available at all good bookshops, or order from Flipped Eye Publishing.
If you enjoyed this episode of NQRFU, try London by Lockdown: a podcast about falling in love with a new city in the middle of a pandemic; remaining curious and open; and about making it work. Available on all podcast platforms or our website.
Information
Music composed by Dominique Le Gendre
Narration by Lucy Hannah
Soundscape: ‘Rainy Season’, created by Gillian Howell and Fitzroy Valley District High School students in 2017, as part of Tura New Music’s Sound FX project in Fitzroy Crossing Western Australia
Extra music & SFX from Epidemic Sound
Image by Moon on Unsplash
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