Dionne Brand says of Giada Scodellaro debut novel, winner of the prestigious Novel Prize: “Ruins, Child takes us to the crumbling architecture of a future past; a future past that is possibly now. In this work of fractal seeing, we encounter women in lives that are simultaneously lived, reenacted, and observed. Ruins, Child is conceptually rich, prismatic, and choral, embodied, and surreal, cinematic and textual. Giada Scodellaro writes us Black life watching Black life.” In today’s conversation with Giada we look at this singular novel, one that moves less by story than by sound and by image; we look at the politics and poetics of the gaze, at the grammar of film and dance in relation to the the way Giada’s language gestures and flows; at Black artistic lineages, and at this community in her novel, of largely Black women, who film themselves living, and watch themselves on film alive.

For the bonus audio archive, Giada contributes a reading from Dionne Brand’s touchstone collection of poetry Ossuaries. This joins contributions from many past guests including Dionne herself, Christina Sharpe, Nikky Finney, Ada Limón, Lydia Davis, Viet Thanh Nguyen and many others. To learn how to subscribe to the bonus audio and about the many other potential benefits and rewards of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter, head over to the show’s Patreon page.

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