THE INK IS BLACK PODCAST | Tiffani Staten

Illustrated woman with short black hair, pink sneakers, and hoop earrings sitting on a stack of books under a podcast microph

with Tiffani Staten

The Fervent Whites: A Novel
by De'Shawn Charles Winslow

July Book Club Pick

It's 1982 in upstate New York, and a couple is coming home. Not to a warm welcome. Not to open arms. James and Ella White are coming back to Fervent, the same tight-knit Black community that turned its back on them, that let them take the fall for something they didn't do.

Fervent. The Whites. The title's doing double duty before you even crack the spine.

At the center of it all are Sylvia Upshaw and her best friend Lafayette "Fate" Jolly, two people who thought they'd made peace with what happened years ago. The Whites' return unravels all of that fast. What's left when you've been cleared on paper but not in the eyes of your neighbors, and what happens to the people who thought that chapter was finally closed.

Winslow writes with a steady hand about betrayal, class, and the messy work of rebuilding a life in a place that already decided who you are.

This one's got teeth. Our first thriller pick on the pod, and it's a doozy.

Tune in at the end of the month to hear the full breakdown.

Available Where Books Are Sold

AUGUST'S PICK

The Double Dutch Fuss: A Memoir

By Phill Branch

Before he was an Emmy-winning filmmaker, Phill Branch was a kid in 1980s Newark who felt more at home jumping double dutch than playing football. That one detail was enough to put him on his father's radar for good, and it set the tone for years of trying to fit into a version of Black manhood that never quite fit him.

This memoir follows Branch from Newark to Hampton University to Los Angeles, tracing what it cost him to hide, and what it took to finally stop. At the center of it all is his relationship with his father, a bond that's messy and tender and never fully resolved in the ways you'd expect.

It's honest. It's funny in the places you don't expect it to be. And it's a story about becoming yourself on your own terms, even when everyone around you had other plans for who you'd be.

Full Disclosure: Phill and I went to college together, same major, orbiting each other's worlds. I've been cheering him on ever since, so getting to share this one with y'all means a lot.

Tune in at the end of August.

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