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Black Writers Read
Black Writers Read
Toni Ann Johnson's "But Where's Home?"
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This episode features our conversation with Toni Ann Johnson, which was live-streamed on February 15, 2026.
Toni Ann Johnson won the Flannery O’Connor Award for her linked story collection, Light Skin Gone to Waste. Selected for the prize and edited by Roxane Gay, the collection was also shortlisted for the Saroyan Prize and nominated for a 2023 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work. Her novella, Homegoing, published in 2021 and linked to Light Skin Gone to Waste, was selected by Katerina Stoykova as the winner of Accents Publishing’s inaugural novella contest. Johnson’s newest linked collection, But Where’s Home?, the third book in the series about the Arrington family, was chosen by Crystal Wilkinson as the winner of the Screen Door Press Prize and published in February of 2026 (Screen Door Press is an imprint of University Press of Kentucky).
During this episode, we talked about Toni Ann’s latest book, But Where’s Home?.
But Where's Home?, Toni Ann Johnson's new collection of linked short stories, explores the sometimes painful and often humorous experiences of the Airringtons as an upper-middle-class Black family in a predominantly white, working-class community. This book follows Johnson's previous collection, Light Skin Gone to Waste. Through multiple perspectives and moments in time, from the 1960s to 2022, readers are invited into the lives of the eldest daughter, who longs for her father's affection while striving for independence; the youngest daughter, who seeks to overcome childhood pain through music and love; a father practicing psychology while engaging in affairs with the white women of the town; and a mother dealing with infidelity while raising her daughters in a place that rejects them.
Deeply emotional, funny, and unflinchingly honest, But Where's Home? lays bare the realities of Black life in America, challenging readers to confront racism, classism, colonized thinking, narcissism, abuse, and troubled parent-child relationships. Johnson's complex and interwoven characters create a kaleidoscope of truths about human nature and race relations in the United States.
Purchase your copy of But Where's Home?: https://www.kentuckypress.com/9781967165032/but-wheres-home/
Find Toni Ann Johnson online: https://www.toniannjohnson.com/
Listen to our first chat with Toni Ann Johnson from Season Three here.
Mentioned during the episode:
Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals by Dr. Saidiya Hartman (2019): https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393357622
Harlem Rhapsody by Victoria Christopher Murray: https://bookshop.org/a/114101/9780593638484
Check out our interview with Victoria Christopher Murray about Harlem Rhapsody from Season Five: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/black-writers-read-victoria-christopher-murray/id1627999524?i=1000698295022
Find Toni Ann on Instagram: @treeladytoniann
Find Black Writers Read on Instagram: @blackwritersread
Find Black Writers Read online: https://blackwritersread.com/
Support Black Writers Read on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/blackwritersread
If if we're talking about American racism, it doesn't matter if we're talking about the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, into the early odds, into, you know, we could be talking about any decade. And there's always some relevance to being black in a white supremacist world. So that's always going to be relevant. But what is really relevant in the in one of the stories? So Phil has a story called To the Moon, where he's at a bar and these townies who are kind of drunk and they're they're you know they're just regular working class guys, but one of them calls him a monkey and then calls him a baboon. And what happened just a few days ago? What did our president do? You know, like it couldn't be any more relevant. That the story takes place in 19 in the 1970s, in the late 1970s, where a white person is calling somebody black a monkey and a baboon. And our so-called president recently put out a video with our former president Obama and his wife as apes. Like, and this is 2026. So why not now? Like there's no wrong time really to put this out. We're not in this halcyon time of like no racism. We're in a very racist time. So it's still relevant.
SPEAKER_02Hello and welcome to Black Writers Read. My name is Nicole Young Martin. I'm the founder, producer, and host of this podcast. Thank you for tuning in for episode 18 of season six of the series. Launched on Juneteenth, 2020, Blackwriters Read was created as a platform to showcase, celebrate, and honor the words, work, and traditions of Black writers from across the country, across genres, across experiences, and across the African diaspora. Black Writers Read is a behind-the-scenes conversation into the craft and what it means to create as a black author in today's society. Since starting the series during December 2020, we've hosted almost 100 authors representing 15 plus genres from six countries and 27 states. In this episode, we welcome back Tony Ann Johnson. Our conversation was live streamed on February 15th, 2026. Tony Ann Johnson won the Flannery O'Connor Award for her link story collection, Light Skin Gone to Waste. She was on a previous episode of Black Redder 3 to talk about the book. We will put a link in the show notes so that you can listen to that episode. Selected for the prize and edited by Roxanne Gay, the collection was also shortlisted for the Soroyan Prize and nominated for a 2023 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work. Her novella Home Going, published in 2021 and linked to Lightskin Gone to Waste, was selected by Katarina Stakova as the winner of Accents Publishing's inaugural novella contest. Johnson's newest linked collection, The Where's Home, the third book in the series about the Arlington family, was chosen by Crystal Wilkerson as the winner of the Screendoor Press Prize and published in February 2026. Screendoor Press is an imprint of University Press of Kentucky. During this episode, we talked about Tony Ann's latest book, But Where's Home. It's 1963 in the small town of Monroe, New York. The Arringtons, a black family, buy a house in a picturesque all-white neighborhood. Some residents are welcoming, but many react to Dr. Philip Arrington, his wife Velma, and their daughters, Livia and Maddie, by conspiring against their successes in both big and small ways. Amid this mix of hostility and shaky acceptance, the Arringtons must navigate their careers, deal with a volatile marriage, and raise their daughters. But where's home, Tony Ann Johnson's new collection of linked short stories, explores the sometimes painful and often humorous experiences of the Arringtons in an upper middle-class black family in a predominantly white working class community. This book follows Johnson's previous collection, Light Skin Gone to Waste, which won the 2021 Flannery O'Connor Award. Through multiple perspectives and moments in time, from the 1960s to 2022, readers are invited into the lives of the eldest daughter who longs for her father's affection while striving for independence, the youngest daughter who seeks to overcome childhood pain through music and love, a father practicing psychology while engaging in affairs with the white women of the town, and a mother dealing with infidelity while raising her daughters in a place that rejects them. Deeply emotional, funny, and unflinchingly honest, who wears home lays bare the realities of black life in America, challenging readers to confront racism, classism, colonized thinking, narcissism, abuse, and troubled parent-child relationships. Johnson's complex and interwoven characters create a kaleidoscope of truths about human nature and race relations in the United States. Learn more about Tony Ann and her work by visiting www.tonyanjohnson.com. That is www.t-o-n-i-a-n-n j-o-h n s o-n dot com. Tony Ann Johnson is definitely a champion for literature. I love what her work does, and this book in particular really proves that. We talked a lot about autofiction and why her work focuses in that genre, and that's a genre I'm learning more about, especially given that I love memoir. And we talked so much about the ways she creates characters by tapping into her past life as an actor. Oh my gosh, like I gathered so many ideas and nuggets of wisdom from her that I will be using in terms of creating characters for myself and my work, especially given that I also have a background in theater. This episode is for everyone who loves to read, but I believe it's especially for writers looking to enhance their craft. Thank you so much, Tony Ann, for all that you do and the amazing work that you do. And even though you're no longer teaching, I believe that you are educating a lot of us through this work. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode, and I hope that you enjoy our conversation as much as I did.
SPEAKER_03Hello. Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_01Oh my gosh, I'm sorry to be here.
SPEAKER_02I'll never forget when you emailed me about being back on. I was like, yes!
SPEAKER_01Thank you. It's a pleasure and an honor to return. Thanks so much.
SPEAKER_02Yes. So I'm so excited to hear you read. So happy reading, and I'll be back to chat.
SPEAKER_01Okay. I'm reading from the opening of the novella But Where's Home, which is also the title of the book. Um, we're in Monroe, New York in 1980. And this is Susie. So one day my mom tells me, Aunt Velma told her, that Zeke Odom finally asked Maddie out. We're excited for her, but Aunt Velma read it in Maddie's diary. So we can't say Snickers till Maddie asks Aunt Velma if she can go, which is like a whole week later. And then we all have to act surprised. I do act surprised, and then I feel bad and tell Maddie her mother told my mother, but I tell her she can't confront her mother because then my mother will know I told. And my mother will know Aunt Velma told, and that will be a mucked up mess. According to Aunt Velma, Maddie's been writing in her diary about nobody but Zeke Odom since she was in the seventh grade. I'd die if I had only one cute brother to choose from all these years. Dag. If Maddie lived around me, she'd have dated a few cute boys by now. When Zeke Odom comes to pick Maddie up to take her to the movies, according to Aunt Velma, he just toots the horn outside. Now, in the boys' defense, Maddie and her parents moved to a big ass estate in a neighborhood across town, this white town from where they used to live. And the main house has an insanely long driveway. My mom says it's not that impressive because it's not like Monroe is Greenwich, Connecticut. It's nothing but a hick town filled with average white folks, according to my mom. Maybe so, but it's easy to see how it could be intimidating because you can't tell which entrance is the front. The only door you can see from the street side leads to an enormous glass porch that kind of looks like a greenhouse, and it doesn't have a front door look. The real front door is up a stone stairway around the back that leads to a patio that overlooks a red bean-shaped pool, and down a hill behind that, there's a tennis court. And there are two cottages. The small one is close to the main house, and the bigger one is like an acre away at the other end of the property and has its own driveway. I mean, hey town or not, maybe Zeke Odom was like, What kind of palatial craziness? The place looks like a small village. Maybe he didn't know where the hell to go. Maddie tries to run out the front door, which is, as I said, in the back. But Aunt Velma grabs her, rubs some rouge off her face, and says, in that gritted teeth, Aunt Velma growl, You're not going any damn where that kid needs to get his ass out of his car and come to the door like a gentleman. He beeps again and Maddie staffes off to Aunt Velma. You're crazy, let me go. And when Aunt Velma doesn't, Maddie, risking her life, says, You're just jealous because no one likes you. And then Aunt Velma pops Maddie in the mouth. I'm hearing this on the extension while Aunt Velma is telling my mother as if slapping Maddie is as normal as making dinner or walking the dog. My mom doesn't say it to Aunt Velma, but later she kisses her teeth and tells me, Your auntie vexed with that arrogant man she never should have married and taking it out on Maddie. I've been telling my mother about this stuff for years. She didn't believe me. Since we were small, I've been seeing Aunt Velma pop Maddie. Sometimes for little things like leaving a towel on the floor, eating the last snack cake. And just a few months ago, I was at the house when red-headed, freckled, peppermint patty looking Lisa Megna, who used to be their next door neighbor across town before they moved, she called and asked Maddie to borrow a pair of crutches that were in their basement. They weren't even Aunt Velma's. The previous owner left them there. Maddie brought them upstairs and asked if Lisa could take them. So Lisa was still on the line, and I saw Aunt Velma morph into a maniac. Her eyes flashed wild, and she chased Maddie around the dining room table, holding up one of those crutches, screaming, What have I told you about putting me on the spot? Finally, she caught Maddie and she beat her to the ground with that crutch. I was shaking. I didn't know if I should be scared, sad, or call the cops. We went into Maddie's room after and she cried. When I told my mother, she said, Yeah, stop them tales about your auntie. Then she waved me away like I was a funky smell. But I did try. So Zeke beeps a third time and Maddie starts crying. According to Aunt Velma, she's crying because she thinks Zeke's gonna leave, not because she just got hit in the face. And when he beeps a fourth time, Maddie rips her arm away and runs off. The boy never does get out of the car, not even to open the door for Maddie. Aunt Velma says Zeke has no damn class. And on that point, I concur. Maddie tells me later that while he's driving, they stop at a red light. Zeke kisses her and puts his thick tongue way deep in her mouth and almost down her throat. It's very fast, she says, and out of nowhere, and it doesn't feel one bit romantic. I'm listening to her tell the story, and what it sounds like to me is that Zeke Odom was hoping to not even get to the damn movies. Sounds like he was angling to park somewhere and get Maddie into the back seat. The thing is, Maddie has no experience messing with boys. She's not fast like that. Sounds like he thinks she is, though. And I'm wondering why. What's his rush? Why is he tonguing her down as soon as he gets it? She gets in his car. This is what I think. Zeke's around nothing but white boys. And they think black girls are easy. It's in their genetic memory. Any enslaved woman was theirs if they wanted her. Now they see black chicks in movies playing long-legged hoes and hot pants. They hear Donna Summer singing, love to love you, baby. And the bells, vous le vous couchez avec moi. And since they don't know any real black girls, they think all of them are ready to spread their legs. And here Zeke is this lone brother around all these clueless jocks. So I bet that's where he's getting his misinformation. Poor Maddie. Even though she thought she liked Zeke because she pretended he was something special, she didn't know his ass from Adam or Eve. And she made up what she wished he'd be, a dude who'd really dig her and think she was special too. She is, but how would he know that? They do end up at the movies that night, but they don't really watch. They mostly make out the whole time, and he feels her up and she tells me she doesn't really like it. I ask her, why'd you keep making out with him then? And Maddie says, What? I thought I had to. Isn't that what I was supposed to do? I'm like, uh, no, Maddie. If you don't want to do something with some stupid ass boy, you don't do it. You tell him to take you home. And she says, Then he won't like me, Susie. And I say, so what? And she goes quiet. I feel bad for her. I don't even tell her about my new boyfriend and what a great time we're having because Marcel is my third boyfriend and she's never even had one. Last weekend, I'm visiting her, and we go to a party at her hazel-eyed friend Julius' house, where I'm sitting there watching all these no rhythm having kids, listening to God knows what, because it damn sure wasn't the beat. And Zeke shows up. Now, I'm not gonna lie, the boy looks tasty. I see him and I'm thinking, damn, this brother's pretty like Muhammad Ali. Smooth peanut butter colored skin, big boulder-like shoulders, thick eyebrows. Zeke Odom's as fine as Maddie's been saying he is. I can see why she's pying for him all these years. And turns out I was right about what he was hoping for on that day. Now, this is what went down. We're all sitting on Julia's basement stairs. He's up top, heads our way, and when he sees me, he plops himself on the stair above us, makes chit-chat, and then I move down a step. Like I'm gonna talk to Peppermint Patty looking Lisa and Julia, who are sitting there. But we all listen and hear him say to Maddie, Can I ask you a personal question and you won't get mad? I'm thinking, oh shit, something foul's about to come out his fine ass lips. He doesn't wait for her to answer before he says, You ever been fucked? Julia looks at me, eyes bugged out like a bumblebee's like she can't believe what she's hearing. Peppermint Patty Lisa slaps a palm to her forehead, and all I can do is try not to laugh. And he says, Well, do you want to be? I see Maddie's tongue lying limp in her mouth. She looks catatonic, staring at him like one of those damn near dead people you see in the old folks' home.
SPEAKER_00Maddie's he says, because every other girl I ever went out with, I always fucked him on the first day.
SPEAKER_01Maddie's eyes, cheeks, and lips droop down her sad face like a wilting flower, and then tears start falling, and she's palming them off, embarrassed. And then something interesting happens. I see this look splash over Zeke Odom like a cold glass of water, hit him in his face. I would say the brother's having an oh shit moment. Like he realizes he got it completely wrong about my cousin. And he says, Oh man, did I? I thought you, I mean, I heard you wanted to. What? You said you heard stuff about me? What did you hear? And she wipes tears away, but she seems more angry than sad. And he sighs, and in a different sounding voice, a softer, sweeter one, he says, Damn, I'm sorry. You're probably scared of me now. Are you? I don't want you to be scared of me. He's looking at her, trying to get her eyes to meet his, and now she won't look at him. She stares at the carpeted step below her. His hefty shoulders slump forward, and he hangs his head as if he feels bad for real. And then he sighs, stands, and big as he is, he somehow looks small when he climbs back up the stairs. Patty Lisa got up and hugged Maddie. Me and Julia didn't move for a few minutes. I saw something in Zeke, something almost nice, that I didn't see when he was talking that shit about every other girl on the first date. I told Maddie, I thought he realized he made a mistake. Maddie said she didn't care. He didn't act nice at all when they went out. She said he treated her like trash. So much for that. Too bad. Maddie's pretty sure things will be better when she gets out of my room. I hope so. Oh, thank you.
SPEAKER_02And I hope you're doing the audiobook for this book because you're also just such an amazing actor.
SPEAKER_01Thank you. I I hope I get to do it. Uh it remains to be seen. We'll see.
SPEAKER_02And then also in terms of your writing, before I go into the questions, like one of the things that I love about your writing is that, and I can see why you like doing the linked stories, is because you have such an amazing talent for writing such deeply rooted characters, and like they live in such unique ways. And I'm like, this is why you write short stories, which other interviews I listened to, I heard you kind of talk a little bit about why the link stories, but literally hearing it and reading it, I understand why. Because you are so good at writing, like writing so many characters.
SPEAKER_01Also, like I love um, you know, I was an actor. I don't, I don't audition and you know, pursue an acting career now, but because I started as an actor, I do like to play all the people. And so my books go give me that opportunity as I'm writing them, I'm embodying them, you know, feeling who they are and trying to write from their point of view as them. And then when I get to read the pieces, I get to do that again and be them. And so I think the stories do lend themselves to that because sometimes, well, not always, but sometimes they're like monologues and sometimes they're just more like sketches. Um, but but I'm always thinking about the character. It's always about the character and who they are, how they sound. I love the different voices and stuff. And so it's just fun for me. Um I I know I I hope that I'll continue to do um more stories, but the next thing I'm working on is a novel. And I have to say I am kind of missing the multi-point of view, um, you know, and different approaches, different voices, tenses and stuff. Um so yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so I'll go ahead and get started with our questions. So, what is the origin story of But Where's Home? Why this title and why this book right now?
SPEAKER_01So at one point, um all the stories in But Where's Home were in One manuscript together with all the stories in Light Skin Gun to Waste and the Novella Homegoing, all of these were published separately. But at one point, it was one long, almost 500-page book. And that um I developed with an agent over the course of five years, and it went out in January of 2021 as a novel, not a story collection. And it didn't sell as a novel. And so Homegoing won a novella collection before the book went out. And so that was published in May of 2021 as its own book. And then by around also May of 2021, you know, I hadn't done anything with the book. It hadn't sold. I was very depressed. But I I saw the call for the Flannery O'Connor Award. And that was, you know, linked, well, not linked, but short stories. And so I I pulled the book apart. I took out a lot of the book, mostly the stories that didn't prioritize Maddie. And I put the book back together in an order. And that's what I sent into the Flannery O'Connor Award and won. And that's how Light Skin Gone to Waste got published. But then I did that book. That book came out. I did the book tour. And then somewhere around in 2023, I still had all these stories left over that I wanted to do something with. And so I looked at those stories. And there was a novella in among those stories, and that is called Butware's Home. And the origin story of But's Home is that was based on the very first screenplay I ever wrote when I was 19 years old and still in college. And I didn't even have a computer then. So I that's how long ago I went to college. But I have this uh typed out printed um script. And I looked at that and I was like, you know what? I like this. Like I can revise this now. And I turned that into the novella. And it was then called But Where's Home? And the title comes from directly within the novella. It's a line in the novella. So Maddie is on a ski trip with her father and his new mistress. It's very shortly after he's left her mother and she's away with them and it's horrible. And she wants to leave and she wants to go home, but there's literally no home to go home to because her mother has taken all the furniture out of the house to keep it from Phil so that he can't steal it from her. So the house is empty. Her mother is raging and angry and violent. So she doesn't want to go there. The only place for her to go is back to her college dorm. And so that's where the title, But Where's Home, comes from. And so But Where's Home is the novella within the collection, but the entire collection is also called But Where's Home. And I, as I was developing the book, I was looking at each individual story. And it started to occur to me that in each of these stories, the characters are in some way either trying to get home, looking for home, trying to make a new home, trying to build a new life in a new place that they want to call home, or trying to leave home, or wishing they could live. And then as far as why this book right now, I mean, I would be lying if I said that I intentionally decided to publish this book in February of 2026. That would be a lie. But it has come out now. And why now? I mean, if if we're talking about American racism, it doesn't matter if we're talking about the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, into the early odds, into, you know, we could be talking about any decade. And there's always some relevance to being black in a white supremacist world. So that's always going to be relevant. But what is really relevant in the in one of the stories? So Phil has a story called To the Moon, where he's at a bar and these townies who are kind of drunk and they're they're you know, they're just regular working class guys, but one of them calls him a monkey and then calls him a baboon. And what happened just a few days ago? What did our president do? You know, like it couldn't be any more relevant. That the story takes place in 19 in the 1970s, in the late 1970s, where a white person is calling somebody black a monkey and a baboon. And our so-called president recently put out a video with our former president Obama and his wife as apes. Like, and this is 2026, so why not now? Like there's no wrong time really to put this out. We're not in this halcyon time of like no racism. We're in a very racist time, so it's still relevant. Um, and one of the stories takes place in 2022, which isn't that long ago. And I think if you grew up um dealing with racism, you you don't forget it. You always remember the things that happened. They they stick with you, they they become part of who you are. And so I was writing from that place. Like that was my experience. Um, I can't really say for certain that that was my parents' experience, but I know some things that they experienced, but I wasn't at that bar with my father. But it's logical that that could happen.
SPEAKER_02And probably worse.
SPEAKER_01Probably.
SPEAKER_02And what's funny, and thank you for mentioning, oh God, I cannot believe he is the leader of the free world, and and like sending out that video, and just the fact that he's backpedaling and not gonna apologize for, and everybody, including some of his own supporters, have called him out for that video. And I'm just like, dude, but he'll never admit that he's wrong at all.
SPEAKER_01Of course. No, I mean, that's the per that's the narcissistic personality. They don't ever apologize. There, it's never their fault, they're never wrong. It's always somebody else's fault. Um, that's in the book, too. Like the parents are narcissists, and that's their personalities. They don't admit fault. It's never their fault, they're never wrong. Um, and I, you know, I actually have been thinking about this. I feel like there the experience of narcissism, being subjected to narcissistic abuse is not that unlike the experience of being subjected to racism. There are there are similar things in racism. There's gaslighting, you know, like the country gaslights black people about how it's treated them or what they deserve. Same thing with narcissistic parents. They'll gaslight you and say, wasn't that bad? You're exact, you're too sensitive. Why why are you making it, you know, why are you making this such a big deal? Same thing they say to black people. Get over it. Why are you making it such a big deal? You're so sensitive. Every you make everything about, oh, you're pulling the race card again. It's gaslighting. That's what that is. Same thing narcissists do.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and I, and it's so funny that Phil, who is one of the narcissistic parents, is also a psychologist. And I remember my own therapist, my own therapist was like, she had she didn't name herself as a narcissist, but she says she's full of herself. And she's like, This is why she's able to do the work that she does. She was like, look out for other therapists because they're going to be full of themselves.
SPEAKER_01And I was just like, Well, they are the god of their own universe, you know. If they're in private practice and they don't have a boss, they're working for themselves, which my father was in private practice. He didn't, he was his own boss. They are it's their world and they are looked upon as gods in a way. I mean, my dad actually had a patient who was a painter who painted him as a deity suspended in the clouds, and this painting was was on the wall of his office. Um, so yeah, I mean, and also my dad was a Freudian psychologist. He studied with Theodore Reich, who was a student of Freud, and that's a whole thing.
SPEAKER_00Oh my god, it's a whole thing, you know.
SPEAKER_02Oh my god, that's an essay in itself. And before I go to the next question, I just thought of something else too. Monroe, New York, ironically, has also come up in the news a lot because of the Hasidic community that has taken over there. So I so it's funny, it's like I first got to engage with Monroe via lights can go on the waste, and then all of a sudden, boom, all of this happens. And I was like, interesting moment to also be writing about Monroe.
SPEAKER_01I kept that out of it. They I was born there in the early 60s, and they began arriving, I would say in the mid-70s. So I wasn't aware of the Hasidic community until around 76, 77. I think I was 14. The first time I met somebody, I met a Hasidic man on the bus. And I was clueless, Dr. Nicole. But I was commuting to acting school and I was on the bus, and this man came up to me and he said, I'm looking for somebody to clean my house. And I was like, Okay, well, why are you telling me? What does that have to do with me? I was so clueless. And I went home and I was like, this man on the bus told me he was looking for somebody to clean his house. And my mother said, Because you're black, he thinks because you're black, you might want to clean his house. And I was like, Oh, I just totally didn't get it. But that was my that was my first experience.
SPEAKER_02Wow. And it's so interesting hearing before I go into the next question, hearing their experiences talking about the anti-Semitism that they're experiencing in Monroe. And I'm like, but y'all are taking over an entire town.
SPEAKER_01Like and I don't know if you saw there was a documentary on a town in Rockland where they took over the school board, and um, that had really um serious repercussions for for that town. Um and yeah, so when I was there, I don't think that the anti-Semitism was anywhere near what it what it may be now, and I'm not there to know what it is now, but that wasn't something that um that my family would would have anything to do with. Um, and you know, my mom as a as a an antiques dealer, you know, has clients and does business with the community and and she's okay with it, but she's not in Monroe. She was in um until recently, she was in a a town sort of a little bit outside the town of Tuxedo, and there's some kind of um a town mandate that the Hasidic community can't um establish like some business or something there. I'm not I'm not exact exactly sure what the law is, but they voted for something so that in Tuxedo, what happened in Monroe can't happen. Um, and it's been a while since I've been there, but the thing that I did notice going back a couple of years ago was um the was housing. They started building like a lot of big apartment buildings, and Monroe was like this little town, this little very like sort of rural almost town. And it was picturesque and it was um, you know, it was a it had a small town feel, and I think now that the new, you know, with all this construction going on, it it has changed kind of the the essence of the town.
SPEAKER_02Wow, I need to do more investigating.
SPEAKER_01I I did um write a movie about uh that involved the Lubovich in Crown Heights. So I worked on a movie called Crown Heights, and I I was so so interested because I got to actually go and and interview um people from that community, and it's not the same group as the Monroe group, um, the Crown Heights group are Lubovich, and um I just had such a great time like meeting and learning, just learning a little bit more about that culture.
SPEAKER_02Nice. And here's a question that I'm so excited to ask because it taps into how you're able to really further develop and toggle into the different characters. But Where's Home starts with a second person point of view and doesn't take on first person narrative until with the Megnas in Neighbors, which is two stories into the book. What insight are you offering to readers by writing from these particular perspectives, especially second person at the beginning of the book?
SPEAKER_01So I wish I could tell you that I had this grand idea of the insight into which, you know, second person, Maddie, and that story, um, that I actually thought it through that much. Um that story, even though it's the first story in the book, it's one of the last stories to be written. And it came about after I delivered the book to Crystal, my my editor, Crystal Wilkinson. And Crystal felt it used to open with either home or the Megnas. And Crystal felt that the opening of the book needed an introduction into this world so that the reader could be grounded and understand why this couple moved to this town, um, why they're in this white town, how they ended up there. Um and we looked at the book, and I and she said, you know, you need this opening. And I said, Well, I think I'd like to balance the opening story with the last story. And I knew that the last story was a story from Phil's mother's point of view. Um, his mother, Emily, is narrating her story from the point at which she's dead. So it's she's narrating after she's dead, and she's and she's using future tense. So the first line is when I pass on, my second son will arrive more than 20 minutes late to my funeral. So that's one perspective. And so with Maddie, the first line is before you arrive, you pick your parents. And so Maddie is narrating from even before in utero. She's she's narrating from the other realm. She's in the spiritual world. Eventually, she's in your utero and she's like trying to get here. But the you, you know, I did not think about this, but when I look at it to try to answer your question, I feel like the you and the I are two different things, and she's not yet created. So she's create, she is literally creating herself, she's manipulating the circumstances to bring about her birth, and she's making herself. There is like a school of thought that, like when a fetus is in your utero, it has the sense of creating itself in utero. This is what's happening in this story. And so the you feels appropriate because it it feels like she's not yet an I. She is projecting like you will be, like you are going to do this. And um, so that's that's why it works for me. Um, I don't know if it gives the reader an extra insight, but it's what felt correct to me as a writer. And I I love second person. There's another second person story in the book called Daughtered Out from Livia's point of view. And um, she also uses the you and for a similar reason. So Livia was as a young person an artist, and she too is creating herself, she's creating her life. Like she even talks about it in those terms that you know she she purposefully constructed and laid out, you know, the the scope of her life intentionally, and on the surface, she's a kind of masterpiece. So she's very clear that she has created who she is. Um, and I think Maddie is doing something similar, not exactly the same, but similar. And so both of those, both women uh use the second person you in those circumstances, but there's other stories where we don't use the second person, but in those, it felt appropriate to me. So a long explanation. And oh, and the Megnas, that's first person plural, so it's a we story. And um I I had never done, I'd never published um a we story before. So I I wanted to do that. And to me, it seemed like okay, this is just this one couple, it's the Megnas, but the we and their perspective could represent the larger community. So even though it's we, and one of the things about this we is that they're okay with Phil and Velma, but they would not be okay with a whole lot of Phils and Velmas. So they get comfortable with this Phil and Velma next door, but don't bring all your relatives, like they get very upset when they have a barbecue and all their black relatives are on the lawn. That's very concerning to them. But then they realize, oh, they they don't want to live with their black relatives because if they did, they'd still be there. They would have stayed in the Bronx, but they're here. They want to live here around white people, so we're okay. We're okay. And I think that that could be representative of you know what a lot of people's attitudes were. Like, yeah, okay, you you two are cute cool. You're you're good looking or you're educated, you have a nice house, you have good taste. We can deal with you, but that doesn't mean that they're not deep down still dealing with racist ideas about who black people are and what's going to happen if more black people come.
SPEAKER_02See, and there's that MFA coming into work because I have yet to figure out a way how to write the you in a way that's convincing. And you do it in such a way where it's like, oh, here it is. This is, you know, this character realizing themselves before they're born. And I'm like, there's that MFA, which are you still teaching writing by chance? No, I'm not.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I you know, I was adjuncting. We talked about this before I came on. Like adjuncting was demoralizing to me, and it just wasn't enough money for me to run myself ragged doing that job. So, you know, I'm older than you and um I've saved up a bit. I'm like ready for retirement. So that's that's where I am. Not not to retire from writing, but to retire from working for anybody else.
SPEAKER_02Nice. I'm gonna be like you when I grow up because I want to retire yes. Yes, so Phil, and I'm gonna okay, is it Arrington or Arrington?
SPEAKER_01Arrington.
SPEAKER_02Arrington, thank you. Phil Arrington appears in both Life's Gen Gone to Waste and But Where's Home. How has this character evolved since Light's Gen Gone to Waste? And what has But Where's Home, its additional characters and timeline allowed you to explore with this character's trajectory?
SPEAKER_01Well, you know, we talked about narcissism, right? So narcissist and Phil is also on the narcissism spectrum, and narcissists don't typically evolve. If by evolve you mean become more mature and get better, they get older, but they don't necessarily um get wiser or have more of an ability to self-reflect. But the characters who do evolve in Butware's home are Maddie and Livia. So Maddie and Livia, we see them over long stretches of time. We meet them both as young girls. So we meet Maddie, we see her at eight, we see her at 58, we see her at 17, um, we see Livia at 10, we see her as a teenager, then at 28, then again at 35. Um, so we get to see how they navigate their relationships with their parents over the course of their lives, and we see that they start to figure it out and they evolve and they decide either I'm going to put down, I'm gonna set a boundary with you and I'm gonna stick firm to it, even though it's hard for me to do that. I'm gonna set this boundary, or I'm gonna set worse than or more than a boundary, I'm just not gonna talk to you anymore. And I'm just gonna move on with my life so that I am not subjected to abuse anymore. So both of those characters evolve. I think that Phil, rather than evolve, Phil, Phil gains a sense of his own importance and he leans into that. So he he becomes more confident, more and more confident and cocky, and like your therapist, he becomes full of himself and he carries himself around the town like he's something special. And he, you know, he is. He believes that he is and he owns that and he's comfortable with that. Um, but I don't I don't see that as evolving. I I see it as you know, just another facet of self involvement and and narcissism. Um and I mean deep down I think it's really to do with a fragile ego more than a genuine. Strong or secure ego. But I still feel like even though he doesn't evolve, he's still fun to check in on because he's he's amusing, he's irritating. I mean, I've heard from readers that they some of them hate him. One person said she wanted to punch him in the throat. Like he's you know, he's definitely a character you you will probably make note of and remember. So um I had fun with him. But yeah, I think if if you're looking for how characters evolve from one book to the next, like both both Maddie and Livia are also in Lightskin Gone to Waste, but they don't they don't get to the point in that book where they're fully themselves and come into their own and to their confidence enough to stand up, to really stand up to their parents. And in this book, they get to the point where they can stand up to their parents. So I think that's the evolution of the book.
SPEAKER_02Nice. So why explore family and these stories as fiction? What are some advantages and what are some challenges? And how does exploring the multigenerational journey of a family help with exploring themes like racism, place in class? Because you span, even though it's a short period of time, like 60s to 2022, a lot happens during that time period.
SPEAKER_01Well, let's start with that part of it. So, how do I how do we look at race and class like over this time period? So when we meet in the first story, when we meet Phil and Gumma, they're still living in the Bronx. And from my point of view, their move, it's it's a working class, maybe it's it's like a a neighborhood that probably spans the the strata of socioeconomic class because that's just how neighborhoods were, you know, like in the in the 50s and the 60s. So they move from this neighborhood to a white working class neighborhood. That's the first neighborhood. So, from my point of view, that's a lateral move. That's not a move up. Like I think they see it as a move up. But I I would bet you that in that black neighborhood that they were in, there were teachers, um, maybe a doctor or two. There, you know, there were a variety of types of people with different types of jobs. Um and yet they did not want to be stuck or forced into a black neighborhood. They wanted the freedom to move elsewhere. And they took that opportunity. And even though they received pushback from the working class white community, um, they decided to stay. And then they moved to another house, which was in a little bit of a better neighborhood, a little bit of a higher class. And then ultimately they bought an estate that was, you know, evidence that they had succeeded, that they had made it, like this was their American dream. And we learned from Phil what his father had done. So his father had been a Pullman porter and then a customs inspector. So he was, you know, first a servant and then a civil servant. So that was a change in class. Um, and his father owned his own home. So that's an indication of the class that he was trying to ascend in. We also learned at some point in the book that Velma's mother had been a live-in maid. And so Velma has gone from the illegitimate daughter of a live-in maid, probably the low socioeconomic class, to living in this home with a pool and a tennis court. So that, you know, she has spanned, she's jumped in class. Um so I guess that's the the breadth of time, is what gives you the ability to look at um at class and the changing class within the family. The same family starts in one place and ends somewhere else. Um the other part of your question, I think you were saying, like, why do this as fiction? Um I'm assuming you mean as opposed to memoir. Is that correct? Yes. Okay. So well, I'm just not trained as a memoirist. I'm trained as a fiction writer. And even though these stories are based on my family, and there are there are facts and experiences from my family, I've also taken the freedom to write about a character from a character's point of view before she's born. I don't think I could do that in memoir because people would think I was insane. So, but as a fiction writer, you know, I can I can imagine, okay, here this character is in the other realm. Like it gives me that freedom to create that point of view while also sticking to facts of how my actual family got to Monroe. So, you know, the the perspective of the of the speaker, of the narrator of the story, that's obviously fiction. I mean, was I reincarnated? Maybe it's possible, but I could not write that as in memoir. But I can do that as a fiction writer. Maddie, you know, is had a relationship with Velma in their past, in her past life, and she's struggling to get back to Velma to repair what she feels she messed up as Velma's mother. She's gonna reincarnate as her daughter. Um, of course that's fiction. Um, but the trajectory from the Bronx to Monroe and what happens when they get there, their water's cut off. Um, there's protests, people throw eggs at them. The the story about how Phil didn't want to stay at the hospital when she goes to give birth. That's real. Like my mother told me that. Your father wanted to go play tennis, he didn't even want to sit with me at the hospital. Like that stuff is real. So I'm blending, you know, these these real things with my imagination. And I think that's what fiction, you know, it is kind of a combination of memory, imagination, you know, things that stick with you. Um, and you know, you just use your creative muscles to make something new out of some stuff that's swirling around in your mind. That's what you do as a fiction writer. And I I don't, I've never written memoir. I've I've written a couple of essays, but I I'm not a memoirist. So I think there was one other part of the question. I forget.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So what are like what are some of the challenges of writing a family story as fiction?
SPEAKER_01Well, the challenge is, of course, like your family doesn't typically want you to write about them, especially the negative aspects of them. Um, and so that was a challenge. But my father passed away in 2014, long before um this, these books came out. My first book, uh Remedy for a Broken Angel, that came out in 2014. And it came out right after he passed away, but it wasn't about him. There were some things in it that um that I took from him, things that he did and aspects of his personality, but it wasn't about him. Um, but in the as a younger writer in my 20s, I did write stuff about him and he hated it so much. Like he hated it, it made him hate me. There was one, I did a play at the Negro Ensemble Company. Sam Jackson was in this play. He played All the Fathers. It was called Here in My Father's House, and it was a bunch of women from an organization called Black Women in Theater. And the playwright Leslie Lee took our individual scenes and monologues and strung them together. And we staged this thing. It was by me, um Cheryl Lane, uh Jewel Bramage, Ellen Clegghorn, and Zelda Patterson. So it was five of us, and it was all about our fathers. And there, and one of my scenes, my father is having sex with somebody. I'm living with him during college. I'm living in his apartment, and he's having loud sex with somebody right in the next room, and I can hear everything. And my and it's a monologue, and I'm complaining. Could you please shut up? And the woman sounds like an ambulance, and I'm throwing shit at the wall. And my father came to see this play, Dr. Nicole, and he was so mad. He was like, I can't believe I came and sat through this. He was so pissed off, and it's hilarious to me now. And it's like, but you did that. You did that. I'm a writer and an actress. Like, what did you think was gonna happen? Like, you don't do that shit around a writer. I'm sorry, but I'm gonna use it. And I did. Um, and so that's a disadvantage, like you piss your family off. Um, but so I don't have to deal with that anymore. Um, according to my uh sibling, they don't read my work, so I guess there's no consequence there. They they have articulated to me that they do not read my work, and so great, good, don't don't is um in her 90s and she can only get it if somebody gives it to her, and I don't know like what you know, if that's gonna happen. I I know that she read Homegoing and she thought that it was about her, and she was annoyed, she was pissed off about it, that it's really about Maddie, but of course, you know, she thought it was about her. And if I was gonna write a book about her, I should have consulted with her, and and she thought my first book was about her too. And there were elements of her personality, but my first book was a jazz singer. My mother's not a jazz singer, but she thought she thinks everything's about her. So, you know, that can be problematic. But um, because I'm writing at this late stage, you know, I'm I'm an older writer, um, there's less uh there's there's less challenge because the people just aren't around. And one of the things that my mother objected to was just the the revealing of her circumstances of her birth and her early childhood, and I can understand that, but and she was very embarrassed and she didn't tell anybody. I don't even know that she told told her closest friends, but they're all dead now. You know, my mother is 94. Uh, her friends have passed away. So who is there to be embarrassed in front of? They're gone. Nobody cares, nobody knows, nobody cares. Um, and so I waited long enough that, you know, to to not embarrass her too much. Um, and it wasn't my intention to embarrass her, but I put that in there because I felt that without it, her character seems too harsh. You know, she's she's um she's mean, she's uh abusive verbally and physically to Maddie. But if you understand that she was abandoned as a young child and that she was in foster care and that, you know, she had a really difficult childhood, you can extend a little bit of grace that she just never recovered from that. She never processed it. She had this childhood trauma from which she never recovered, and it manifested in her parenting. Um, so you know, I I felt like I was doing her a disservice not to include those things because not knowing any of that, she's just a horrible character, and you don't have any insight into why she's so horrible. Why does she have these crazy abandonment issues? This man has cheated on her all the like left and right throughout the entire marriage, and she doesn't want him to leave her. That's crazy. It doesn't make sense. But if you know that she was abandoned as a baby, her abandonment issues make a little bit more sense, you know. Um so those are some of the challenges and the advantages. I think I articulated in it earlier in that I have the freedom to, you know, to just make stuff up and try different things.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and thank you for such a thorough and very candid answer. Because one of the things I'm exploring, because I'm working on memoir, which I, you know, up until this point did plays and play on plays and poetry. And the trick with memoir is you it's a snapshot of time. Whereas in fiction, you could write about an entire life. And also, what I like about fiction are those moments of redemption, because you can rewrite something as opposed to a memoir. What I'm learning is if you're rewriting something that may or may not have happened, or you don't have the clear source material on it, it can't go on the book, or you have to really like finagle it for it to be able to work.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that and that that is, I feel for me, that would be so limiting, you know, because there's a lot of the story that where I want to have a lot of detail, but I was too young to to know what those details were. So I had to research and you know, make some of them up and and create them. And I feel like if I were to write this as memoir, if I had to stick to like the actual details, and I'm not sure like if I would be able to, you know, could I could I make up like, well, this was the color of the house, this was the foliage in this place, like could I make that up? Or would I have to stick to actually what was there? And I I might have to, and I could go back there and look, but I don't know, it's just easier just to say they were maple trees, you know, there was a birch tree there. Um, and if it's wrong, so what? Like, you know, it's not a memoir, it's fiction. And also, you know, it's less likely to be sued if I'm writing this as fiction. Um, the names are changed, people are, you know, condensed, like sexes are are switched, you know, there's characters who are a composite of different people. Then there's nobody that can read this and say, that's exactly me, except for the members of my family.
SPEAKER_02But going back to this before my next question, I can't, and this is something not to put our business out there, but this is something that me and my husband are very conscious of. We're just like, people are home. I cannot believe that your father, with you as a college student, had said, I'm like, wow. And then instead of saying, you know, I'm sorry or being embarrassed, he's like, Why are you right about me?
SPEAKER_01And I'm like, bro, like so that particular scene is not in but where's home, but there is a scene in But Where's Home where it happens, and there's another kid there too, the mistress's kid is also there and hears it. And so he then starts speaking of himself in the third person. It's like, well, your father is not handling this, it's a very tumultuous time, you know. Like, so it's like he's creating this distance, you know. Um that was a recurring um experience in my life, and it definitely was not pleasant.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Oh my gosh, you fall into the like segue to the next question.
SPEAKER_02Um prior to having our guests on Black Writers Read, we asked each of them why they write. Here's what you offer. I write to understand who I am and what I believe about the world and my experiences of it. I also write to connect with others, to move and/or entertain them, and to be in conversation with them. I think it means to make sense of things that are happening in society rather by elu, see, here's my doctorate not coming in handy. By elucidating, I hope I pronounced it right. The past yes, to help to help readers understand the past connections, connection to the present and to heal, or by documenting the present and give readers sustenance, hope to help them feel less alone, or to move them to action. Contributing my voice and perspective adds to the cultural conversation. While my work may differ from other writers, we're in community. We share this world, and each contribution helps us as a collective make sense of the culture. How do you think fiction helps us to understand the complexities of society and culture? And why do you think fiction is an important form of storytelling and world building for black women writers?
SPEAKER_01Well, let me take the first part of the question first. So, why how does fiction help us make sense of society? That's the question. Yes. So I think because of its specificity, if you're reading a book, you know, about a particular character, for example, you're reading a book about Maddie as a young girl in this environment where she's othered. She's, you know, she's not um, she's not in a community of people who look like her. She's in a community where she's different from everybody and she's trying to fit in. And if I can bring you into her interiority and how she experiences this, she doesn't really have anybody to talk with about it because her mother doesn't want to hear it, doesn't ask, isn't isn't interested in her experience. Her mother really just isn't interested in her experience. What her mother is interested in is appearance. Like you should be in ballet because that makes us look good, because we are, you know, giving you this opportunity for you to um do something that that's sort of sophisticated and and and is indicative of our upper middle class status. We want, you know, I want my daughter to be in taking ballet class. But Maddie has this horrible experience um where her ballet teacher is cruel to her. She's the only black girl in the class, she's ridiculed in the class. I think that that being with her through that experience gives you a you know a close look at, you know, what what did educators get away with in that time period in in the 60s? Like you were allowed to be mean to a child that and you were the educator. Um and what was it like to be just you know a little black girl in this situation with nobody else who could understand how she felt? Um, we we actually see that we experience it through her. And so that's just one example. But I think it I think fiction draws you into the inner life of a character and how they experience and process the world, how they respond emotionally or don't respond, like what they're how they're able to get their needs met or or are they not? And in you know, in this particular setting, this one character, she doesn't really get her needs met. The way that she gets the way that she meets her needs is basically calling forth her grown self for comfort. Um, and you know, I think that was my experience. And so I'm writing fiction about my experience, but I'm sharing something, you know, that was that was very real to me. I was alone, I was isolated and did not have parents who were interested in what I was going through. And there was no point in trying to bring it up because they were more interested in their own experience and their own lives. And that's, you know, that's one, as you said earlier about like your about memoirs, like that's a snapshot of something that was going on with, you know, a person, a black person in a white environment in that year, whenever the year that was 1971. You know, that's that's a historical sort of um snapshot of that something that was happening. And so throughout the book, throughout all, you know, all the books, there are things that are happening in different time frames. Um, one thing that comes to mind is in Homegoing, I don't know if you remember this, but in 2006, Michael Richards went to a comedy club in LA and started calling somebody the N-word. And he said the actual word. He didn't say the N-word, he said the actual word hard E R. And I remember that. And I wrote a scene of Maddie watching that um from her, you know, experiencing that from her point of view, taking that in and how it reminds her of being called that at home in Monroe. And that too, it's like, okay, that's fiction, but I really did experience Michael Richards' racist rant, and it really did trigger me. And so I'm, you know, this that was something going on in society. This is a white comedian beloved, beloved comedian from Seinfeld, calling somebody an N-I-G-G-E-R, repeatedly leaning into it, even doing a black voice as he heard like it was so upsetting. And this was 2006, shortly before Thanksgiving. Um, that's a you know, a way to, if not document, because if it was documented, it would be memoir, it was fiction, but I'm writing pieces of my experience through history in my life and sharing that. And so I that's a great way to understand society because you're you're getting into you know into somebody's head who's going through it. So um that's how I see it. That's how I experience fiction, um, even historical fiction, like historical. Historical fiction gives me a window into a time that you know where I didn't exist, but I can understand the inner lives of somebody who did. Um, and I particularly like to see that, you know, as as black women, like what you know, what were their lives like? Um, so I think that was another part of your question, right? So there was an additional part that had to do with black women. Could you repeat that?
SPEAKER_02Yes. Why do you think fiction is an important form of storytelling and world building for black women writers?
SPEAKER_01I like the idea that you that you use um word world building because I feel like we, as black women writers, you know, write ourselves into existence. So if I didn't write this story, when I'm gone, nobody would know what my experience was, except for my family, and then they'll eventually be gone too. So who would know? You know, who would know what my experience is? And and that's what I love about um you know, reading books by Black women writers um from you know, over the course of time. I like seeing like what was it like? I I recently read the book Um Harlem Rhapsody. Um, and in it, like she's writing from Jesse Fawcett's point of view. And Jesse Fawcett was this wonderful writer and editor, and she discovered all this talent. And it, I mean, talk about like under getting a feel of society. So we got we got to understand through Jesse Fawcett's experience the sexism, like her, you know, W.E.B. Du Bois like was really kind of a jerk and you know, like marginalized her as a woman and and didn't, you know, he he respected her for her talent, but he didn't really help her ascend like the way that she wanted to. But we're we're seeing this whole complex like world of the Harlem Renaissance and her place in it and how sophisticated she is, how well educated she is, like all these wonderful things that if I hadn't read that book, I wouldn't like I've heard of Jesse Fawcett. I could look her up on Wikipedia, but reading this um, what's the author's name?
SPEAKER_02Um Victoria Victoria Christopher Murray, which she was on Black Writers Read.
SPEAKER_01Well, I loved her book, and I loved being in Jesse Fawcett's head and learning stuff about Jesse Fawcett's life and her relationship with W.E.B. Du Bois. And I was just so, you know, I was so into this book and so proud of her and how brilliant she was, and I was rooting for her. But I feel like even though I didn't live during the Harlem Renaissance, um, Victoria Chamber, Victoria, what's her middle name? Christopher Murray.
SPEAKER_02Christopher Murray, yep.
SPEAKER_01Um, she she gave me that setting. She gave me the Harlem Renaissance, she gave me the experience of being at that publication and the the politics therein and how she was treated by like other people. Like, I got the whole world. I mean, what a great way to learn about history is through fiction that's entertaining. That book was so entertaining. I read that book as if Jesse Fawcett was my friend, and I was like, girl, kick him to the curb, get out of that relationship. Like, I was so into that book. I and I was telling everybody, you have to read this. This is so good. It was so good. I love that book.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and also thank you for mentioning Harlem Rhapsody because the thing that I and we talked about it in the interview. As a graduate student, I and I'm not gonna say at which institution, but it might be obvious to people because one of them, I went, he has an affiliation. Many of us we knew that WEB Du Bois, especially during that time period, we knew men in power had other women and all sorts of stuff, and got around in the ways that they did. And I feel like if we did not, we would not be able to get the story that we got on Jesse Fawcett if a black woman was not allowed to build her world because of men in power. I'm not saying that Du Bois was trying to cover up her story, but at the same time, we don't really get Jesse's story until a hundred years later. So, yeah, so fiction and world building, especially for black women writers, it really allows us to excavate the stories of our foremothers who may have gone absent to really bring them to light.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we get to see their inner lives. Have you read Um The Street by Anne Petri?
SPEAKER_02No.
SPEAKER_01That I only learned about that book about two years ago. Dr. Nicole, that book is amazing. Anne Petrie was a genius, and I I it's it's all interiority, it's it's all like her thoughts, and she we see this woman who's a a domestic, and the trajectory of her life, um, and it's you know, it's it's hard, it's a difficult experience, but she does everything she can to make it work. And the society she was living in, and she's in Harlem. I've forgotten the exact year, but I think it takes place sometime between like the late 30s and the mid-40s. I could be wrong, but but it does such a good job of like showing what people were up against and how no matter how hard you tried, the the world was just brutal to black women. Brutal, brutal. It was the hardest experience. And her experience kind of illuminated for me my biological grandmother's experience. My biological grandmother was a live-in maid who just could not get it together to make a safe and consistent home for her child. She had a child with someone she worked for who didn't want it and didn't financially help her. And this is that world. This is that world. Like if you're a black woman, like you know, you're relegated, unless you're fortunate and able to get yourself a really good education and and move out, like if you're in the working class and you're taking these jobs, like you are vulnerable to other people's whims and and cruelties. Um, but the book is so well written and it's called The Street. And I listened to it on audiobook, and my goodness, it's magnificent. I can't recommend it highly enough. Like, go just go get it from the library and listen to it if you can. Like it's so, so good.
SPEAKER_02Nice. And thanks for recommending to get it from the library because our libraries are so one more thing.
SPEAKER_01Um the there's a a brilliant academic writer. Um, I think it's Sadia Hartman. Can you do you know who I'm talking about?
SPEAKER_02Yes, I do, yes.
SPEAKER_01So she wrote a book that was I've forgotten the title of it, but it it's it's a chronicle of a bunch of women sort of through a a period of time. Um I can't remember the name of it. You might you might know of this book. It's it's a it's a popular book, but but when I listen to her book, the street fits right in there. Like it this is a book about the about just the challenges of black women in this time frame that she's writing about. And the street, the the character in the street like could be inserted into that same book. Like it was just um incredible. I want to say wise women, but that's not it. Um but it's one of Sadia Hart, Dr. Sadia Hartman's books. So nice.
SPEAKER_02I'm gonna yeah, I'm gonna look for it and put it in the um the description after the show because I think it's not, but I can't think of the title offhand. So I have like two more questions for you. Okay. What was your favorite story to write within but where's home and why?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I can't, I don't know. I can't really say that I had a favorite. Um, and I wrote these stories over quite a vast like long period of time, and they were all fun in their way because they they all have their own rhythm, you know, and so it's it's it's was kind of fun to find that rhythm and to write it. But I guess more more recently, so the most recent stories are the first story in But Wears Home, and that story was like, as I was writing it, I thought it was crazy because it started rhyming, and then I just like leaned into the rhyming, and I was like, this is so nuts. Like it's reincarnation and rhyming, and it's like I had fun with it though. But then, so the story Um To the Moon was an old story that I had abandoned on my computer and thought, eh, nobody's gonna want to sit with this crazy man. Um, and there's a story in Lightskin Gone to Waste called Make a Space, and that story is the same story from Maddie's point of view. So the the event is Phil brings his mistress to his home where his wife still lives, and while she's at work, he has his mistress come to the house and plays tennis with her and swims with her and another couple and forces Maddie to babysit. When Maddie wanted to go to a party to see Zeke Odom. So, Susie, when I read Susie was talking about Zeke Odom, Maddie was trying to go to this party. But then, so that's in that's called Make a Space, and that story appears in Lightskin Gone to Waste. In this book, I found this old story version of the same story from Phil's point of view. So Phil is justifying bringing this woman to his house while his still wife is at work, and and being in his head, like I just thought, man, he's nuts, but he's so amusing. It's so, it's so amusing to see how he justifies his bad behavior and it's terrible behavior. But then I also brought in an element in that story of him missing his father. So Phil lost his father when he was 10 years old, and he never got over it. His mother was mean to him, and we learn a little bit about why in Lightskin Gone to Waste. There was some colorism issues going on there. Um, but she also too was not, you know, a very warm and nurturing mother. She was a better grandmother, but not so great as a mother to Phil. And so he's he suffered through that, felt unloved, felt displaced, and and all of that is in the book. And then I bring his father into the book as a a ghost, maybe, or as a um something in Phil's imagination. He's very drunk. Maybe it's a hallucination, I don't know. But his father comes to him in the story. Um, and that was really fun. It was fun to be in this arrogant man's head who's saying, Yeah, I did it. And look, and to see like how he's yearning for his daddy. He's still like, he's still that 10-year-old little boy who wants his dad. Um, so that was fun. But I I liked I liked writing all the stories. Um, I also really liked working on there. Was once, there's two stories. Crystal asked me to separate them. They were originally one story, um, and they became far away from here and far away from there. And in far away from here, it's the the thing that I mentioned in answering one of your questions, where Maddie was um uh treated badly by one of her teachers or ballet teacher, and then and then she's treated even worse by Velma, who hits her and she runs away. And I was able to blink those stories by having the adult Maddie go back to the young Maddie, meet her at this spot in the town, and they have they have a moment together where young Maddie gets to see her adult self and how she turns out. And that was really healing for me to write. I really, I really appreciated writing that. And there's a line, there's a line in Far Away from here that where Maddie says to her mother, you're a mean lady. And if you're not nicer to me, when you get old, I'm gonna stick you in the home and leave you there. And I actually said that to my mother, and my mother would bring it up every few years, the older she got, she would remind me that I said that. I was like, Yeah, and you better be nice to me because I'll do it. She wasn't. Um, but it was fun to write that and to write like what I don't even know where as a little girl I got that because I was eight years old. I don't, I don't think I even I had never been to a home. I don't know. I must maybe I saw something on TV, but I feel like my older self reached back and said, Here, I'm gonna help you out. Say this. Um, and so that's how I took it. That's how I wrote it. It was like older Maddie sort of going back to support her younger self.
SPEAKER_02Nice. I love that. And lastly, what is next for you? Which you mentioned a little bit at the beginning, but what is next for you and how can a Black Writers Read community support you on this journey?
SPEAKER_01Well, to be honest, what's next is like continuing to promote this book. So I'll be, you know, I'll be in promotion mode probably at least until the summer. So I have events like through May, and then I actually have something in June. And, you know, maybe things will come up um it in between there. So promote, you know, promotion is a job. It's like it's hard. Like I cannot be in my writer head while I'm having to like work on questions, work on readings, be on, you know, do virtual events, do in-person events, get called clothes for these events, like all this stuff. Like it's a job. And um, I so I am not actively working on my next book because I'm doing this. Like I have, you know, I have like two more events this week, virtual events, and then I have my in-person event. I have to prepare for all these things. And I I just don't have the energy. Like, I'm you know, I'm I am, I feel like I look younger, but I am not young. And I it's a lot of energy to to to do all that. And writing the kind of writing that I do requires a lot of stamina and emotional energy, and I just don't have it. I just have to do this right now. So that's what I'm doing. But when I get to it, I do have a novel that um that I I am revising. And so um that is what I plan to do next. And it it's it's not about the Arringtons, but it it's it's looking at similar things, race and class. And I think that that, you know, continues to arise in my work, looking at race and class and identity, because that was my life. And you know, if you're it's a it's a kind of unusual circumstance to be like an upper middle class person surrounded by mostly working class, it's not that, it's it's not that common. And but it's how I learned how to be in the world. It's was what my experience was, and so that comes up, you know, in in my work. Um, and even even when I'm not thinking about it, it comes up. You know, it's just who I am, I guess. Like then when I was saying, like, I was listening to your answer, um, my answer to your question that you read, like I'm writing to figure out like who I am, what I think about things. And that really did like I saw that I was doing this repeatedly, like, you know, writing about this particular experience. And it is like because that's where I come from. You know, that's why I'm writing what I write. It's it's because of where I come from. And and the work itself tells me who I am. It's like what comes out is is like illuminating, you know, this is who I am, this is what I think. This is, you know, this is what these are my this is my worldview, basically.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and also I know you're gonna be at AWP, which I can't remember the dates right now.
SPEAKER_01Um panel, it's not about my book though. I'm on a panel, a social justice panel. Um, and the book that we're looking at is um Keenan Norris's Confessions of Copeland Kane. Oh, that book that I that I was trying to remember the title of is Wayward Women. I think it's Wayward Women or Wayward Women's Lives.
SPEAKER_02Nice.
SPEAKER_01What happens at this age? You hear something, you're thinking about something else, and then it pops up. Okay, so the book where we're gonna be looking at at uh AWP, it's a social justice panel uh staging, so using a social justice novel and and adapting it for the stage. And we're gonna we're gonna perform a scene from it, and Keenan will be there. He's actually, I think, going to read one of the parts. Um, and then we'll also just be talking about you know how we came to be involved in writing social justice. The there's I think five panelists, and we'll we'll all have a little bit to say about our experience um writing about social justice.
SPEAKER_02Yes, and I also want to put out since I'm not since I'm in Connecticut, I'm not that far from New York City, you will be in New York City on March 31st.
SPEAKER_01I will, yes, at PT Knitwear. Yeah. Oh, and they ask, like, if people find this and and watch and want to help me, like it really does help if you add a Goodreads or an Amazon review. I can always that's that's always really helpful.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, thank you for plugging Goodreads and Amazon reviews. Those are huge.
SPEAKER_01And then also too, however, everybody's trying to leave Amazon. Um true. Um, so maybe, but I think Goodreads is all it's all connected. So if you don't want to, I I completely understand. I mean, I I've I've been seeing people post that they've left Amazon and I get it. I understand. But as a you know, as a writer, sort of trying to just be seen, um, it it does help me, but I'm not gonna ask people to do something that they feel uh violates their their beliefs or their views.
SPEAKER_02So, Tony Ann, thank you so much for being on this afternoon. It's always so great chatting with you, and it was great having you back.
SPEAKER_01Oh, thank you. It was great to be here. I I enjoy chatting with you too.
SPEAKER_02Thank you so much for joining us for this episode of Black Writers Read. Black Writers Read is available on all platforms. Please be sure to subscribe to Black Writers Read wherever you listen to your podcasts to receive each new episode once they are released. And after you've listened to this episode and subscribed to the podcast, I would appreciate so very much of you, but also leave a review as your feedback helps me to curate the series and it helps others to find us. I hope that you are so moved and encouraged to take your support of Black Writers Read one step further and join us on Patreon. Thank you for championing this work and helping to sustain this award-winning, independently produced virtual platform. To learn more, please visit BlackWritersread.com. Thanks again for your support and for ensuring that Black Writers continue to matter.
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