This week on SELECTED SHORTS, guest host DeRay Mckesson presents four works that consider the Black experience in America from bold perspectives. Former Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm recalled her historic victory in her essay “Unbought and Unbossed.” An excerpt is read by Crystal Dickinson. James Baldwin’s powerful letter to his nephew, “My Dungeon Shook,” is read by Christopher Jackson. Poet Sonia Sanchez recalls a life-altering encounter with Malcolm X in “Homegirls on St. Nicholas Avenue,” read by Marsha Stephanie Blake, and Percival Everett turns the tables on Southern racists in “The Appropriation of Cultures,” read by Wren T. Brown.

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This week on SELECTED SHORTS, host Meg Wolitzer presents three stories about problems without solutions. In Elif Batuman’s “The Board,” read by Cindy Cheung, the protagonist has found the perfect apartment, but he has to satisfy a Kafka-esque co-op committee. Jesse Eisenberg imagines an irritating sibling with problems of global proportions in ““My Little Sister Texts Me with Her Problems,” read by real-life sisters Lacey Lamar and Amber Ruffin. And a patient is drawn to her therapist—but is this a bad thing? in Esther Freud’s “Transference,” read by Claire Danes.

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Host Meg Wolitzer presents two stories that demonstrate the ways in which characters—like all of us—can play many different roles in one another's lives, and in the world around us. Cherline Bazile’s “Tender,” which guest editor Min Jin Lee included in Best American Short Stories 2023, reflects the contradictory nature of friendship. It’s read by Anna Uzele. And our second story, Grace Paley’s “The Contest,” reflects the contradictory nature of courtship, as the bewildered narrator is alternatively flattered and bullied by a girl with way more on the ball than he has.He tells us so himself, in the voice of actor Justin Bartha.

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