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Gilbert Cruz is joined by two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Colson Whitehead as he talks about his novel “Crook Manifesto,” which picks up the story of furniture salesman and sometime crook Ray Carney, and what it was like to write about Harlem in the 1970s. He also reflects on his famous post-9/11 essay on New York City.
“I was trying to understand my hometown after it was attacked,” Whitehead says of his piece from DailyExpertNews Magazine, which was later collected in the book “The Colossus of New York.” “I cried while writing this essay. … I felt better when I wrote it, and I put into words so much about the city that I had never tried to put into words before. And when it came out, it meant so much to other people. I had never written anything that had such a response, and it moved me to write more essays about the city.
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