Saturday Morning for Saturday 28 May 2022

8.10 Joshua Prager: whatever happened to baby Roe?

Almost 50 years ago the US Supreme Court handed down the landmark Roe v Wade ruling securing a woman’s legal right to obtain an abortion. In the decades since, the ruling has been at the centre of the abortion debate and is now looking likely to be overturned following the leak of an opinion document from the court earlier this month.

The plaintiff at the centre of the case, known by the pseudonym Jane Roe, was Louisiana-born woman Norma McCorvey. Her unwanted pregnancy in 1969 opened a great fracture in American life, but baby Roe was in fact born.

Journalist Joshua Prager spent hundreds of hours with McCorvey and her three children up until her death in 2017, and tells her story in his latest book, The Family Roe.

 

8.35  Nathan Joe: new play a meta-analysis of Asian identity

Dubbed "a doom scroll described as a play", Scenes from a Yellow Peril is the latest offering from Chinese-New Zealand playwright and performance poet Nathan Joe.

Looking to dissolve traditional formats, Joe says the work is an epic poem about the East Asian experience in New Zealand, encompassing provocative themes and blending them into a dizzying mix of humour, rage, commentary, and confessional.

Joe was the recipient of the 2021 Bruce Mason Playwriting Award and scooped the title of National Slam Champion in 2020.

Scenes from a Yellow Peril runs from 21 June until 3 July at ASB Waterfront Theatre. Head over here for more information.

 

9.05 Gideon Mendel: capturing portraits of a drowning world

During his 35-year career, South African-born photographer Gideon Mendel has travelled the globe documenting the impact of disease, flood and fire on communities. Mendel began in the 1980s, photographing life under apartheid and then turned his lens on the impact of AIDS in Africa for 12 years. 

Since 2007 Mendel’s focus has often been climate change, capturing the devastating effects of flooding around the world and, most recently, photographing people returning home after wildfires in New South Wales and on the island of Evia in Greece.

Submerged Portraits features in the Auckland Festival of Photography, and is showing on the Queen’s Wharf fence until June 27. Accompanying video work The Water Chapters is screening outside Auckland Central Library between 12-7pm until June 12.
 

 

9.35 Dr Rangi Te Kanawa: working to conserve our taonga kākahu

As a child Rangi Te Kanawa was surrounded by weaving. Both her mother, Diggeress Te Kanawa, and grandmother, Dame Rangimārie Hetet, were lauded Māori weavers. Te Kanawa's formative experiences immersed in the world of harakeke are undoubtedly what led to her current work as a textile conservator and researcher.

Of particular interest to Te Kanawa are customary Māori clothing dyes, which involved using an iron-tannate dyeing process that saw textiles submerged in iron-rich mud to instil a geographically distinct black colour. However, this process made the fibres more brittle, and these precious kākahu are now starting to perish.

 

10.05 Justin Fenton: Baltimore’s corrupt cops exposed in follow-up to The Wire

If you thought there wasn’t any more to say about crime in Baltimore after watching The Wire, think again. Justin Fenton was a crime reporter for the Baltimore Sun newspaper for 13 years and has written a shocking true account of a corrupt police force in his new book, We Own this City. 

It was David Simon, also once a crime reporter for the Sun and one of the co-creators of The Wire who encouraged Fenton to write the book. Simon then turned it into an HBO series. It features cop Wayne Jenkins, who was tasked with fixing Baltimore’s drug and gun crisis, but who also turns his taskforce into a gangster enterprise, operating with impunity for years.

Fenton is now with multi-platform outlet the Baltimore Banner, which launches next month. We Own this City is currently screening on Sky and Neon.

 

11.05 Nick Duerden: what happens to pop stars after the hits dry up?

UK journalist and author Nick Duerden has spent years interviewing the most famous musicians on the planet and believes, without exception, they are at their most interesting when they've peaked and are on the way down. 

Duerden interviewed 50 musicians who experienced fame and lived to tell the tale for his latest book Exit Stage Left: The Curious Afterlife of Pop Stars. Some, like Natalie Merchant, found surprising new careers, others like David Gray were able to keep making music on their own terms. Then there are the members of the likes of Sigue Sigue Sputnik and Tenpole Tudor who watched their groups fade quickly from popular memory.

 

Books mentioned in this show:

The Family Roe
By Joshua Prager
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 978-1-324-03607-4

We Own This City
By Justin Fenton
Publisher: Allen and Unwin 
ISBN: 0593133668

Exit Stage Left: The Curious Afterlife of Pop Stars
By Nick Duerden
Publisher: Hachette 
ISBN: 1472277775

 

Music featured in this show:

Baltimore
By Nina Simone
Played at 10.50am

Justified and Ancient
By The KLF
Played at 11.20am

Marlene on the Wall
By Suzanne Vega
Played at 11.25am

Swords of a Thousand Men
By Tenpole Tudor
Played at 11.40am

Vibrate
By Rufus Wainwright
Played at 11.55am

Tubthumping
By Chumbawamba
Played at 11.59am