In celebration of 2023 Boston Book Festival, GBH's Callie Crossley of Under the Radar with Callie Crossley talks with Tiya Miles, a public historian and creative writer whose research focuses on African American, Native American and women’s history during colonial America.
Miles is the Michael Garvey Professor of History at Harvard University, the author of five prize-winning works on the history of slavery and early American race relations, and a 2011 MacArthur Fellowship recipient. She was the founder and director of the Michigan-based ECO Girls program. Her New York Times bestselling book All That She Carried won the National Book Award.
Miles’s latest book Wild Girls, examines how Harriet Tubman, Zitkála-Šá and Louisa May Alcott, among others, found self-understanding in the natural world and became women who changed America. This beautiful, meditative work of history puts girls of all races—and the landscapes they loved—at center stage and reveals the impact of the outdoors on women’s independence, resourcefulness and vision. For these trailblazing women of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, navigating the woods, following the stars, playing sports and taking to the streets in peaceful protest were not only joyful pursuits, but also techniques to resist assimilation, racism, and sexism.
Check out all the 2023 Boston Book Festival Headliners and Keynotes at bostonbookfest.org