BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.

Hello, I'm Tina Dehealy.

This is Beyond Today from BBC Radio 4,

a space to ask one big question about one big story.

Today is wokess just white guilt.

When Lena Waith, the writer of Queen and Slim, a master of none, buys the screen rights to your debut novel six months before it's been published, you know you might be on to a winner. That's what happened to Kylie Reed. Her book,

such a fun age, shot straight into the bestsellers lists in the US where she's from and has received rave reviews in the UK.

Stardom awaits for the 32 year old.

Now Kylie's book falls into the category of the great American coming of age novel. It sets in Philadelphia

in the post Obama era a time when people thought racial divisions had narrowed all

even clothes. Well that was certainly a narrative that suited

liberal Americans now we know it was optimistic. Such a fun age is centered around

the relationship between 25-year-old babysitter Amira Tucker and her wealthy

white employer Alex Chamberlain her white boyfriend Kelly and her best friend Zara and

it explores race class and wealth and how well-meaning wokeness can actually

exacerbate those issues. It starts on a Saturday night in September in 2015 in Philadelphia and we meet

Amira Tucker. She's a young African American babysitter who's 25 years old and

she doesn't really know what she wants to do in life and she's also

coming at the end of her parents health insurance so she needs to figure that out

quickly but she is a really good babysitter but when the novel opens she's

babysitting a three-year-old briar, they're on a grocery store,

and a high-end part of Philadelphia. They're having fun and dancing until a customer

...