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 months

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

So I was interested in that statement in relationship to using outside language in this book.

So in this case, the language of anthropology, which you've said gives – and I think it does.

You've said that this language gives something more credence.

So I was wondering if – do you employ this language twinned with a woman who's a poet –

being emotional as a way to sort of reveal the machinery through which we're manipulated by language?

You

Yeah.

Could, could we hear a couple more poems?

So I was thinking, uh, black women for beginners part one, and we are the house that holds the table at which yes, we will happily take a goddamn seat.

I've been listening to Morgan Parker read from her latest poetry collection, Magical Negro.

So another thing that I think underlies Magical Negro's archival impulse is a question of absences and gaps and of erasure.

There is all the history that's lost in the middle passage, but there's also history that doesn't have to be lost, that could be told but isn't.

instance, in the poem, who are Frederick Douglass's cousins and other quotidian black people?

history facts that I wish I learned in school, we experience the erasure of anything particular, specific, or everyday about black history.

But also, say, Nancy Meyers in your poem, Nancy Meyers, In My Dream of Whiteness, the director of Hollywood blockbusters like The Parent Trap,

none of which have black protagonists or the title of the first section.

Let us now praise famous magical Negroes, which is a nod to James Adjie's work.

Let us now praise famous men, which was looking at three tenant farm families, but all of which were also white.

What I loved about this is that the poems and titles are,

They work in their own way, even if you don't know Nancy Meyers and even if you don't know of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.

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