Adam Shatz, THE REBEL’S CLINIC & Vanessa Lillie, BLOOD SISTERS

Writer's Voice with Francesca Rheannon

Mind & Liberation: Unveiling Frantz Fanon’s Revolutionary Psychiatry and Post-Colonial Vision. Also, a Cherokee murder mystery.

We talk with Adam Shatz about his acclaimed biography, The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon.

Then, a Cherokee murder mystery based on two very real crises affecting Indigenous communities: missing and murdered women and environmental racism. We talk with Cherokee author Vanessa Lillie about her suspense novel, Blood Sisters.

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Key words: Adam Shatz, Frantz Fanon, Vanessa Lillie, suspense, history, podcast, book recommendations, author interview, book podcast, book show, writer’s voice, Francesca Rheannon

Who Was Frantz Fanon?

Frantz Fanon lived a mere 36 years, yet his revolutionary legacy has been enduring. He was the intellectual activist of the postcolonial era, and his writings about race, revolution, and the psychology of power continue to shape radical movements across the world

As a psychiatrist, he explored how colonialism deforms the psyche of not only the colonized but also the colonizer.

As a Black man, he wrote powerfully about identity, alienation and the trauma of being The Other in the view of the White Gaze.

And as a revolutionary, he held a nuanced understanding of anti-colonial violence, as both a tool for liberation and a destructive force that can undermine democracy in post-colonial societies.

The Rebel’s Clinic

We discuss all this and more with my guest Adam Shatz. His biography of Fanon, The Rebel’s Clinic, explores Frantz Fanon’s life, work, and enduring influence on post-colonial theory and beyond. It was named a most anticipated book of 2024.

About The Author

Adam Shatz is the US editor of The London Review of Books and a contributor to The New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, and other publications. In addition to The Rebel’s Clinic, he is the author of Prophets Outcast: A Century of Dissident Jewish Writing about Zionism and Israel and Writers and Missionaries: Essays on the Radical Imagination. He is also the host of the podcast Myself with Others.

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Twin Crises Afflicting Indigenous Communties

There are twin crises afflicting Native American communities. The first is the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Crisis: one study found that more than four in five Native American women (84.3 percent) have experienced violence in their lifetime.

The other crisis is environmental racism. Indigenous communities are disproportionately exposed to environmental contaminants.

One of the worst examples of this racism can be found on Cherokee land in northeast Oklahoma, home to one of the worst Superfund sites in the country. Contamination by lead and zinc mining has spawned an epidemic of chronic diseases and poisoned the land and water.

A Cherokee Murder Mystery

Vanessa Lillie is an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation — and a bestselling author of suspense novels like Little Voices and For the Best. Her new thriller is Blood Sisters, named as one of the best mystery novels of 2023 by the Washington Post.

Her thriller Blood Sisters takes up the themes of environmental injustice and the missing Indigenous women crisis, based on real events near the Cherokee community where Lillie grew up.

Read An Excerpt