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 over the last 12 months — 10 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 3.

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Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry · From the Archives : Morgan Parker : Magical Negro · 13 Aug 2026 podcast

3 or Black Women for Beginners Part 1.

all of which give this sense of cataloging and a sense of the anthropological.

So I was hoping maybe you could talk a little bit about the thought process there.

Well, it seems fitting that the book opens with a poem whose title is taken from a line by Zora Neale Hurston, because she was often described, rightly or wrongly, as taking an anthropological approach to her nonfiction writing.

So I was hoping maybe you could read I Feel Most Colored When I'm Thrown Against a Sharp White Background.

We've been listening to Morgan Parker read from Magical Negro from Tin House.

When I see all of the poems with numbers like Magical Negro, number 217, Diana Ross finishing at Rib in Alabama, 1990s, or Magical Negro, number 607, Gladys Knight on the 200th episode of The Jeffersons, I have two feelings at once.

And one is what you've been describing already, one that I'm witnessing a certain sort of archiving of very specific things and things that might not otherwise get archived.

Mm-hmm.

But it also alerts me, the numbers also alert me to that I'm reading something that is part of a larger work that isn't all here in front of me.

And I also get the feeling with the poem you just read with the acknowledgement.

So, for instance, the poem doesn't just say after Zora Neale Hurston to acknowledge your debt to her.

but instead the line says, after Glenn Ligon, after Zora Neale Hurston, which sort of creates a chain.

We get Zora Neale Hurston's words, and then we get the artist who put her words into his installation to disembark.

And then your poem is creating another link, or at least that's the way I read it a little bit.

So I was curious if you see that as this, as...

part of the archival activity is also sort of the connecting to these other figures.

So you've said before in other interviews that emotional statements and personal statements, particularly coming from women, aren't taken as seriously.

That if you're emotional, you are suddenly illogical.

And that there's this misconception to think that emotion can even be divorced from logic and clarity to begin with.

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