Hello friends,Today we bring a new podcast episode and conversation that I think you will love. It’s with Damianne Scott, an educator, writer and speaker in the Jane Austen community - she teaches literature at the University of Cincinnati Blue Ash College and Cincinnati State University. And she’s the host of the Facebook page, Black Girl Loves Jane. She’s also working on a very intriguing project right now - rewriting the story of Jane Austen’s Persuasion into the setting of an African-American megachurch. In her own book project, Persuaded, due out from Meryton Press next year, Ms. Scott makes Anne Elliot a PK - or preacher’s kid. And as Dr. Cornell West has pointed out, in a legendary talk at the JASNA Annual General Meeting of 2012, Jane Austen was also a PK, or preacher’s kid. This is a world that Damianne Scott knows well, and it’s a world I also am not unfamiliar with - I also, as it happens, am a PK - so I really enjoyed this conversation. Ms. Scott says that as a student of 19th century literature, which she has loved since middle school, she often has found herself the only Black student in the room. So she appreciates the nontraditional casting of shows like Bridgerton, but has also watched and addressed the backlash that has arisen from that production and from the PBS series Sanditon.An article Damianne Scott contributed to JASNA.org, or the Jane Austen Society of North America online, addressed the pineapple controversy surrounding the Sanditon series. A chorus of viewers felt that using the pineapple emoji as a fan symbol for the show was insensitive to the cultural weight and the connotations of colonialism and of the slave trade carried by that symbol. Damianne Scott weighed in, and she weighs in here, in this conversation, saying she hopes people and the community of Austen lovers and fans will continue to grow and understand that - as she says - Austen doesn't want to be put up on a pedestal: Jane Austen, she says, wants to be among the people. I love that.Press play here (above) to stream this from any device, or find the Austen Connection podcast on Spotify or Apple. Enjoy!And for you word lovers, here’s an excerpt from our conversation:Plain JaneLet me talk a little bit first about Persuasion. So why do you love the story of Persuasion?Damianne ScottWell, I love the story of Persuasion … It was my first Jane Austen novel that I read in college. And the first one I did a paper on. So that was one reason why I loved it. Second, I do enjoy the movie, the one that [from 1995], with Ciarán Hinds, the BBC, is one of my favorite adaptations. And then I like it now. Because Anne Elliot is very adaptable for any woman today, who is over a certain age who is not married, who has no children, and who has come to bear the responsibility  - either willingly or unwillingly - to be the caregiver of their parents, and their finances, the dependable child in the household. And I find that very relatable to me, because I am not married, have no children, and have become the pseudo-caregiver [and] financial-responsibility person, in my family. So it speaks to me. The other thing is, I think that Persuasion in itself, again, is very adaptable to what I'm doing now with my rewriting of it and modernizing it. Anne - she's always criticized by her father for the way she looks. There's that famous scene where, you know, she's talking, and he's like, “Oh, your skin looks better today, you changed cold creams”! And he talks about the naval officers, and he talks about Admiral Croft and how, you know, he looks pretty well for somebody who was in the Navy!Plain Jane  And it's very funny, like, it's a source of humor, but also it's just, you feel Anne’s pain. I mean, any woman in the world feels Anne’s pain with all of this. We're also laughing at it.Damianne Scott Because he's totally ridiculous! Like, really. So it is very funny. And so my adaptation- it's a little focused on physicality. So my Anne does not necessarily have a ski