LATEST SALES & OFFERS: PROMOTIONS
Playwright, actress, teacher, Anna Deavere Smith is most of all a listener. For years she has created unique art by listening more closely than others, listening with the belief that language and character are inextricably bound. In Talk to Me she listens in search of America. Smith's goal is to discern the American character and to capture its politics. To that end she travels everywhere from the site of recent church burnings in rural Alabama to the presidential conventions of 1996, from the segregated Baltimore of her childhood to the Maryland Correctional Institute for Women. And along the way she interviews everyone from Studs Terkel to President Bill Clinton himself. The result is a defiantly brilliant book that honors no rules.
What Smith does with these interviews shows a kind of brilliance that goes straight to the heart. --Los Angeles Times Succeeds in teaching one crucial lesson: those who truly listen, truly hear. --The New York Times Book Review [A] fascinating, hall-of-mirrors meditation. --San Francisco Chronicle [A] book as fascinating for its content as it is beautiful for its poetic form. --Denver Rocky Mountain News [This book] succeeds in teaching one crucial lesson: those who truly listen, truly hear. --The New York Times Book Review
