Ladee Hubbard read the first chapter of her critically acclaimed book “The Talented Ribkins” during a recent “Writing Now, Reading Now” series held at the Ulrich Museum of Art.
Hubbard wrote the first chapter of this book as her thesis for her Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is currently teaching a fiction tutorial for graduate students at Wichita State University.
“It has been a real pleasure to be here this past month and having this opportunity to work with such fine writers,” Hubbard said. “A lot of what people are working on was first novels, so I thought I’d read the first chapter of my first novel.”
A Black American author, Hubbard’s work explores politics, class and Black culture.
“The Talented Ribkins” follows a man named Johnny Ribkins, who finds out he has a brother he didn’t know about for 20 years.
“But he’d wanted that trace of memory to remain. When they told stories, when they said it out loud, when they got to remembering who they were,” Hubbard read from the novel. “And so they were the Ribkins: born of the rib, still of the rib, and this year, your flesh and bone.”
The book puts a spin on a W. E. B. Du Bois’ essay called the “Talented Tenth.” In this essay, Pan-African activist Du Bois explains how 10% of the Black population have the ability to become leaders of their race.
“I just wanted to make the idea of talent, like, tangible,” Hubbard said about her book.
Hubbard’s grandfather was also a big inspiration for her book.
“My grandfather was a chemistry professor,” Hubbard said. “And so that was the only reason he was able to do that was because of people like Du Bois coming up with theories to educate and provide a large education to Black people.”
The first chapter of “The Talented Ribkins” was originally published as a short story called “The Last Woman.” It was later expanded into a novel after Hubbard decided she wanted to explore Du Bois theory more.
“I was going to introduce it, but I’m not going to introduce it; I’ll just read it,” Hubbard said, preparing to read from “The Talented Ribkins.” “I guess let’s see if it does what a first chapter should do.”
