Collection: Interviews with M. K. Asante, author of Buck: A Memoir (2013) Return to Group

Interviews from areound the time of the release of Buck: A Memoir in 2013.

• ~ 1 month ago

  MK Asante: Coming of Age in ‘Killadelphia’ as a Writer, Artist and Filmmaker

  

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  On October 14, 2015, we had the privilege of sitting with MK Asante for an interview during his tour for BUCK: Coming of Age in Killadelphia, the memoir and the soundtrack.  Praised by the L.A. Times, NPR, and NBC, the book has been called “Frequently brilliant and always engaging… It takes great skill to render the wide variety of characters, male and female, young and old, that populate a memoir like Buck. … A powerful and captivating book.”

  Asante gifted us with some tidbits of wisdom about being creative and seizing opportunities to turn life into poetry, song, or story.

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• ~ 1 month ago

  Morgan State’s own, MK Asante, opens up about “Buck,” The N Word, his music career, and his dream movie project

  

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• ~ 1 month ago

  'Buck' Tells Of Wild Childhood In 'Killadelphia'

  

  Uploaded by Coach Reed -

  Writer, hip-hop artist and filmmaker MK Asante's new memoir is called Buck. It's about growing up in North Philadelphia in the 1990s. Asante describes his adolescence as, "Me, unsupervised, with my brother gone, my dad gone, my mom gone, and me just on the block in the neighborhood, roaming the streets of Philly - just lost."

  Buck captures Asante's transformation from a drug dealer and delinquent to a poet and professor.

  "I wanted a title that was loaded, that was also short and to the point, but loaded in terms of its substance ...[BUCK] has references to 'make a buck.' It also has references to 'buck shots' in the air. It's to shoot. That refers to violence from where I'm from, 'Killadelphia.'"

  Ultimately, Asante wants readers to realize what it means to buck the system. He says that "being a rebel, or being a true buck, isn't about doing the things that result in you ending up in jail. But being a true buck is bucking against the status quo, bucking against the statistics, the norm."

  Staring at a blank page helped Asante re-imagine himself.

  Asante has won several prestigious prizes, including the Langston Hughes Creative Writing Award for poetry. He spoke with Tell Me More host Michel Martin about finding his voice in Buck.

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