WILMINGTON, MA — In the June episode of Wilmington Community Television’s Book Stew, host Eileen MacDougall interviews author Renee Simms.
From the host: “Renee Simms is a triple threat attorney/academic/author. Her book of short stories, Meet Behind Mars, brings her own Detroit childhood in the ‘70s and ‘80s to the forefront. In this collection, the most poignant and infuriating is the title story, based on a Cheryl Lynn disco tune, Star Love, from 1978. In it, an indignant mother corresponds with a bureaucratic white school administration determined to derail the education of her black son. It’s both hilarious and furious, and so vivid in the mother’s attempts to corral her contempt so as to not make anything worse that it appears to have been written through gritted teeth.
In this episode, Simms reads from her story, You Can Kiss All Of That Bye-Bye, where an African American teenager is discouraged by the response to her portrayal of Maria in a school play of The Sound Of Music. Her father, a former backup singer, refuses to let her back down, extolling: ‘Do it until their clapping sounds like love.'”
Watch the episode, courtesy of Wilmington Community Television, below:
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