Black Cherokee (2025)

Downing's novel traces the layered inheritance of Black and Cherokee identity through the fictional life of a young girl, Ophelia Blue Rivers. The story is set in the historical town of Etsi, which confronts what the author calls America’s “two original sins” — Black enslavement and Indigenous genocide — and invites readers to reflect on what happens when those histories meet in one body. For me, I was particularly drawn to how the novel processes historical and inter-generational wounds, and what literature means in this context for collective healing.

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Black Cherokee

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Transcript

Framing The Novel And Its Stakes

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Beyond the Words, previously known as the Global Novel Podcast, and we're exploring literature as a living archive of human experience. Today I want to share with everybody Black Cherokee. This is a novel that just came out by the acclaimed Canadian author Antonio Michael Downing. It traces the layered inheritance of Black and Cherokee identity through the fictional life of a young girl, Ophelia Blue Rivers. The story is set in the historical town of Etsy, which confronts what the author calls America's two original sins, black enslavement and indigenous genocide. It invites readers to reflect on what happens when those histories meet in one body. For me, I was particularly drawn to how the novel processes historical and intergenerational wounds and what literature means in this context for collective healing. I'm having the author right here with me. Hi Antonio, welcome.

SPEAKER_02 1:12

Hi Claire, thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_00 1:14

This is wonderful. I really enjoyed reading your novel. I know Black Cherokee is your second work after Saga Boy, which is actually a memoir. Is that right?

SPEAKER_02 1:25

That's correct.

Ophelia’s Dual Heritage And Exclusion

SPEAKER_00 1:26

Black Cherokee is a very soul-touching story. Can you briefly let our listeners know what's it about and why do you think it needs to be heard?

The River As Time And Ancestry

SPEAKER_02 1:35

Well, Black Cherokee is the story, as you said, of Ophelia Blue Rivers, a young girl who we follow. Uh, we meet when she's seven, and we leave when she's 19. So it's a coming-of-age story. And just like the title suggests, she is both black and Cherokee. So she has these two heritages. And she's born into a place that was a Cherokee reservation, but it's kind of been privatized. But her family has lived there for many, many years, many, many generations. And what happens to her is she gets rejected by both the black folks in the area and the Cherokee folks. Basically, they're saying, look, you you can't be both of those things. You have to be one of them. We don't understand you. And she has to kind of figure it out. Um, why I think this story should be out there is first of all, it tells a little known history of how some of the the tribes in the southeast, which were sort of moved to Oklahoma and the infamous Trail of Tears, uh, many of them own slaves, many of the wealthy folks in those tribes own slaves. And I feel like most of our politics today are about who gets included and who gets excluded. Is an immigrant a real citizen? Is a trans person deserving of equal rights? Is our black people really full American citizens? Um, and and how do you feel belonging as a member of those communities? But also what happens to us when we cut those people out and treat them differently, even though they're part of our community. So I feel like almost all our politics revolve around who's included and who's excluded. And that's kind of what Ophelia is is experiencing and have to figure out as well.

SPEAKER_00 3:40

Right. Well, the river in Black Cherokee is more than landscape. It feels like a living character because it nourishes, it remembers, and when it's poisoned, it exposes deeper fractures in the community, right? So, how did you conceive of the river symbolically? Was it always meant to mirror the inherited trauma and contested belonging at the heart of the novel?

SPEAKER_02 4:07

Well, yeah, and first of all, it's it's wonderful to be here, Claire. I've been listening to some of your previous um episodes, and it's just wonderful as a literature major myself to discuss uh the book in that context because that's closest, it's closest to how I experience it. So, yeah, absolutely. I mean, the river is one of those things where I if you're looking for the symbolism, you see it, but you know, if you don't see it, you don't see it. But the river is ever present, and it is uh for me, the river represents time. It's you know, just like uh just like they say the river is there, but you never step into the same river twice that because it's always moving and it comes from somewhere and it goes to somewhere. Well, it's just like time. And and also in a deeper way for grandma blue and for uh for Ophelia and her grandma blue, it represents the traditions and the old ways and the ancestors bestowing their gifts onto a new generation, and then that new generation becomes the older generation, and that's sort of the energy that surrounds Ophelia and Grandma Blue. In fact, uh Grandma Blue, we find out, is has the exact same name as Ophelia, and it's a name that her grandma had, so it's something she's passed down, and it's also this idea of Derrida has this idea of hauntology where where you know the past haunts us, and even the future selves that we we imagine haunt us in the present, and so it's kind of a collapse of temporality where at once we are living among, and grandma blue keeps you know having conversations with her ex-husband who's passed away, with her husband who's passed away, and and seeing her father in the landscape. And so there's this idea of being haunted by things that have passed, but she's also haunted by the future she wants for Ophelia and by the future she wanted for her children that didn't work out, which makes her grip onto Ophelia a little bit tighter. So um, the river represents that flow of all of those things existing in all of those dimensions all at the same time.

Writing Across Difference Responsibly

SPEAKER_00 6:40

Wonderful. Well, the novel doesn't shy away from the difficult history between black freedmen and Cherokee identity, especially the tension around recognition and bloodline. What responsibility did you feel, if if any, in representing that sort of complexity? And how do you see fiction contributing to conversations that are often politically and emotionally charged?

Solidarity, History, And Bridge-Building

SPEAKER_02 7:07

Yeah, well, the first question, um, which I think is a nice way of saying, how can you write about Cherokee people when you're not Cherokee? And the truth is, I tried to avoid it in a lot of ways until my editor finally said to me, Look, we need to go to this reservation and meet these people because that is the novel you're writing. If you're writing some, if you want to write some other novel, fine, but we need to go there. And it's an interesting thing because we have great debates about who can do what. And I was obsessively um concerned about representing everyone as real people, you know, as and so doing the research and doing the work to make sure that they are three-dimensional and and real and and not caricatures in any way, shape, or form. That's hard, especially when you're, you know, I the book is features mostly the book has Cherokee characters, I'm not Cherokee. The book features everyone is American, I'm not American. Um, most of the characters are women that speak, and I'm not a woman. So so it's there was a lot of that going on. Um but that was the story that called. And I feel in art we need to uh honor that, but also we need to honor the fact that that you need to get it right. And you know, and so in terms of research, I spoke to many there there are a handful of flag Cherokee scholars in um in America. I spoke to all of them. I I had an extensive reading list, which was fun. You're an academic, so I'm sure you can appreciate Claire. Um the research is almost almost most of the fun of writing the book, uh just learning the stuff. Yeah. Um and and but always being guided by honoring the people and the traditions that you're representing. Um, I think this is important because I think if we all just write ourselves, write what we know, as as MFA programs tell us all the time, I think I think we lose the capacity to build bridges. And to your second question, that's what I think um a book like Black Cherokee represents. It's a bridge between cultures that don't often speak, but often have a lot to offer each other. Because of course, if as you said in your introduction, if I'm right, and these are the two great original sins, then those two people have a lot to learn from each other. And the great Canadian um uh Anishinabik scholar Tanya Talaga, she says, you know, I draw a lot of inspiration from the black civil rights struggle in America because black folks lived intimately with the slave masters, right? They they lived in their house, they nursed their children at their bosom, they worked side by side. We didn't, and so they have knowledge, and this is historically true, especially with the Seminoles, for example, who would um who would invite runaway um enslaved folks into their their their space, give them land, give them roles within the tribe, and there was a deep um um solidarity there. And so I think that's what I think a book like this can do. It can bridge gaps, but it does require you to have a certain amount of courage, first of all, because it's a scary time for writers to be writing about anything that's not their own experience, which is why auto fiction is so popular, I think. Um but but you have to do it because we want because someone has to be able to build this space where both cultures can speak to each other and see each other in a really real way. And it's an incredible act of empathy as a writer because you have to sort of be in the mind of of something you're not, and to me, that is what um writing really is. That's what fiction is. It's an act of um of audacious imagination, and so I hope I've done it just.

SPEAKER_00 11:52

That's very much true. I do think, Antonio, you have done a great job in fictionalizing someone whose gender is not your own. Reminds me much of D. H. Lawrence.

SPEAKER_02 12:03

Give me all the can canonical comps you want. I'm here for it.

SPEAKER_00 12:09

Well, you mentioned Grandma Blue protects Ophelia fiercely, sometimes harshly, because she knows how unforgiving the world can be. The novel suggests that trauma can be inherited, but so is resilience, right? So, in your view, what does healing actually look like in the story? Is it some kind of reconciliation, public an acknowledgement, personal courage, or something else?

Gender, Voice, And Character Depth

SPEAKER_02 12:38

Yeah, I feel like, and and part of what I try to I see my role as a writer is not to offer answers, but to ask the writer questions, to offer questions that the reader can then internalize and and answer for themselves. And so I don't offer, I don't think I offer um solutions and answers to these questions or reconciliation, but I do think um the big questions are obviously what happens to someone who is severed from a community that they belong in. But also what happens to that community? And so Ophelia is severed from the Cherokee community, the black community, even her own family, she's a bit she's uh she's isolated from and but what happens to those entities when they do something like that? When you know, when they've excluded Grandma Blue? What happens to the SE reservation, you know, when they've um when the black community sort of treats Ophelia and these other poor girls differently because they're black, but they're not black enough. What happens to that community when you do that? And of course, you harm yourself, and of course, how do we heal and how do we come around to it? So I don't think I have any clear answers. Like I know what it means for me, but I think I'd love I'd love for someone to read Black Cherokee, ask all of these questions, and then after you know the book is closed, walk off wondering what that what are those answers for themselves. And and that that would be success for me as a novelist in this case.

Trauma, Resilience, And Open Questions

SPEAKER_00 14:32

Absolutely wise to have an open-ending interpretation. So you mentioned that there are many aspects to the characters in the novel, to which you are not. So, how did your own journey inspire the characters in Black Cherokee?

Psyche Splinters And Character Mirrors

SPEAKER_02 14:49

Yeah, well, I as you mentioned off the top before we started, we were talking about um the psychological nature. I was complementing your um your your um Freud Tolstoy Anna Karenina as Freud uh psychoanalysis um um episode, and you mentioned that I have a very psychological outlook, and I think um and I think that's very true. I grew up with an auntie as a teen who had was a psychotherapist for a very long time, and so some of the first books I read, because I would read everything, so I would go on her shelf and be young and um and uh developmental psychology and Freud, and I was very confused by most of it, but it still seems to have shaped the way I conceive of what a person is. The sort of details of their lives are different than the details of my life, but I think in every one of those characters, and I think this might be true of all novelists, there's a bit of this our own psyche, a splinter of our psyche in each character. I can see, I I've I asked my friends who know me well, which character they think I most like, um, and I get a different answer every time, but I can certainly see uh in Belle, Grandma um Ophelia's aunts, Belle, uh she has a kind of extravagance to her uh that I see in myself I can relate to. Um I think Ayana is a bit of a people pleaser, but also a very boisterous character. I see that in myself as well. I see the sternness of grandma blue in myself. Um, you know, I also grew up with my grandmother as well, which I think is a direct biographical link. But my grandmother was very different than Grandma Blue. Grandma Blue is stern, rough, and kind of holds it all in. My grandmother was very, she would sing to she would she was very expressive, and that's how she navigated how her so she would sing, she would pray, she would talk. Uh Grandma Blue is the opposite. As Ophelia says, she only talks about two things, uh growing food and cooking food, and everything else is long talking. So I I feel there's a splinter of my psyche in every single one of these characters. So um I how I chose who would get what, uh, that's a mystery to me as well. A lot of it is very intuitive, but um, but yes, I can relate to all of them, even though they're all very important.

SPEAKER_00 17:47

There's also this intermingling of historical facts, historical factors with fictional elements in your novel. Why do you think exploring history through storytelling is so relevant today?

Why Fictionalize History Now

SPEAKER_02 18:00

Well, I think that it's almost like science fiction is interesting and fantasy is interesting because you know, I used to be a Star Trek fan and I'm a Lord of the Rings fan, so those might be the ones your listeners might have the player's connection with. And there's something interesting because you're like, why put they've set it in this setting that is not our time, it's referencing times that have gone way pat in the past or prospective future times, and yet the issues they're dealing with are incredibly contemporary. And I think there's something that happens when you situate a story in in a in a either a space or a time that is remote, whether future or or past. Um I think it the reader comes into it thinking, oh, this is not us, this is not me. And so they approach it as a kind of deta with a detached curiosity that you might, if you think, oh, this is about me and what's going on now, you might have pre-formed opinions, some of it might be directly related to you, you might be triggered, and then it pre all of that emotion prevents you from engaging with the story on its own terms. And so I think for me, setting it in the in the 90s, but also as I said earlier, there are a lot of ghosts from even the more remote past and from actual history that are haunting them. You certainly feel the the haunting of these wealthy Cherokee who had slaves in those times. You feel the haunting of um Andrew Jackson and the Indian Removal Act, which moved all the Cherokee and the other the other five tribes, the other four tribes, um, to on the trail of tears. You feel that sorrow. You feel the emancipation proclamation is very big. It echoes, right? It lives there. And so I think, but I think if I'd gone specifically and attached to any one of those things, it we all come with a lot of baggage in how we view those things, or they trigger things we have a lot of baggage around. So for me, the fictionalizing is is about making it remote so we can think, oh, this isn't us, it's just a nice story, and surprise. So there are questions being asked that actually vibrate in in a contemporary way.

Process: Letting The Book Win

SPEAKER_00 20:53

Brilliant. Now that we are talking about your writing experience, could you describe your creative process for writing across different genres?

Hosting The Next Chapter

SPEAKER_02 21:03

Yeah, I mean, it's there's a lot to it. I think talking process is my favorite thing in the whole world. I love it. But so I won't I won't drown you in a sermon. But one curious thing is that after Saga Boy was done, like it was praised by, you know, um, you know, uh Kse Lehman, um, Kinesia Lubrin, uh, like a lot of very well-regarded authors praised it. And so I started writing, and in my head, I'm like, okay, they've all said you're a good writer, so you're a good writer. You gotta prove you're a good writer. You can't disappoint them because you are a good writer. And this is a clear, a terrible approach to writing a novel. Um, I was trying to prove that I was a good writer, and and what became very clear for me is that who we are as a writer, we have things we want the book to do but the book also has something it wants to be and what I had to learn with Black Cherokee is that the book has to win because you can't you can't just impose your ambitions as a writer into a story. Right? It's the narrative you have to honor the narrative, honor the characters, and be a servant to the characters. So I stopped thinking of oh I'm gonna get up and work on my book. I started thinking of it as gardening. Because like grandma blue grandma blue helped me through this because she's always gardening. But think about it when you garden you don't grow the plants you create the conditions so that the plant can grow. And that little subtle shift basically influences my process tremendously where I I I I practice a kind of deep listening to what the characters in the book want to be and I sort of surrender my own ambitions in substance and style. I sort of ignore myself and I let the book serve me. At the end of the day it's all coming through my imagination. So I am there. I'm fully there but how it shows up I think the book should determine that. And so that's the biggest switch to my process and I think it's become fundamental to how I write now I I'm always trying to listen for what is my ego and what is the actual the book and I'm always trying to choose to honor the book as much as I can wonderful. I heard you have been hosting a national book show what was that experience like and how did that experience change your perspective on writing well I still do in fact when we're done I have to start preparing for my studio day on Tuesday. So um yeah so um the show is called the next chapter it's also a podcast um I think of my experience in the last five years of writing and publishing I call it the three educations the three literary educations so there's the one that you're familiar with knowing books and loving books and understanding reading a lot of books and understanding what's possible that I draw on that. The other is understanding the publishing industry which although it is very related to the world of books it's it's they actually have very different needs and very different approaches to literature. Like if you're a really bookish person and you just love the book when you get to the publishing industry there are many surprises that don't align. And then finally hosting a radio show talking about books interviewing authors talking to readers just really digging into the bones of reading and why people do it and what it does for them. I think what I've learned is that how when people are in the room deciding what book they're going to talk about and what author we're gonna bring in because there's so many like it's it w there's way too many for us to actually cover all the books we get. So we have to choose well what criteria do people use for choosing that's what I learned in that third education like sitting in the room and just watching people choose and that's been really interesting and it's actually affected maybe not how I write or what I write about but but perhaps it affects what I choose to write next is the biggest thing it impacts because you realize how much timing and the zeitgeist of what's happening in the world but also but also your own personal what you are passionate and most on fire for right now that's the thing you need to write you know and at any given point I have five or six ideas and I think hosting a radio show is taught me that hey it made it easier for me to choose which one I wanted to write next if that makes sense. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:38

If our listeners want to listen to your show where would they go?

SPEAKER_02 26:42

Um anywhere you get your podcast that you want to you want to listen to any any platform you choose wherever you get your podcast is uh it's the next chapter with Antonio Michael Down.

Claiming Belonging And Why Literature Matters

SPEAKER_00 26:55

Great well as we close today's conversation on Black Cherokee my mic kept drift drifting back to the river. In the novel the river is mother memory sustenance and when it is contaminated it becomes a visible sign of what happens when history is mishandled and when identities failed to be recognized but healing in this novel is not naive it is not a simple apology or a legal victory. Healing means something else it means standing up publicly and claiming what is yours. It means refusing erasure it means feeling the scar without being devoured by it and more importantly to insist that belonging is not determined by fear but by reading and processing shared memories that make us all survivors. And that is why literature matters literature is not an excluded privilege it is shared experience. It does not belong to institutions alone everyone can own literature these days you don't need a PhD to be able to read James Joyce. You don't need to be accredited in order to claim the identity of a literatiers storytellers of all kinds to join share and weave that vision together again thank you so much Antonio for joining the show your story has truly been inspiring.

SPEAKER_02 28:47

I'm a big believer so I feel like we are more accorded on that side thank you.

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SPEAKER_00 28:54

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