E-mail a friendMarch 9, 2007
Tavis talks with Michael Eric Dyson and Ethiopian writer Dinaw Mengestu.
Dr. Michael Eric Dyson
Dr. Michael Eric Dyson
Dr. Michael Eric Dyson is a social analyst, ordained minister and best-selling author. A former teen father who once lived on welfare, Dyson went on to earn a Ph.D. from Princeton. He's written books on Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King, singer Marvin Gaye and Bill Cosby. In his latest, Come Hell or High Water, Dyson offers a searing assessment of the meaning of Hurricane Katrina. Often described as the "hip-hop intellectual," Dyson is Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania.
Dinaw Mengestu
Dinaw Mengestu
Born in Ethiopia, Dinaw Mengestu immigrated to the U.S. in '80, joining his father, who fled their native country during the Red Terror. He graduated from Columbia University's MFA fiction program and interned at The New Yorker. A Visiting Writer at his Georgetown alma mater, Mengestu has written a firsthand account of the situation in Darfur for RollingStone and draws on his background to tell a story of the African immigrant experience in his debut novel, Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears.