Society & Culture

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews the novel "A Feather on the Breath of God," about a second-generation immigrant born to Chinese and German parents.

Journalist Leslie Savan writes about television advertising. Her new book, "The Sponsored Life," reveals "how commercial values infiltrate our beliefs and desires, how we become more and more sponsored."

Film Critic Stephen Schiff reviews "Higher Learning," the new film from director John Singleton. It's about identity and culture clashes on a college campus, and stars Laurence Fishburne, Ice Cube and Omar Epps.

Linguist Geoffrey Nunberg says that the word is akin to the New York City borough -- little known and misunderstood by many. He has this commentary.

Redgrave appeared in over 50 films, including "Morgan!", "Blow Up", "Julia" and "Howards End". Her stage work has included Shakespeare, Chekhov, Noel Coward and Tennessee Williams. She comes from a celebrated theater family, and her daughters are both actresses. Redgrave is also well known for her political activism, including support for Nuclear Disarmament and Palestinian causes. Her memoirs have just been published by Random House.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews "The Paperboy," a new novel about from Pete Dexter. She says its sole flaw is the lack of complex women characters.

Professor of English and Director of African and Afro-American Studies at Washington University, Gerald Early. He reflects on the meaning of Motown music to whites and blacks.

Terry discusses the recent murder of abortion doctors with Dr. Susan Wicklund, who provides abortion services; National Director of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue Reverend, Flip Benham; and Director of the Christian Defense Coalition, Pat Mahoney.

Humorist and NPR commentator David Sedaris charms us with "Santaland Diaries." The piece comes from Sedaris' book "Barrel Fever," and first ran on NPR's Morning Edition a few days before Christmas 1992. Even though Sedaris has achieved national fame and movie contracts for his humor writing, he still cleans apartments during the day, because, he says, he can only write at night.

Film critic Stephen Schiff has a review of Little Women, the latest of many adaptations of Louisa May Alcott's classic novel.

Payn's new memoir is about his life with the the legendary theater songwriter. Coward is the author of "Hay Fever," "Private Lives," and "Blithe Spirit." Payn met him as a child, when he acted in Coward's "Words and Music" in 1932. The two were friends for thirty years until Coward's death in 1973.

Grimsley is a writer-in-residence at the 7 Stages Theater in Atlanta, and the winner of Newsday's George Oppenheimer Award for Best New American Playwright in 1988. His first novel is "Winter Birds," about an eight-year-old hemophiliac in a poor family who witnesses violent fight between his parents on Thanksgiving. Grimsley says the book is "autobiographical, but not an autobiography." He also has been HIV positive for 14 years, making him one of the longest survivors of the virus.

Linguist Geoffrey Nunberg comments on the importance of the integrity of language to the French.

Writer Darcy Frey, a contributing editor to "Harper's" and "The New York Times Magazine," spent a year at the Abraham Lincoln High School on Coney Island. He followed four young, African American basketball players trying to make it out of the ghetto and into a Division I school. "The Last Shot: City Streets, Basketball Dreams" is his record of what happened to the dreams of these young men.

Kushner is the author of "Angels in America," for which he won a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award for Best Play. It's a two-part "seven hour epic about gays, AIDS and Reaganism" (New York "Newsday"). Kushner reads a new poem, a plea to God about the AIDS epidemic.

Trinidad's latest book is "Answer Song." He and Dennis Cooper are co-editing a volume of selected poems by Tim Dlugos called "Powerless."

Doty won the 1994 National Book Critics Circle award for his poetry, My Alexandria. He is currently a Fannie Hearst Visiting Professor at Brandeis University. He tells Terry about caring for his lover, who died of AIDS.

Hemphill is the author of two books of poetry, "Earth Life" and "Conditions," and a collection of prose and poetry called "Ceremonies." He's also the editor of "Brother to Brother: New Writings by Black Gay Men." He reads an excerpt from his poem "Vital Signs," published in the collection "Life Sentences: Writers, Artists, and AIDS," edited by Thomas Avena.

Michael Denneny is currently an editor at Crown Publishers. He worked with many gay authors in his 17 years at St. Martins Press, where he had his own imprint, Stonewall Editions.

Panter is well known in the punk-rock scene, and was a founding member and writer of "Pee-Wee's Playhouse." She is a member of the punk band Honk if Yer Horny. In 1992, Panter co-founded The Bohemian Women's Political Alliance, a feminist organization of "the teenagers who dressed in black, the bad girls who climbed out of [their] bedroom windows at dark and caught taxis home at dawn."