Psychjourney Audio Book Club

The Ditchdigger's Daughters: A Black Family's Astonishing Success Story

MP3 File

Length-40 minutes, 0 seconds

Jamie Mason, co-host of North Star Guardians, interviews Dr. Yvonne S. Thornton, author of The Ditchdigger's Daughters: A Black Family's Astonishing Success Story published by Kensington.

Dr. Yvonne S. Thornton

Dr. Thornton is a double-Board Certified specialist in obstetrics, gynecology and maternal-fetal medicine. She has risen to the academic rank of Professor of Clinical Obstetrics and Gynecology. She is a member of the Association of Women Surgeons, a life member of The New York Academy of Medicine, and is a Fellow of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American College of Surgeons.

As senior perinatologist in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at The New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, Dr. Thornton established and developed the program for a new form of early prenatal diagnostic testing known as CVS (chronic villus sampling). Dr. Thornton was one of the original American investigators whose CVS results were relied upon by the FDA prior to its granting approval for the procedure in 1989.  Visit her website.

Visit Jamie Mason's website and blog.

Her biography is presently in  Who's Who in America and Who's Who in the World. She is listed in The Best Doctors -- New York Metro Area. She was listed in New York Magazine as one of the Top Ten Maternal-Fetal Medicine Specialists in New York City.

Doctor Thornton was the first black woman in the United States to be Board-certified in High-Risk obstetrics and to be accepted into The New York Obstetrical Society.

Dr. Thornton is the national best-selling author of the Pulitzer prize-nominated book entitled, The Ditchdigger's Daughters: A Black Family's Astonishing Success Story published in 1995, with over 300,000 copies in print. This family biography (co-authored with Jo Coudert) is a tribute to her parents and was condensed in The Reader's Digest, adapted into a World Premiere Movie and nominated for the Peabody Award and the Cable ACE Award for Best Picture.

In 1996, the American Library Association named it as one of the Best Books for Young Adults and Doctor Thornton was given the "Excellence in Literature" Award by the New Jersey Education Association. She has authored two other books;a medical text entitled, Primary Care for the Obstetrician and Gynecologist and Woman to Woman: Leading Gynecologist Tells You All You Need Know abt your Baby your Health.

There Goes My Everything: White Southerners in the Age of Civil Rights, 1945-1975

Length-39 minutes, 20 seconds

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Dr. Jason Sokol, author of  There Goes My Everything: White Southerners in the Age of Civil Rights, 1945-1975 published by Vintage.

Dr. Jason Sokol

Jason Sokol grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts, the birthplace of basketball. He attended Oberlin College, and double-majored in History and Philosophy. Jason graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1999 with Highest Honors in History. From 1997 to 2000, he worked variously for the Springfield Union-News, the New Haven Advocate, and The Nation. Jasons writings on American history, politics, and race have appeared in those publications, among several others.

He received his doctorate in American History from the University of California, Berkeley, under the supervision of Leon Litwack. His dissertation would become the basis for There Goes My Everything. Jason moved to Brooklyn, New York in 2005 and served as a Non-Resident Fellow at Harvard? W.E.B. Du Bois Institute. In that capacity, he worked on assorted television projects dealing with African-American History.

Jason is now a Visiting Assistant Professor of History and Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell University. He lives in Ithaca, New York, with the playwright Nina Louise Morrison.

Jason was recently named one of America's "Top Young Historians" by the History News Network.  Visit his website.

Black Masculinity And the U.S. South: From Uncle Tom to Gangsta

Length-52 minutes, 55 seconds

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Dr. Riche' Richardson, author of Black Masculinity And the U.S. South: From Uncle Tom to Gangsta published by the University of Georgia Press.

Dr. Riche' Richardson

Professor Richardson is a Southerner who was born and raised in Montgomery, Alabama. She joined the English Department faculty at UC Davis in the fall of 1998.

Her scholarly essays have appeared in journals such as American Literature, The Mississippi Quarterly, and the Forum for Modern Language Studies. She is the co-editor, with Jon Smith, of the new book series, The New Southern Studies, at the University of Georgia Press.

Professor Richardson regularly gives lectures and serves on panels at national conferences. Professor Richardson recently completed a two-year term on the Executive Council for the Society for the Study of Southern Literature, and also serves on that organization's Publication Committee. Most recently, she was elected to the Southern Literature Discussion Group in the Modern Language Association (2006-09).

In addition to being a scholar, she is an artist who makes mixed-media appliqué art quilts. Her body of art work will be featured in an upcoming exhibition in Montgomery, Alabama, which will be accompanied by a catalog and site online.  Visit her webpage.

Ghettonation: A Journey Into the Land of Bling and Home of the Shameless

Length- 1 hour, 12 minutes, 2 seconds

Dr. Kevin Keough, interviews Ms. Cora Daniels, M.A., author of Ghettonation: A Journey Into the Land of Bling and Home of the Shameless published by Doubleday.

Ms. Cora Daniels, M.A.

Cora Daniels is an author and award-winning journalist. Her work has appeared in Fortune, the New York Times, Essence, O: The Oprah Magazine, USA Today, Heart & Soul, FSB: Fortune Small Business, and Savoy. She has been a staff writer at Fortune and an editor at Working Mother magazine and is currently a contributing writer for Essence. A sought after expert on diversity and business issues she has served as a commentator on ABC News, CNN, CNBC, BET, NPR, and the Charlie Rose Show. In 2002 she spearheaded Fortune's first ever search for the 50 most powerful Black executives in America. In 2005 her much acclaimed Fortune cover story The Bravest Generation, about the original Black corporate pioneers, created national attention for this overlooked part of civil rights history.

As an author Cora has been called "dynamic", and "perceptive" and "a powerful voice from the younger generation." Her first book, Black Power Inc., was dubbed "thought provoking" by the Washington Post and a "must read" by Black Issues Book Review. Her much anticipated second book, Ghettonation: A Journey Into the Land of Bling and Home of the Shameless (Doubleday) will be released March of 2007.

Cora is a native New Yorker and lives in Brooklyn, NY. She is a graduate of Yale University with a BA in history and has a masters degree in Journalism from Columbia University.   Visit her website .

Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present

58 minutes, 40 seconds

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Ms. Harriet A. Washington, author of Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present published by Doubleday.

Ms. Harriet Washington

Harriet A. Washington has been a fellow in ethics at the Harvard Medical School, a fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health, and a senior research scholar at the National Center for Bioethics at Tuskegee University. As a journalist and editor, she has worked for USA Today and several other publications, been a Knight Fellow at Stanford University and has written for such academic forums as the Harvard Public Health Review and The New England Journal of Medicine. She is the recipient of several prestigious awards for her work. Washington lives in New York City. Visit her website.