Rachel Zucker speaks with writer Sabrina Orah Mark (author of The Babies and Tsim Tsum) right before the first night of Passover. They talk about Judaism, surrealism, Claudia Rankine and Kenneth Koch, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, being good at being pummeled, the prose poem, the kabbalistic concept of tsim tsum, the Holocaust, Jewish identification, what makes a Nazi a Nazi, empathy, Trump, slavery, living in Georgia, the commodification of trauma, teaching outside the academy, “the crying room,” writing fiction, using “I” again, raising an interracial Jewish family in the South, privilege, safety, fear, and believing and not believing in healing.
EXTRA RESOURCES FOR EPISODE 33Books by Sabrina Orah MarkTsim Tsum (Saturnalia, 2009)
The Babies (Saturnalia, 2004)
Other Books and Authors Mentioned in the EpisodeClaudia Rankine
Kenneth Koch
John Donne
Rachel Zucker’s chapbook Annunciation
Coetze’s Waiting for the Barbarians (Penguin, 2010)
Josh Bell
Reginald McKnight
Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness by Jane Lazarre
Bruno Schulz
Other Relevant LinksMagritte’s The Healer
Emmett Till
Controversy over the Emmett Till painting at the Whitney
“The Poet as Collector,” Sabrina’s lecture on trash
Rachel’s birth poem that mentions tsim tsum
Episode 101: Prageeta Sharma
Episode 100: Doreen Wang
Episode 99: Douglas Kearney
Episode 98: Torrey Peters
Episode 97: Camille Dungy
Episode 96: Judy Grahn
Episode 95: Jason Schneiderman
Episode 94: Jennifer Block
Episode 93: Arielle Greenberg
Episode 92: Behind the Scenes
Episode 91: Nate Marshall
Episode 90: Makenna Goodman
Episode 89: The Ladder Out of the Hole
Episode 88: Global Roll Call, Part 3
Episode 87: Global Roll Call, Part 2
Episode 86: Global Roll Call, Part 1
Episode 85: The Craft of the Literary Interview
Episode 84: M. NourbeSe Philip
Episode 83: Darcey Steinke
Episode 82: Maggie Nelson
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
50 Tastes Of Gray
Dear Alice | Interior Design
Spider-Man Crawlspace Podcast
The Art of War
Gulliver’s Travels
The Magnus Archives
The Moth