Therí Alyce Pickens on What Had Happened Was

This discussion is with Dr. Therí A. Pickens received her undergraduate degree in Comparative Literature from Princeton University (P’05) and her PhD in Comparative Literature from UCLA (2010).  She is a poet-scholar who focuses on Arab American Studies, Black Studies, Comparative Literature, and Disability Studies.

In today’s conversation, we discuss her debut poetry collection What Had Happened Was, where she addresses topics ranging from Black life, popular culture, and history to individual encounters with emotion, love, and chronic disability.

What is Conversations in Atlantic Theory?

These conversations explore the cultural, political, and philosophical traditions of the Atlantic world, ranging from European critical theory to the black Atlantic to sites of indigenous resistance and self-articulation, as well as the complex geography of thinking between traditions, inside traditions, and from positions of insurgency, critique, and counternarrative.