'I Did Not Watch the Video'

The week Ida B. Wells’ reporting on lynching received a Pulitzer Prize, a video of 25 year-old Ahmaud Arbery being chased and killed began to circulate on social media. It was one of the few news stories that have grabbed widespread attention amid the coronavirus pandemic. But how do we all process such horrible violence, even as we continue to face the daily tragedies of a pandemic?

To answer that question, host Kai Wright sat down for a video chat with a writer whose debut collection of dystopian short stories has won widespread acclaim for reimagining America's responses to anti-black violence. In this episode, Kai and Friday Black author Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah reflect on how they each deal with the spectacle of anti-black violence, what they learned from their elders, and the mind-scrambling experience of living through a pandemic at the center of global capitalism.

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Notes from America airs live on Sundays at 6 p.m. ET. The podcast episodes are lightly edited from our live broadcasts.