Karen Grigsby Bates
Karen Grigsby Bates is the Senior Correspondent for Code Switch, a podcast that reports on race and ethnicity. A veteran NPR reporter, Bates covered race for the network for several years before becoming a founding member of the Code Switch team. She is especially interested in stories about the hidden history of race in America—and in the intersection of race and culture. She oversees much of Code Switch's coverage of books by and about people of color, as well as issues of race in the publishing industry. Bates is the co-author of a best-selling etiquette book (Basic Black: Home Training for Modern Times) and two mystery novels; she is also a contributor to several anthologies of essays. She lives in Los Angeles and reports from NPR West.
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Who turned out the lights out, and what's being done about it? Two years ago this weekend, the biggest blackout in U.S. history struck parts of the Northeast, Midwest and Canada, knocking out power to millions of Americans. Karen Grigsby Bates looks at what's been done since to fix the problems that led up to the blackout.
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The Watts Riots began in Los Angeles 40 years ago Thursday, a six-day eruption of racial frustration that left 34 people dead, hundreds more injured and scores of buildings damaged, looted or destroyed. Karen Grigsby Bates visits the 77th Street police station in the heart of Watts with writer Karl Fleming, who witnessed the riots as a reporter for Newsweek magazine.
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Karen Grigsby Bates tours the San Fernando Valley suburb of Los Angeles with Day to Day commentator and mystery writer Marcos McPeek Villatoro to talk about his latest book, A Venom Beneath the Skin. -
NPR's Karen Grigsby Bates reconnects with the members of "Roadtrip Nation." The young explorers have taken the idea of doing a post-college road trip and turned it into a public television series. They ask successful people they meet on the road how they got where they are.
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Author Judith Moore's darkly humorous and unflinching memoir recounts growing up "heavy" with an abusive mother. Moore revels in the delights of a cheeseburger, and the subtle victory of rising above her past.
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Karen Grigsby Bates looks at why no one seems to want to take advantage of one great perk of being Los Angeles mayor: living rent-free in a gorgeous mansion. -
Karen Grigsby Bates usually has a big stack of books to enjoy over the summer months. She shares four selections covering the gamut: from history to memoirs to children's books to cookbooks.
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Karen Grigsby Bates tours the South Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts with journalist Karl Fleming, who was nearly beaten to death during a racial protest in the summer of 1966. Fleming's new book details his time reporting on the civil rights movement during the turbulent 1960s. -
In Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith, the latest collection of personal essays from Anne Lamott, the author picks up where her last book, the bestselling Traveling Mercies, left off. She talks with NPR's Karen Grigsby Bates.
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Nancy Rawles' new novel My Jim is the story of Sadie Watson, the wife of "Nigger Jim," as he was referred to in the Mark Twain classic Huckleberry Finn. Rawles' novel is an enduring love story as much as it is a chronicle of slavery and resistance to it.
