Left of Black S12 · E7 | Shanna Greene Benjamin on the Life and Legacy of Nellie Y. McKay

Nellie Y. McKay, a champion for Black women's voices in modern literature, was also a scholar with an extraordinary path to academia in the late 1960's, early 1970's. Many personal details of her life were not known until after her passing away in 2006, even to some of her closest colleagues. McKay rewrote the narrative of her life to become aligned with her goals of becoming a professor in African American Literature, which led to such achievements as co-editing the Norton Anthology of African American Literature with Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. In this episode of Left of Black, host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal sits with Dr. Shanna Greene Benjamin to discuss her book, Half in Shadow: The Life and Legacy of Nellie Y. McKay, published by University of North Carolina Press.