Who thought that would be good for a kid?
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Prologue
Stars & Bars & Bars
Producer Neil Drumming talks with the rapper Breeze Brewin about a toy car they both loved playing with as kids: The General Lee from the hit TV show The Dukes of Hazzard. Breeze went on to record a song called “Generally” about The General Lee with his group the Juggaknots. (11 minutes)
History is Not a Toy
There’s a museum in Baltimore that was created to memorialize the Black experience in America. It’s called The National Great Blacks in Wax Museum. Our producer B.A. Parker went there as a kid, and its straightforward and sometimes disturbing look at history stuck with her. So she went back. (14 minutes)
The Questionnaire
Over the last few years, there’s been a flood of kids from Central America who’ve arrived in the United States by themselves. With no adults. And often, they have to navigate the immigration system on their own. One of the people who’s helped them is the writer Valeria Luiselli. She worked as a translator in immigration court, where her job was to ask children a series of forty questions. Her story is excerpted from her book Tell Me How It Ends. (17 minutes)
Rocket Boy
Paul Zimmer is eighty-three years old now, and he’s still haunted by something he saw in his teens. Something very few Americans have ever seen: The explosion of an atomic bomb. Paul’s essay originally appeared in The Georgia Review. It is read by actor John Conlee. (6 minutes)
Song:
Related
Act One: Do You Hear What I Hear?
Act Three: Girls In Need Of A Safer Time
Act One
Staff Recommendations
Simulated Worlds
Civil War reenactments, wax museums, simulated coal mines, fake ethnic restaurants, an ersatz Medieval castle, and other re-created worlds that thrive all across America.
Abdi and the Golden Ticket
A story about someone who's desperately trying – against long odds – to make it to the United States and become an American.