Mara Brock Akil

speaker

353 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 30 Jun

Mara Brock Akil’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 — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.

Appearances

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The Oprah Podcast · Mara Brock Akil’s New Novel About Betrayal, Shame & Redemption with Oprah · 30 Jun 2026 podcast

You can be with someone for five years, know they want to be married, know they want to spend the rest of their life with you, want to build a life with you, and you dangle little things in front of them because you want those things too, but you're not really...

But he didn't want her.

And I think that's a lot of investment of time, especially in the 90s when every other article for women was your biological clock.

You better get that guy.

At the same time, they're telling us to be independent.

So she's on a quest to find her man so she can have that baby, build that life.

And he didn't want that from her.

And I think, I think through the lens of, but then I've got to shout out, you know, Medill School of Journalism.

Why?

So that Darren, for me, I got to explore why are some of these stories that we hear and multitude, why the man, how many stories we've heard about women saying he took the best years of my life and he, I've waited five years and I've done this and I've done that.

Well,

I wanted to put my lens on his why and explore what a portrait of a black man could be in 1991 in New York for this successful black woman who's doing her thing.

And he's doing his thing and they look like the perfect couple and everybody projects onto the perfect couple.

And so I wanted to pull that couple apart and I wanted us to see who they were and be a reflection not only of then, but still now.

Thank you.

I'd like to think I do portrait work.

And when you really do a portrait, you need to see the whole person.

And I think

I know I've been endeavoring to paint the fullest humanity of us.

I feel like if America is our home, right, and we are children in this home, our image has been so distorted, if at all, on the wall.

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