An Adventurous Duo Performs New Music

Alegria was raised by left-leaning parents. As a young woman, she left El Salvador to study in the United States, and then to report on the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Later, she was denied entry into her home country. Alegria joins Fresh Air to talk about her writing and life as an exile.

Michael Barson's new book, Lost, Lonely and Vicious, collects promotional postcards of B movies from the late 1940s through the early '60s. He says these films were all sizzle, and were tame compared to their lurid, sensationalistic descriptions.

Whoopi Goldberg's one-woman show leans heavily on celebrity impersonations and a character named Fontaine -- a black man who expounds on various social issues affecting the African American community. But these monologues are often divorced from narrative context, and lose their power. Critic Laurie Stone says she's more impressed by Goldberg's action movie roles, and what her presence in movie does for black actors.