S6 Ep. 49: Georgia’s Fani Willis Takes on Trump: Maurice Carlos Ruffin on the History of Powerful Black Women Challenging the Establishment

fiction/non/fiction

Fiction writer Maurice Carlos Ruffin joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about the literary and historical antecedents to Fani Willis, the Georgia prosecutor who has filed a RICO case against Trump and 18 co-defendants for their illegal attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. He discusses the long history of Black women who have challenged the white establishment when it comes to issues like political corruption, incarceration, and violence. He reads from his forthcoming novel The American Daughters, historical fiction about an enslaved woman who joins a society of spies.

To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/

This episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf.

Maurice Carlos Ruffin

• We Cast a Shadow
• The Ones Who Don’t Say I Love You
• The American Daughters (forthcoming in 2024)
• “Returning the Gaze” | VQR Online

Others:

• Ida Bae Wells on X: "Once again, it is Black people who are the greatest agents of democracy the United States has ever seen." / X
• “Fani Willis Took On Atlanta’s Gangs. Now She May Be Coming For Trump.” The New York Times Magazine
• Maurice Ruffin, First (Literary) Citizen of New Orleans (Literary Hub)
• Maurice Carlos Ruffin’s Creative Journey from Lawyer to Award-Winning Writer (Literary Hub)
• Fiction/Non/Fiction: Season 3, Episode 26: “The Past Is Never Dead: Maurice Carlos Ruffin and Michael Gorra on the ‘New South’ and Whether Faulkner Still Belongs There”
• Toni Morrison
• The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
• Lighting the Fires of Freedom: African American Women in the Civil Rights Movement, by Janet Dewart Bell
• Sojourner Truth
• Angela Davis
• Harriet Tubman
• Ida B. Wells
• Phillis Wheatley
• Nikole Hannah-Jones
• Maya Angelou
• Zora Neale Hurston
• Ernest J. Gaines
• The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

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