During the summer, my daughter, Juliette, and I started seriously talking about doing a podcast. This conversation started earlier, but we really started working on it around June. What arose from those conversations was Classics & Coffee, a podcast where we would talk about books while drinking coffee. This format seemed obvious to us since both of us read extensively. I, of course, read a lot for work, and Juliette reads for school as well. However, we both read for pleasure, especially to learn more about the world around us.

For the first season of Classics & Coffee, we chose five books. We chose a joint book and then each of us chose two other books to discuss. Our joint book was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, a novel that both of us loathe but also enjoy. For her books, Juliette chose two of her favorite novels, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah. For my books, I chose two books that I was using in my classes, William Gardner Smith’s The Stone Face and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. These choices gave us a wide variety of books ranging from nineteenth century England to twenty first century Nigeria.

We initially went into the season with planned out questions for each book. We’d talk about why we chose the book, what we like about it, what we dislike about it, whether we consider it a classic, why we’d recommend it to someone, and what song we’d choose to represent the book if we were creating a soundtrack. As the season progressed, these questions became more amorphous, sometimes getting pushed to the wayside as we chatted about the books we had selected. Yet, they serve as the foundational underpinnings of our discussions on Classics & Coffee, even if we don’t explicitly ask the questions in each episode.

Juliette and I started this podcast somewhat on a whim, not really even expecting anything out of it. We do it for fun and the enjoyment of reading and talking about literature. It’s an avenue to have conversations about the world that may be difficult and to learn more from one another. It’s a cliché for teachers to say that they learn just as much from their students as students learn from them. However, it’s true. The same applies for parents and children. What I like about doing the podcast with my daughter is that we learn from one another and we learn more about one another through our conversations. For me, that is what I enjoy about doing Classics & Coffee with her because literature connects us and provides us with space to hear each other’s perspectives and insights. As well, it gets me to read books that I have wanted to read but have not had to read, specifically Jane Eyre and Americanah, and to think about them in relation to my own research and pedagogy.

Classics & Coffee has allowed us to talk about a myriad of issues from attempts to ban and challenge books to the upsrisings in France following the murder of Nahel Merzouk. It has given us the opportunity to sit at the table and chat as we drink Portrait Coffee and talk about everything from Britain’s colonization of the Caribbean and India to eugenics in the early twentieth century. It has given us the chance to expand our reading and draw connections between texts that we may have never seen.

What makes Classics & Coffee unique for a listener stems from the fact that the series consists of a father and daughter talking about literature. There are generational differences between us. There are gender differences between us. There are ideological differences between us. These differences provide us with different perspectives as we encounter the books that we read. They provide us with different insights. The podcast provides a space for us to talk about the ways that we see and navigate the world and to learn from another.

I want to conclude this post by sharing a short interview I did with Juliette about the podcast. Below, you will find her answers to some questions I posed to her about the podcast.

Why did you want to start this podcast?

We decided to start this podcast after a conversation that we had in the car. I remember asking the hypothetical question of “What if we did a podcast with books?” and I kind of let the idea go for a while, but dad kept mentioning it in hopes of turning that hypothetical question into a reality. I was a bit lenient at first, unsure as to what I was getting myself into, but thankfully the experience turned out to be enjoyable.

What have you enjoyed about recording this podcast?

My favorite thing about recording the podcasts is that every time we record a new episode I always learn something new. Oftentimes my dad will notice things in the novels we’re reading that I never noticed and visa versa. It is an exchange of knowledge and views and through those exchanges I get to learn more about myself and what I think.

What have you learned from doing this podcast?

I feel as though this podcast has allowed me to learn more about my own voice and my beliefs as an individual.

What book from season one is your favorite and why?

Surprisingly, The Stone Face by William Gardner Smith was my favorite book, probably because I went into the reading the novel with the notion that I was not going to enjoy it. However, it was my favorite because it brought to light issues I never knew existed or would have been exposed to if I had not read the novel, and novels like The Stone Face are why I love reading, because they expose me to stories that I would otherwise have not been exposed to.

What do you hope the audience takes away from this podcast?

I want people to learn that it is important to have the hard conversations, and that literature is one of the many ways to begin those conversations. And through those conversations I want people to be able to learn more about themselves and what they believe in.

Make sure to check out Classics & Coffee wherever you get your podcasts and follow us on Twitter at @CLASandCoffee and Instagram at Classicsandcoffeepodcast.