David Naimon
speaker
4,074 appearances
10 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2026
last heard 24 Aug
David Naimon’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 10 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 3.
Appearances
Well, as you moved away in this book from being – of wanting to charm people, you said before that you were concerned about scaring people away in your previous collections.
And so drawing people in would say with Beyonce and then doing –
a switch and saying, well, actually this book's about something
And this book you've, you've dispensed with the charming people away and you're, you're not concerned about scaring people away.
But the paradox of that is you, you said that you were particularly terrified for how this book would be in the world.
So how has the reality of Magical Negro been since it's come out for you and compared to your expectations or your, your anxieties about it?
One of my favorite public conversations you've had about the book so far is with Candace Williams at Electric Literature.
the last time you were on the show, we talked about the magical Negro phenomenon, the benevolent, one-dimensional, magical black figure that comes to the aid of the dimensional white protagonist.
in relationship to your last collection.
But in your conversation with Candice, you talk about the dangers of reclaiming the magical label, that even though you were in, for instance, the Black Girl Magic Anthology, and you support that endeavor, that just saying Black people are magical is problematic on the flip side when we think about
Michael Brown being seen as
devil and Rodney King having Hulk-like strength.
So talk to us about Magical Negro, the poetry collection in this light, in the light of how you wanted your work to engage with this problematic phenomenon of magic beyond the response of just flipping the narrative to its reverse.
Well, you've said in relationship to this book, it's becoming increasingly important for us to document ourselves.
We're reflected in these major ways, but it's still never enough.
It's still never specific enough.
It's still not exactly in our words enough.
And I wondered if that is the key to this collection, that the collection is motivated by documentation and specification.
And I think of the titles of the three sections, Let Us Now Praise Famous Magical Negroes, Field Negro Field Notes, and Popular Negro Punchlines, and also the titles of some of the poems like Magical Negro No.
84 or Magical Negro No.
Showing 461–480 of 4,074 · page 24 of 204
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