Dr. Laila Amine on Arab immigration and race relations in France. Bread and Roses' host Del Criscenzo asks Laila, her compatriot, about the history of French Imperialism and Arab immigration to France. They discuss racism and race relations in their country as well as Maghrebi literature and its contributions to denouncing historical silencing. Laila Amine specializes in twentieth-century African American and African Diaspora literature with particular interest in comparative race and ethnic studies. Her current project, Algerian Paris: Belonging beyond Diaspora uncovers how the Algerian war (1954-1962) and its legacies shaped representations of a transnational Paris in African American, French, and Maghrebi cultural texts. Laila Amine was born in Brest, France in 1977. Her parents emigrated from Morocco in the mid 1960s. Her father worked in the building industry. After studying English at the Université Victor Segalen, she lived in Luton, England and Santa Barbara California, before starting her graduate studies at Indiana University. She is now a postdoctoral research fellow in the department of African American Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.

Native Poet Erika Wurth discusses her first collection of poems Indian Trains. Bread and Roses' host Del Criscenzo interviewed Erika a year ago after one of her poetry readings in Bloomington, IN. Erika T. Wurth is Apache, Chickasaw and Cherokee. She was born in Los Angeles and grew up in Colorado between Idaho Springs and Evergreen, although she has lived different places off and on. Her work, both poetry and fiction, has appeared in Raven Chronicles, Fiction, Cedar Hill Review, AMCRJ, and SAIL. She teaches creative writing at Western Illinois University in Macomb, Illinois. She talks with Del about her art, her identiy as an artist, and reads some poems from Indian Trains and her new collection not yet published.

My Teenage Werewolf: A Mother, a Daughter, a Journey Through the Thicket of Adolescence is Lauren Kessler's latest book in which she explores the mother/daughter relationship and tries to find out "what's more challenging in the life of a woman: being a teenager or being the mother of a teenager?" Lauren Kessler is the author of six works of narrative non-fiction, including Dancing with Rose: Finding Life in the Land of Alzheimer's for which she won the Pacific Northwest Book Award. Lauren also teaches  journalism and directs the graduate program in literary nonfiction at the University of Oregon. Visit www.myteenagewerewolf.com for update on Lauren and Lizzie's lives or http://laurenkessler.com for more on Lauren's works. She sat with Bread and Roses' host Del Criscenzo to discuss My Teenage Werewolf and her current research...

More information on My Teenage Werewolf is available at Books on KBOO

Listen as Del Criscenzo interviews Samantha Taylor and Megan Snelling. Samantha Taylor is a student advocate working for the Women’s Resource Center at Portland Community College Sylvania campus. Samantha started by discussing the Women’s Resource Center and the services and resources they have available for PCC students. She introduced the Illumination Project an interactive theater program at PCC designed to address issues of discrimination to end oppression on campus. We were also joined by Megan Snelling who is a co-producer for this year’s production of the Vagina Monologues. She discussed the up-coming performances and why this is a PCC tradition. Megan read The Happy Vagina Fact Monologue and described her experiences being part of the Vigina Monologues production and of the Illumination Project. She improvised a scene with Samantha  to demonstrate how PCC uses interactive theater to address issues of discrimination. 2 powerful women working hard towards social change!