Real Ballers Read

To celebrate our 50th episode, Real Ballers Read had a special guest on today’s podcast: Symone Speech!! Symone is the Executive Director, college advisor and NCAA specialist for @ccachicago , a volleyball coach, retired pro athlete extraordinaire, and Jan's fiancé. In this episode, we hear Symone’s incredible story from not making tryouts as a 7th grader to making it as a pro volleyballer in Ital...

 What a joy this episode was to record! bell hooks is one of our favorite authors and there is still so much we have to learn from her work. In this episode, we talk about one of our favorite books of hers, We Real Cool. We discuss what our favorite chapters are, whether or not we agree with her analysis and so many different aspects of masculinity and Black masculinity in particular. Share t...

In this final Part 3 episode, Jan and Miles keep talking with Reggie Bailey— the man behind @reggiereads and one of the hosts of the awesome podcast, Books Are Pop Culture! The party don't stop... 2:32 You can’t get to the next level by being agreeable 4:34 How does Reggie measure his growth 7:39 Practicing the community you preach 10:34 Talking with Imani Perry 13:18 How to contact and talk with...

In this Part 2 episode, Jan and Miles keep talking with Reggie Bailey— the man behind @reggiereads and one of the hosts of the awesome podcast, Books Are Pop Culture! We talk about whether or not books should have trigger warnings, Reggie’s 10 Books 10 Decades challenge, and his story of how Books Are Pop Culture started.  This is another episode full of gems and energy from Reggie so we know...

In this episode, Jan and Miles talk with Reggie Bailey— the man behind @reggiereads and one of the hosts of the awesome podcast, Books Are Pop Culture! We talk about Reggie’s epic story of how he got into reading and our thoughts about Deborah Appleman’s new book, Literature and the New Culture Wars. We kept it real for three + hours so this is just the first part of our convo! Stay tuned for Part...

In this episode, Miles interviews Jan about Eric Thomas' new book, You Owe You. We have been fans of ET's message for some time and this book did not disappoint. It brought all of the energy and focus of his speeches in an even more personal package.  0:41 Background on Eric Thomas 2:08 What surprised Jan most about You Owe You 3:38 Eric Thomas’ Childhood story 5:30 How Jan clarified his purp...

In this episode, Miles and Jan talk about a book that Miles read recently: Native Son by Richard Wright. It's a crazy and complex book that has an even more important legacy. We talk about why the book had such a big impact, what’s relatable and realistic about Bigger Thomas, dive into what it really means to understand other people's emotions and our own. CW: In discussing Native Son, we talk abo...

They are the ONLY thing. In this podcast episode, we talk about all of the places we've been in the past couple of years, and how our relationships to each other and our friends and family have changed during that time.   0:50 What We’re Looking Forward to In Chicago 3:31 What DC Means to Jan 5:04 The difference between people and place 5:30 Miles talks about New York City 11:00 How City Stereotyp...

In this episode, we talk about why Real Ballers Read, the origin of the phrase, why reading is important to us, how our relationship to reading has changed over time and how you can start to strengthen your own reading habits. This episode has been years in the making! We know you'll love it. Subscribe to our podcast and leave a review! 1:31 The Story of When Our Mom First Said Real Ballers Read 4...

We're back to reflect on all of the ways we've grown from this last year of the Real Ballers Read Podcast. We're excited to embark on this new chapter of the podcast with you all! Subscribe to our podcast and leave a review! Real Ballers Read Website Real Ballers Read Instagram 0:40 What We’ve Been up to 6:49 The original purpose of the podcast 10:35 Lesson One- Go First 14:04 How We’ve Changed Th...

Glory Edim has spent a lifetime gathering and uplifting the stories of Black women. As a little girl in Arlington Virginia, Glory could be found at her local library reading The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. As a college student at Howard University, Glory could be found at Founders Library reading Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. As the visionary founder of Well-Read Black Girl,...

On the first day of Dr. Curtis L. Odom’s capstone business class at Northeastern, Dr. Odom tells his students that anything he says twice they should write down.  Eli Boulous, a Senior student in the class one fall, heard this message and then proceeded to take copious notes of everything important Dr. Odom said. He meticulously organized these notes into quotations and by theme, and then gif...

Cree Myles doesn't believe in book blurbs. After years of reading the newest releases around the clock, she's no longer fooled by any overly positive message on a book jacket. But when the author Jason Reynolds took the time to tweet about Noviolet Bulawayo's new book, Glory, she knew his praise was genuine and decided to read the book for herself⏤and now, Glory is her favorite book of 2022. In th...

Sometimes its okay to believe the hype. Brittany Anderson had heard so much about The Final Revival of Opal and New by Dawnie Walton that she figured it was worth picking up a copy.  Little did she know that through this book, she would enter a world of surprises, secrets and betrayal, where a fictional story felt so real that Brittany learned a lot about herself and society. We were blown aw...

Halim A. Flowers is inspiring a love revolution.  He's a prolific artist, activist, and entrepreneur who’s on another level. And for 22 years and 2 months, Halim spent his life in prison, labeled by society as an unredeemable “Superpredator”.  It was during this time that Halim went from reading everything he could get his hands on, to publishing 11 books of prose and poetry from behind...

Hanif Abdurraqib was just a twelve-year-old in the 90's when he picked up Your Blues Ain't Like Mine by Bebe Moore Campbell for the first time; he was probably too young to be reading the book and certainly too young to understand all of what captivated him so much about the book. But Hanif kept coming back to Your Blues Ain't Like Mine every couple of years, and it slowly shifted his own understa...

In a casual conversation with a friend in 2010, Dr. Gina Paige was introduced to a book with a bold title and an interesting premise—Brainwashed by Tom Burrell. In the book, Burrell takes the framework of advertising and marketing campaigns to explain the hundreds of years-long process of brainwashing Black people into believing their own inferiority. While she was already aware of this connection...

You know a book is a real classic when you can love reading it as a child, then love it even more while re reading it as an adult.  Librarian and bookstagrammer Hawa Jalloh from @hawareads proved that to us by sharing her story with Mildred D. Taylor's Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry .  Hawa first picked this one up because she saw herself in the main character on the book cover. But that r...

Double-Agent. Chessmaster. Trickster. Genius. Snitch. Louis E. Tackwood was the "Forrest Gump of Black Radical Politics" and there's no record of his life after 1975. But a careful eye can still find Tackwood in the footnotes of history—as Zach Kirk, a Bay-Area activist, did last year. After frequently seeing Tackwood as a reference in books he was reading, Zach decided to investigate this mysteri...

In 2011, Brandon decided to take his life-long love and talent for cooking to the next level by getting his first job in the restaurant industry. The reality of the industry was not as sunny as Brandon expected though. After years of packed, no-weekend work schedules and being on the receiving end of an intense amount of pressure and scrutiny, Brandon chose to exit the food business and enjoy his...

Dr. Shana L. Redmond is a professor of the first order. She's an interdisciplinary scholar of race, music, culture, and power and has published award-winning books. But most importantly, she is as committed to learning as her students. And in the fall of 2021, she decided to teach a book she had just read—A Little Devil In America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance by Hanif Abdurraqib. Where ot...

It's the 90's—Ramunda was at Langston University in Oklahoma and Derrick was 1,300 miles away at Bowie State University in Prince George's County, Maryland. While separated by geography, Ramunda and Derrick underwent similar transformations when they were introduced to Assata Shakur's autobiography and Huey Newton's autobiography, Revolutionary Suicide. Assata and Revolutionary Suicide, respective...

Over twenty years ago while attending graduate school, Freddie Taylor came across a book that would change the direction of his life. The book was The Miseducation of the Negro by Carter G. Woodson and it's a book he has read countless times since. Taylor then began a transformative deep dive into Black history that led to him founding Urban Intellectuals, a company committed to informing Black pe...

In December of 1984, a young Mark Anthony Neal read a book that jumpstarted his political and cultural awakening, Earthquakes and Sunrise Missions by Haki Madhubuti. The book's honest discussion of Black culture and the relationships between Black men and Black women laid a foundation for inquiries that have guided his journey since. In response to a variety of different questions from us, Dr. Nea...

In this episode, we talk with Kat from @booksenvogue about The Afrominimalist's Guide to Living with Less by Christine Platt. Kat stumbled upon this book listening to a podcast actually (as you will by listening to this show🤯) and she was surprised by the depth of the book and all of the personal revelations it brought about. We talk about everything she appreciated and learned from Afrominimalis...