Society & Culture

Playwright and novelist Ntzoake Shange, best known for her play For Colored Girls, joins Fresh Air to talk about the diversity of the black experience, her childhood and early education, and the criticism she sometimes gets from black male authors and playwrights. Her new play is called Betsey Brown.

John Leonard reviews fellow book critic Jonathan Yardley's new memoir, Our Kind of People. Leonard disagrees with Yardley's world view, but his real criticism lies in how the author glosses over the enduring literary and cultural legacy of WASPs in the United States.

Fallows writes for the Atlantic Monthly, and reports on Asia. His new book, More Like Us, examines the cultural differences between the United States and Asian countries, and argues that America needs to embrace its unique diversity -- and work to resolve class differences -- in order to reach its full potential.

HBO will soon air the animated show Babar, about an elephant and his family. TV critic David Bianculli says the program joins the ranks of other recent, excellent children's programming like Shining Time Station and the Peter Pan musical. More importantly, his kids love it too.

Carl Bernstein, who broke the Watergate story with his colleague Bob Woodward, has a new memoir about his parents, called Loyalties. Bernstein's mother and father were communist activists during the McCarthy era, and were monitored by the FBI.

Tan's first novel is called The Joy Luck Club, which is about a group of Chinese mothers who try to understand their American-born daughters. She joins Fresh Air to discuss her relationship with her own mother, and her mother's home country.

Critic Ken Tucker reviews the Oscar-winning 1943 film, which was credited with galvanizing support for the Allies during World War II. Contrary to some contemporary attitudes toward the movie, critic Ken Tucker says Mrs. Miniver critiques, rather than celebrates, bourgeois life.

Ted Schultz edited a new book called The Fringes of Reason, which compiles conflicting opinions of supernatural, New Age, and cosmological world views. Schultz is now studying entomology, which he says is related to his curiosity about what is and isn't real.

John Irving began his career writing short books that were critically-acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful. His more sprawling novels, beginning with The World According to Garp, proved to be more popular. Book critic John Leonard reviews Irving's latest, A Prayer for Owen Meany, which he says is fatalistic, religious, and unexpectedly funny.

Award-winning book reviewer Jonathan Yardley has recently published a memoir called Our Kind of People, about his family, his parents' marriage, and WASP culture. He says that, at the age of 47, he was finally able to see his mother and father as people -- not just his parents. He joins Fresh Air to talk about his book, as well as his work as a critic.

Critic-at-large Laurie Stone says that recent advertisements, TV shows, and theater betray a cultural shift toward a new traditionalism that debases feminism and expects women to return to conventionally feminine roles.

Rather than simply include more women artists into the canon, Nochlin believes art critics and historians should rethink the way artistic greatness has been constructed in such a way that has prevented women from achieving a particular model of success. Her new book about this topic is called Women, Art, and Power.

The prolific and award-winning author is uncomfortable with fame, and has kept a low public profile. Now he opens up in a new collection of autobiographical essays. Updike uses his own body as a jumping-off point for his ruminations.

Language Commentator GEOFFREY NUNBERG reviews a new video version of Strunk and White's "The Elements of Style," featuring CBS newsman CHARLES OSGOOD.

Robert MacNeil hosts the Newshour program with Jim Lehrer. His latest book is about how his childhood experiences led him to a career in the news, and the importance of language and diction in his professional life.

Film critic David Bianculli says the drama China Beach and a special episode of Nightline deal with the lives of Vietnam veterans in respectful and powerful ways; both are worth watching.

Le Guin has a new collection of essays called "Dancing at the Edge of the World," about her life as a writer of genre fiction, her perspective as a woman sci-fi author who is also a mother, and the various tropes she explore in her classic works, like 1969's gender-themed "Left Hand of Darkness."

The new novelist's book, The Casual Brutality, deals with a man from Trinidad who moves to Canada -- a narrative inspired by Bissoondath's own life. The writer is descended from Indian immigrants, and is the nephew of fellow author V.S. Naipaul.

Critic Stuart Klawans reviews the new Mike Leigh film, about working class people and their gentrifying London neighborhood. It's the director's first movie since the 1970s; Klawans says it was worth the wait.

Naipaul was born to Indian Hindu parents in Trinidad. His international perspective has informed both his fiction and nonfiction, which are often set in post-colonial countries. His newest book, A Turn in the South, explores the culture of the United States' Southern states.