Kamal Al-Solaylee is the author of Brown: What Being Brown in the World Today Means (To Everyone)
In her Globe and Mail review of Kamal Al-Solaylee's Brown: What Being Brown in the World Today Means (To Everyone), Scaachi Koul wrote that the book was essential reading, "not only for brown people seeking connection or explanation, but for anyone with any stake in understanding the non-white world." We spoke to author Al-Solaylee, a finalist for the 2006 Governor-General's Award for Non-Fiction, about his current passions, from elegant song to essential radio to a book on America's black and white divide.
What he's listening to: "I'm a sucker for the Great American Songbook, so I'm mesmerized by Kristin Chenoweth's new The Art of Elegance because it's just a collection of standards beautifully orchestrated and impeccably sung. For nearly 25 years, the two-volume Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Rodgers and Hart Song Book has rarely been out of my CD player. I want it played at my funeral and maybe even buried with it."
What he's tuned into: "CBC Radio 1. Is there anything else? I wake up to Metro Morning, hang around for The Current and go to sleep to the midnight edition of As It Happens. My idea of bliss is the back-to-back Spark, Tapestry and Writers & Company on Sunday afternoons. I guess that makes me an elite – or is it an effete? – to the political right."
What he's reading: "I'm reading (and sighing) my way through White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide, Carol Anderson's detailed study of how black progress in America has been stalled. It's a prescient and brutal analysis – but a necessary one."
Kamal Al-Solaylee (and Ann Y.K. Choi, Steve Paikin and Charlotte Gray) read at the Ben McNally Globe and Mail Books and Brunch, Dec. 11, 10 a.m., $55. Omni King Edward Hotel 37 King St. E., 416-361-0032.
Brad Wheeler