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Emily Bernard has offered her essays to The American Scholar since 2005, when we published \u201cTeaching the N-Word.\u201d She's written a lot of essays since then, essays that prove their etymology: the French word essayer\u2014to try. She tries on different ways of thinking about what it means to be black, or the mother of daughters adopted from Ethiopia, or married to a white man, or the American daughter of a Trinidadian father. She joins us on the podcast to sort through the questions\u2014and some of the answers\u2014that form the heart of her new collection, Black Is the Body.

Go beyond the episode:

• Emily Bernard\u2019s Black Is the Body: Stories from My Grandmother\u2019s Time, My Mother\u2019s Time, and Mine
• Read her essays in The American Scholar: \u201cTeaching the N-Word,\u201d \u201cInterstates,\u201d \u201cScar Tissue,\u201d and a bonus from our archives about friendship, \u201cFired.\u201d

Tune in every week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek. Follow us on Twitter @TheAmScho or on Facebook.

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