Divining Freedom with Sarah Johnson and JerJuan Howard

In this special live episode, Donna and Sam sat down with the producer of Authentically Detroit, Sarah Johnson and Jerjuan Howard, the owner of the newly opened Howard Family Bookstore for a powerful evening rooted in storytelling, reflection, and community.

The discussion surrounded the creation of Divining Freedom, a novel written by Donna. This multigenerational story explores the legacy of the Great Migration, the building of Black institutions, and the women who carry communities forward when systems failed them.

They also spoke with JerJuan about his writing journey, and what it means to create and share Black literature within Black-owned spaces. The conversation serves as a reminder that storytelling is not only an art form, but a way of preserving memory, challenging systems, and imagining new possibilities for our communities

To purchase copies of Divining Freedom, click here.

Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:24

What's up, Detroit? Welcome to another episode of Authentically Detroit. We are broadcasting live from Detroit's West Side today at the Howard Family Bookstore. I'm Sam Robinson. And I'm Dinah Givens Davidson. We want to thank you all so much for listening in and supporting our efforts to build a platform of authentic voices for real people here in the city of Detroit. We want you guys to like, rate, and subscribe to our podcast on all platforms. Today we have a very special episode. We have the honor of hosting a special live show and book talk featuring Juwan Howard and our producer, Sarah Johnson, at the newly opened Howard Family Bookstore on Puritan. Juwan, Sarah, welcome everyone in the crowd. We have a live audience today. Like I'm Regis and Fieldman or something, you know? Um are you guys doing? Good.

SPEAKER_03 1:18

Good.

SPEAKER_05 1:18

Great. Great. It's a great day out here. It's a beautiful day. It is. We are at 13803 Puritan Avenue. It was once an abandoned building, sat vacant for 25 years, uh, overlooked and forgotten in June of 2024. That all changed. I got a chance really early on to see this space before it was anything. And man, you have like I this is beyond what I visioned for it. Obviously, uh, you know, at the at the uh opening, you had, you know, like more than a hundred people here to celebrate you. Uh, I know that for you, uh, your your vision to turn this vacant uh storefront into a bookstore was rooted in your community and in purpose. And I know Juwan, for you, this was very personal. Juwan grew up blocks away. Uh from here, walking past this building on his way home from middle school, uh, where others saw decay. Juwan saw a possibility. The Howard Family Bookstore was not built alone, it was developed through a community effort, grounded in self-determination. Family, friends, and neighbors came together to bring this space to life. They painted, installed flooring, hung drywall, helped transform what once stood empty. People like Aaron Thomas gave their time, energy, and skill because they believed in what this space could become. Their contributions live within these walls. This project builds on a larger vision in 2022. Umja Debate League transformed nearby vacant lot into Umoja Village, which I just walked past it to get here. A vibrant community space for youth art and programming. The bookstore is the next chapter in the same story of community-led development. Within a one and a half square mile radius, there are five K through 12 schools, hundreds of young people who pass through this area every single day. The Howard Family Bookstore exists to ensure they have a space for literacy, imagination, and growth, a place that reflects them and invests in who they can become. This store is not just a business, it is a movement. It represents the belief that the solutions to our community's challenges already exist within them. It stands at the intersection of youth development, community care, and self-determination. This space was created to rewrite a narrative, to turn vacancy into vision, to invest in the place that raised us. Sarah?

SPEAKER_00 3:44

Okay, now in divining freedom, generations of black families carry their hopes from the red clay roads of the South to the streets of Detroit, a city shimmering with promise, shadowed by limits they cannot yet see. What they find is not a destination, but a question that echoes across time. What does it mean to be free in a land that remembers your bondage and still demands your submission? At the heart of this sweeping novel are women whose voices are first silenced, then borrowed, then reshaped, until they claim them as their own. Daughters inherit the quiet endurance of their mothers only to transform it into something sharper, a language of truth, justice, and self-possession. Alongside them, men pursue freedom through ambition, defiance, and control until they confront the limits of conquest. As Detroit rises and burns, as dreams are built and broken, these lives reveal a deeper struggle, not only for survival, but for meaning.

SPEAKER_05 4:41

And Donna?

Donna Givens Davidson 4:43

Okay. Well, I'm going to start by reading a couple excerpts from the book. I want to say this was something I've been working on for four years. And some of you know that in addition to Authentically Detroit, I teach at Columbia University. I teach about Detroit's history, about um the history of racial justice in the city of Detroit. And I find myself telling stories, but also wanting to highlight the humanity of our people. We're not numbers, we are not statistics, we are human beings who've lived through many things. And in order to have justice, you have to be able to see human beings as human. You have to be able to see people as worthy of all the same things as everybody else. And it's the diminishment of Detroit, the disminishment of Detroiters that allows for things like emergency management to snatch our democracy and so many other things, mass foreclosures, mass tax foreclosures, and mass demolitions that just wipe us away. And people say, well, it makes good sense, but not good sense if these are also people. So let me start with the chapter. The book is divided into parts. The first part is during the Great Migration, and actually the formation of Black Detroit, how people got here. And so this first part is actually from somebody who, because Detroiters were here before the Great Migration, this is somebody who descends from a family that was here before the Great Migration. Roger Dunbar was born on Detroit's east side, the only child of a church mother who tried to protect him from the day he was born, from the prying eyes of friends and neighbors, from a grandmother who believed he was possessed by a spirit, and from the shame of his father's rejection. That boy looks like his no good father, his grandmother Ellen would complain, and he acts like him too. Can't sit still for nothing. Mama, stop, Gretchen responded weakly, knowing her mother was unstoppable when she was in a mood. He's only two years old. I told you that man was married when you first brought him around. I just knew it. What kind of man goes out of town every week? I'll tell you what, a man with a family in another town. Gretchen felt trapped living with her mother on a cramped block in a wood frame home with chip paint, a sagging porch, and windows coated with cold dust. She responded with a sigh. He's just a little boy, Mom. He can't help it, Ellen said. He was born that way. I'm telling you, as soon as I saw that fire mark on that boy's stomach, I knew what I was seeing. Satan. When Roger had temper tantrums, Gretchen tried to make him stop, holding him tight to calm him down and to silence her mother, which only made him thrash harder and scream at the top of his lungs. As he got older, he tried to win his grandmother's love. One day he brought her a bouquet of dandelions, and his grandmother sneered, Boy, get those weeds away from me. You trying to kill me? When Gretchen got home, she saw him sitting on the porch, a cloud of dandelion petals coating the porch steps while he aimed pebbles at the dog. Neighbors saw him and shook their heads. You know that boy's touch, they would say. As he matured, he learned to charm teenage girls, seducing them with flattery and flowers. Then he would notice a prettier girl or a girl with a better personality rolling the dice until he impregnated his mother's pastor's teenage daughter. Sheila was cute and caring, but most importantly, she came from a family with money and social standing. Her family believed in the sanctity of marriage. If he made Sheila an honest woman, the Colts family agreed to accept him as one of their own. They would mold him into something acceptable despite his lack of money, skills, or education. On the day he got married, his mother told him, Now listen, son, my job is done. Thank before you go out and do another foolish thing. Roger hugged his mother, thinking to himself that she didn't understand. Marrying Sheila was like rolling three sevens, a wife, a home, and a growing family. When he was hired at Ford Motor Company after being referred by his father-in-law, he thought he had broken the curse. Then came the Stark microcrash, layoffs and indolence. My parents gave us some money to hold us over, Sheila told him brightly, trying to lighten his spirits. Dad said you could do some work around the church until times get better. Roger could imagine the conversation led to their benevolence, and Sheila's cheery spirit didn't speech didn't fool him. He saw the worry and disappointment in her tight smile, her slump shoulders, the way she avoided looking him in the eye, the way she avoided his touch. You don't trust me to take care of us. Haven't I been taking care of you for eleven years? Sheila wouldn't look him in the eye as she responded, You know my father got you that job. He doesn't have any other leads. That will's gone dry. That's why he offered you the job of the church. Chastened and disillusioned, Roger considered the lies he had been telling himself. So you never respected me, he said before getting up to leave. He gathered his thoughts and tried to imagine a future living in this unwelcome truth. He was done proving himself. There was no future here with a wife who didn't believe in him and in-laws who looked down on him. One day, he chased a new dream out of town, leaving without warning or explanation. So that's one person, and it's his story growing up. And so you'll see how he gives birth to a son, and his son moves on to um, you know, have a very interesting marriage. So this is a grandparent of one of the lead characters. The next chapter is after they're established in Detroit. Um this is probably one of the chapters that sort of gives away some of the architecture of the book and what happens here, and it's called The Deal, and it takes place in 1970. There was no funeral for Greg Goins, only a private memorial following his cremation. The streets were too volatile for a public gathering. A funeral would have drawn the wrong kind of crowd. Police still hunting for the shooter, and young Bucks hungry for the chance to claim Goins Turf. George sat in his car longer than he needed, trying to gather himself before facing the family. His hands shook despite how tightly he gripped the steering wheel. He could still hear the gunshots in his head, could still feel the hot wind of bullets slicing past him. The sky outside was a flat, heavy gray, water pulled across the pub pavement until a day of intermittent rain falling suddenly and without warning, just like his tears. He wiped them as quickly as they came, angry that he couldn't control them, angry at everything he had failed to stop. Goins was dead, shot in a drive-by from an unmarked car. If George had moved a second slower, he would have been lying beside him. He didn't know the shooter's name, but the motive was clear. He had tried to warn Goins again and again. George had always hated drugs, hated poisoning his own people, hated risking the lives of men in a trade that felt like a curse. There were other hustles, safer hustles, gambling, numbers, loan sharking, fencing, even bank robbery. None of them shredded a community the way heroin did. They both claimed to serve their neighborhood through the Freedman Center, but drugs hollow out the very people they said they were helping. Goines thought the money was too good to walk away from. He compromised by allowing soft drugs, reefer, coke, trying to tell himself it was no worse than alcohol. But compromise is a slow slide, and not everyone honored the rules. Prophet was king, drugs were drugs, as a cash poured in. Goines closed his eyes and asked George to do the same. George never could. He has seen addiction up close at the Freedman Center. Young men who were proud, energetic, and hungry for knowledge, eyes bright with expectation. He watched too many decline to become shelves of their former selves, lethargic with vacant stares and lost purpose. Vietnam accelerated the crisis among young men, fighting a guerrilla war in tropical trip tropical triple canopy jungles against an entire people, not only soldiers, but sometimes their wives and children. The toll of direct combat, continuous fear, and mistrust, and sometimes buried guilt and shame produced trauma. He had no capacity to understand and no self-help. And self-help could not heal. Alternately escaped through heroin into a trap as deadly as war. What Gorings refused to see, or maybe couldn't bear to face, was his age. The streets were changing. Young men hardened overseas, now killed without hesitation. They weren't afraid of old school rules. They didn't respect them. They wanted everything the profit, the turf, the power. This is a young man's game, Georgia tried to warn him. There are better ways to make money that won't get us arrested or killed. Look around you. I love you, man, Judge Goins to cut him off, but you always think you're above the rest of these cats. I don't like drugs any more than you do, so I don't use them. But telling men to sacrifice profit to appreese appease your conscience, that's a waste of breath. You think selling drugs is dangerous? Try stopping a man from selling them. George wished, not for the first time, that he had shouted back, forced him to listen, done something, but he hadn't. And in one violent instant, the old guard lost his anchor. If Goins couldn't protect them or himself, why should any man stay loyal to the syndicate? The day after the memorial, George summoned his top lieutenants, Ray Watkins, Wayne Porter, and Joseph F. Evans to a secret basement vault he discovered while remodeling his kitchen. The door was hidden behind a false wall in the kitchen pantry. A steep staircase led to a former speakeasy left over from prohibition. The room was furnished with two wooden tables, a handful of mismatched chairs, and a single bolt casting shadows over the men's faces. George took a breath and forced his voice level. The drug game is over. Let them have their turf. If any of our men want to follow them, let them go. It's done. Ray's chair scraped the concrete, loud and unfrayed. Let's not overreact, he snapped. We throw it on our cards and they'll think we folded. Words gets out were soft. He cut a sharp look around the table. We're finished. George stilled his nurse, refusing to write to the implied criticism that he was acting out of cowardice. You're not I'm not reacting, he said, controlling the pace of his words. I've been building this plan for years. If Goins had listened, he would still be sitting here. A beat of silence, the truth of it hurt. He let it. Wayne leaned forward, nestled, knuckles pressed to the table. You can't expect a man like Goins to give up money out of fear. It's not fear, George said, softer now, it's vision. I'm not telling anyone to stop making money. I'm telling you we're going to change how we make it. He paused, studying the faces of men he had chosen, groomed and trusted. He needed to know this trust was returned. They were willing to stay loyal to him as he stepped into Goins' position, that they would follow him even as he changed tactics. We're starting a bank, a black market bank, he said. We won't be the front end of any crime. We won't push, pimp, break, or run, but we will take the money. We'll wash it, we'll invest it, and we'll use it to build something at last. Political power, businesses, jobs the answer to us, the answer to our people. We have a real chance to elect Detroit's first black mayor, but campaigns cost money, real money. This bank, our bank, gives us a voice that can't be silenced by a squat car or a badge. Ray lifted his chin, skeptical. Nothing new about laundering money, laundering, plenty of fronts already, and plenty of them failed, George Counter, keeping his tone even. You spend all day digging shadows, you forget to look forward. I want a front no one wants to raid, whose books no one wants to open. He let the idea hang. A church, he said. Find a storefront pastor looking to grow his congregation, needs a building and a little help along the way. Let him use a freedman center, give him a little money, and recruit members. When's the last time you saw police raid a sanctuary? Tell me the last time the IRS counted offering plates. It's a win-win solution. Ray's laughter broke first as he stood as if to leave the room. Hey, he said, wiping his eyes. I thought you were doing closing up shop, but this is diabolical, man. I'd rather sell drugs than blasphemy God. It's no for me, man. Have a seat, Ray George back, and share me your holier than now. Nobody's talking about blasphemy. The message is a message, a pastor control's message. We're offering a building and a little cash to help spread the word of God, but let's not pretend our money doesn't go into offering plates every Sunday. That some churches will not close their doors without our support. But tithing doesn't attract crime, you know the saying. Don't shit where you sleep. How about this? Don't shit where you worship, Ray said responded hotly. George looked Ray in the eye and stared at him until he finally sat back in his seat. Maybe I haven't been clear, George said in a low, intense word spoken in Cicado. We are going to clean up our business and leave the shit to young men with nothing to lose. They need a place to wash their cash and we need a place to pull our earnings to build wealth and power. There's no shame in that. But if your God prefers poverty and powerlessness and you feel the need to walk out the door, it will lock behind you. You are welcome to leave. So that's the architecture. So as he goes on, um, in that chapter, he says, What are you gonna call this church? And he decides to name it the congregation. So you have the congregation inside a church, and that's um one of the things that happens, but it's something that's so true to our history. Um it's true to capitalist history anyway, that a lot of people who became billionaires started their billions selling, you know, contraband. But in a black community where black people could not make money legally and where blackness was criminalized, um, this was not just a bad thing. If you research some of our if I research some of my family history, I'm gonna find it stopping there, right? And it's not because bad people were doing that, it's because people did what they needed to survive. And the interesting thing about George is you'll find out how George actually got to this point where he is this um, he's he's what he was one of the most entertaining people for me to write about. I actually enjoy writing about him. And then finally, I'm gonna just read a chapter that sort of shows um this brings us to the 20th century. And this chapter is called The American Dream. And some of us will recognize this also. Lola did not meet Garrett Morris and Derek Weir at the American Dreams office. She met them at the Detroit Business Club, her place among Detroit's power brokers. She arrived early, ordered tea, and reviewed the pitch she had already shaped in her head. When they appeared, she didn't stand. You're late, she said pleasantly. Traffic, Garrett replied, already smiling. Miss Finch, thank you for taking time. Time is money, she reminded him. Let's get right to the point. I read your email and I see you want to bring your new mortgage product to Detroit. How is it different? We're letting people who can't get conventional mortgage we're lending to people who can't get conventional mortgages, Garrett began. Lola cut them off. That's not new. What's your angle? Wells, Vargo, and Country Ride are already here and a bunch of no-name lenders all over the city. She signaled the waiter and sipped her tea, smiling to herself. When Garrett looked over at Derek. Here it began, she thought capitalism and blackface, but she was ready for them. The difference we're seeking is partnerships with organizations that can help us screen and select qualified borrowers. We need partners who know this community and understand the people so we can look beyond credit scores and traditional metrics, Derek explained. What you're looking for is trusted organizations to legitimize your risky death debt, build trust, and overwhelm the competition, she replied. It will be a legitimate partnership, Derek responded. We're offering 20% of the closing fees. After you deduct for legal title and business registration, what's left? We're estimating about $10,000 per transaction. Lola laughed. In Detroit, with houses selling on average are $80,000, that's highway robbery. Remember, these are no down payment mortgages, Garrett jumped back into the conversation. There's a lot of risk involved. You're not here to sell me, Lola responded. I'm not one of your customers. You're here because you need my help selling your so-called partnership model in Detroit. Let's start with the name. American Dreams is fine as a company, but you need a different name for your product. Detroiters don't trust America with their dreams. We need something better. I'm thinking Unity Mortgage. We're not trying to change our name. We're looking for partners. Mayor Jackson said you could help. He explained it to me, and I explained a few things to him. My help doesn't come free. Like you, I'm taking a risk and I need to be compensated. And I'm not going to try and sell a product wrapped in a flag to a community that doesn't hang flags from their porches. We need a name that will work in Detroit and be culturally relevant. You want to work, you're going to want to work with churches, and I can get you into the faith-based office. And I have another organization you might want to consider. We'll have that discussion after we agree on the terms. Here's what I expect: a real partnership with a stake and your real profits, silent, of course. In return, I'll give you Detroit. So that's sort of how you know. It's one of the things that I want to demonstrate is how corruption happens. Corruption doesn't happen all at once. Corruption happens little by little. And a lot of times people become corrupt because of good things, not because they want to harm people. But, you know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. And so hopefully by the end, you'll sort of see that, but you'll also hopefully by the end of this book find hope. And find hope in women. And so I'm just going to close with a poem and then I'm done. And it's a poem that I wrote is called. It's called Epilogues, it's Epilogue Seeds of Love. Eve bit the apple and swallowed the seed that grew into a tree of knowledge. And for that, Eve was punished, beaten, burned, raped, renamed. Which horror, queer threat, a body who would not hide, a voice who would not be silent. What if Eve was not a person, woman, or man, but resistance? What if Eve was a place, a community that cultivates caring, choosing collective over self, free will over force, where conquest could not dwell? What if Adam was an island of broken people with its own orchard, its own roots, its seedless fruit, and still they could not taste goodness without choking on their evil? What if free will granted access to the paradise of Eve? But self-seeking Adams left in pursuit of power and lost their way home. Maybe Eve was not temptation, Eve was truth. God taught Eve first, and unfinished Adams have been threatened ever since. Their island appetites ill-equipped to grow the love inside the seed.

SPEAKER_05 21:50

Authentic to Detroit, we'll be right back after these messages.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

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SPEAKER_05 22:41

Now, Donna, I I want to ask you something that I remember talking to Juwan about when Juan wrote uh his book. That was back when we were in college together. You don't think anything is impossible, but somebody like me that writes every single day and has for the past like decade, writing a 400, 500-page book like this is like inconceivable to me. I couldn't even like you know. I agree with that. So, Donna, at what point did it become real for you? I you know, you talk about working on this for the last four years. Take me back to four years ago when you were like, okay, I need to do this.

Donna Givens Davidson 23:25

I lost my mother. And life fell apart.

SPEAKER_05 23:29

Yeah.

Donna Givens Davidson 23:30

And everything was crazy. And so Kevin and I went to my husband Kevin, who actually painted the cover, by the way, of this book. Um, we went away to um it's amazing, by the way.

SPEAKER_05 23:43

It's awesome.

Donna Givens Davidson 23:44

Yes. Um we went to um Canada and I was just escaping life. And so I said, You write, I'll write, you paint. And so he finished his painting in one sitting, and I just got through a couple chapters, but I just wanted to try something new, and I'd never written fiction before. And um, Sarah can tell you because she read the first drafts, it was not great, okay? I had to write, you know, learning how to write, you know, you had to get into a rhythm. It was a it was testing myself in something new. Because, you know, anybody who knows, I write long Facebook posts, I write proposals, I write serious stuff, right? But writing fiction and being creative and tapping into my creative self was not something I've done since I was in high school. In high school, I was into poetry. But you know what happens when I was a child, I put away childish things and I became an adult, and that's always sounds so good to you. Realize that there's that part of you, that creativity that you kill. And so I had to unbury that in myself. Um, and the honest thing about writing this book, and this most amazing thing that's hard for me to explain, but it's true, is I didn't know who these characters were until I was writing them. And as I was writing them, it was like, oh, they're gonna do this. So I mean, when I say I have fun writing George, that was so much fun because I was like, oh my goodness, he's gonna do this. I was like, oh my God. It was fun. I was creating, but I was actually, I don't know. Does that make sense to you? How you can just you and and I found the opportunity to bring forward, you know, things in my subconscious people I've known. Um, when you've lived as long as I have and worked with as many people as I have, you meet a lot of people, and there's just all of these stories that you develop. And so, you know, just being able to have that opportunity, it was something I will never stop doing again. Writing was my therapy. Um, I when I write, I don't get on Facebook and complain about the news because I don't have time. So I'm too busy writing my fictional world. So um, it's one of those things I think it was scary for me. It was not something I thought I was going to um do well, but I actually think this is pretty good, and it took me a while. Now I've written, I have so many versions of this at home.

SPEAKER_00 25:55

There are so many versions. I have like five versions of the book at this point, but I want to ask you because you mentioned uh Nana passing away and how that uh inspired you to want to write, because you've been talking about writing a book for years, and so how many of like the characters in the book were inspired by our own family stories?

Donna Givens Davidson 26:15

Um there were some. You know, there's one character who was inspired by Nana, um character who was inspired by um my paternal grandparents. So you'll read them first when you read about the people. Um, you know, the first couples is definitely inspired by my own grandparents. My first memory was being on Chicago Boulevard at 12th Street at almost four years old when the um 1967 rebellion. My first memory is crawling under the windows. Second memory is driving out of town with my parents and being stopped by the National Guard or somebody who had a you know shotgun in my whatever they call those in my father's head, asking him where he was going. And, you know, in those days you have a whole family. My grandmother and my mother, my father was sitting in the front seat, and there were four of us sitting in the back seat terrified. And so um, anybody who was alive then will remember the Vietnam War was also being waged on television. Like you watch television and you see all of the same stuff on TV that was taking place in the streets, and so um a big part of this book was going to start in 1967, and that's what I was gonna do. I was gonna do 1967 forward, but then I was like, but how did they get here? Oh, well, I have to write about the people who got here and how they came to Detroit so that we can understand what was here, and so I just kept going back. I stopped at like 1875. I didn't try to go back beforehand, but it was, you know, it was that.

SPEAKER_00 27:47

Now, there were a lot of stories uh in the beginning of people coming to Detroit and like their migration stories, and I just thought it was so funny. I mean, it wasn't funny, but it was because you have so much hope for these characters, and then they just kind of like have a super sad ending. So, can you talk a little bit about that?

Donna Givens Davidson 28:04

I mean, not all of them have a sad ending, but most of them encounter trauma in the beginning, and then they encounter trauma because you come to Detroit and racism is here. You come here and you're segregated into really tight neighborhoods, you're not allowed to go to many places, it's not Jim Crow. It's some people call it Jane Crow. Whatever it is, is Northern Crow, okay? And the Northern Crow is not freedom. And so you think you're coming here. If you look at environmental justice history, I have this book on the environmental justice history in Detroit. People were leaving a plantation in the South where they had no rights, couldn't vote, couldn't own a home, sharecropping, moving to Detroit, the promised land, and dying at 35.

SPEAKER_00 28:51

That was also something that stood out to me about the book is a lot of times when people talk about Detroit history, they'll talk about how people came to Detroit because of good paying jobs, and it's like everybody came here and lived happily ever after. But a lot of the characters in the story, like they get here and it's not what it's cooked up to be.

Donna Givens Davidson 29:08

Yeah, I mean, there's people came for two reasons. There's a push and the pull, right? People came for the jobs, people also came running away from something, okay? That we, you know, this is um forced, you people were displaced almost like refugees, having to get out of where you were because there was no freedom. It was scary times. Um, but you know, you have this thinking, Henry Ford paid everybody five dollars a day. You worked at Ford Motor Company, you made five dollars a day, black, white, Mexican, Filipino, and people from all over the world came, Polish, everybody made five dollars a day. And when they came to Detroit, if you were European, you had to go through this Americanization program where you had to learn how to be a good American, and half of your pay came from being a good American. If you were black, there was no such thing. Um, you were here, you're gonna make the same amount of money, but you have to live in this very, very overcrowded, polluted place where the sewage system has not been modernized, they're building sewers out, but your place they're not, so you have all of this. You're living closest to the factory dust that's killing people. You're working in factories where there's no OSHA standards, and so I mean, there's all of this, and then you're dealing with racial violence on the job. And so you're here, you're making money, and you know, now the good thing is that Black Bottom in Paradise Valley was not all misery, right? Because we know how to take stuff and make blues, we know how to make stuff. Detroit jazz is something, right? But Detroiters have this way of, or black folks have this way of really creating something out of, you know, pressure. But that does not mean that the pressure is not there. And so I write about the pressure and about that because I think that it's helpful for us to understand that this was not freedom. And since this book is about divining freedom, I want people to know that being here, you have more freedoms perhaps in some instances, but fewer in others. If you're living in a place where you don't see grass, where trees don't grow, right? You're living in concrete jungles. That's not freedom in the way so you're you're trading off, you know, discreen pastures for something else.

SPEAKER_00 31:20

So in the book, there's two main characters who kind of go through like this uh awakening, I guess, where they want to get back more to their African roots. And in doing that, they change their names. And so there's a book that I have that talks a lot about the power of naming and how like when you're cut off from that power, it creates a trauma in you. So can you talk a little bit about like their decision to change their names and what what you know made you make them make that choice?

Donna Givens Davidson 31:49

Okay. So I really wanted to write a book. At first, it was gonna be one kind of thing, but then it became something else, and it was about a church, right? And so the church that ends up being over the congregation is a black liberation church. The pastor of the black liberation church grew up or was raised in a family very much like my father's family. So I want to own that because you might read that and say, You're talking about Reverend Clayton. No, I'm talking about my daddy, okay? And the the the contradictions there, right? So you are black and he's my you know, he was raised in this black elite family in a racist city. And my grandfather raised him in the same community where he he was like this prince in this community where everybody else looked up to my grandfather, you know. And so my father kind of rebelled, and he was going to be, you know, super black, okay? He was like, he was like, I'm not gonna be, he was not, he was, he was a rebel. And um he actually wanted to be an attorney, but my grandfather wouldn't let him, this long story, so he ended up being a doctor like my grandfather. But he had this identity where he was like proudly almost, you know, um, you know, seriously black. And he made it very clear, like he from the time I was young, you're black, he wanted us to know. He in in every single way, he wanted us to understand what life was for a black person, right? And he had these little sayings like, What do you call a black man with a PhD? You know, and it starts with the N, N words, you know, he wanted us to understand how society saw us, how society saw him. And so I imagine my father was also a philosopher, he was very deep. Um, these he was very, very deep. He read all of these philosophical books, and so he would have these philosophies about life. And so I just created this person and put him into a liberation pastor who's rebelling, and he rebels all the way, and so he decides he's breaking off with his family because his family at the time of 1967, he's black and he's proud, and his family is like, oh no, we're good Negroes, these, you know, and you had that happen, like where people are happening, right there at 12th Street in in Chicago, that's where everybody was like, Oh, I can't believe these people are doing this, they're crazy. You know, two blocks over, they were like, No, this is real, okay. And so you had this contradiction going on that people had to contend with, and you kind of see it now, right? You saw it with Trayvon Martin and people talking about respectability, and if only he wasn't wearing that hood, he'd be alive today. And other people were like, wait a minute, Martin Luther King was, you know, killed in a suit, he was a business suit. So um that's they they changed their names, and uh, a lot of times it was people trying to seek and find identities that were not enslaved, identities that would take them back to who they imagined Mother Africa to be, even though that knowledge of that history was stripped from us, right? And so they take these identities on.

SPEAKER_00 34:44

And he his wife also changes her name, so it's kind of like he has renamed her too.

Donna Givens Davidson 34:49

Yeah, he renames her, she falls in love with him, she does, she's not from his world, and um he's he falls in love with her because she's not from his world, and he's she's from the world that he wants to belong to, right? And so he admires her, she falls in love with him, they they connect, but just think about this: they're not from the same world. She's trying to escape poverty, she's trying to escape everything, generations of oppression her way, and she finds it in him because he's gonna lift her out of poverty, and she's gonna bring him closer to his black identity, and so they change their names together and they get in this experiment together.

SPEAKER_00 35:29

And there's also kind of a theme in the book of, like you said, him rebelling against his father, but he rebels so hard that he kind of becomes his father. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because I feel like that happens a lot with people.

Donna Givens Davidson 35:41

Yeah, yeah. When you're just rebelling and you're just fighting, you're not really dealing with things there. I try to, in my what I try to do is create people who are sympathetic even when they're bad. Okay. His father did not just become that way, his father became that way. He was molded and shaped into that. And he had some sad things happen to him along the way. Most of us are just figuring out how to deal, how to function in a system of racial oppression. How do I find myself in this system? And so we can do it in different ways. We can do it by being, you know, the talented tenth, and I'm just gonna be above all of this, or we can do it by, you know, Marcus Garvey was going to the UNIA, we're gonna go back to Africa and clamor, you know, everybody does their own thing. But it's all fighting the same core injury, and that injury is racial oppression. And so he's unsympathetic to his father, he's rebelling against his father, he's fighting his parents without really respecting or even understanding who they are. And when all you're doing is fighting, you can't find liberation through fights. You find liberation through love. And so I think if he had stopped to actually figure out who his parents were, then he could have had a more nuanced response where he did not become the opposite of his parents and therefore the same thing. If that makes sense, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:04

Yeah. Um, so something else that popped up with that, and even in the passage that you read earlier, is uh older generations always saying like the younger generation has no respect, they have no code, they follow no rules, and it's like the book goes through generations, and every generation says that about the younger generation.

SPEAKER_03 37:25

Like, can you talk a little bit about this?

Donna Givens Davidson 37:28

Yeah, I mean, um no, sometimes I think it's narcissism, right? I think you know, all the good music got made in the 1970s, and if you were born, you know it's true. No, I'm just joking. But you know what I mean. Like, everybody, everybody has their era, and everything was good then, and everything is bad afterwards because we are not like, you know, but we're we're all that's when young people rebel against parents, that's what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to pull away and create your own. That's the beauty of things, right? If you really look at music and you really look at how music is passed on, it's honoring that previous generation when you're bringing those things in and creating something new. And I think that we're all supposed to create. So I think there's that. I think that there's power. You know, um, we grow up and we are young and we think about power differently than we do when we have power. Teenagers don't have power, teenagers want power. Um, by the time you get to a certain age, you want power, and you also want to hold on to your power. And if I'm holding on to my power, you can't have it.

unknown 38:28

Okay.

Donna Givens Davidson 38:29

And so there's this way of generationally not always, and you know, especially like now, this is just not even connected to that, but like people who are a certain age, we don't know how to get out of the way and let young people leave. We're like, no, uh-uh, they don't they don't understand 1960 when we had civil rights, because we solved racism in 1967 and it all fell apart again. I don't know what happened. Um, we don't have a way of understanding how to share power. That's what's so exciting to me about doing the podcast with younger people with Sam because Sam is a little bit younger than me, not much, but a little bit younger than me. Um and that's how Orlando and I started it. Where's Orlando's? We started it with the idea was that we were going to have a younger man, and I'm not gonna call myself older, but a more mature woman, um, sharing microphones because we wanted to bring generations together and bring our viewpoints together. And I stand by that, you know. I think that power actually is best and diversity is the spice of life, and we come together and we honor each other, that we're stronger as a people. And so the other thing I want to say is that I am always have been. I told you how my daddy was a proud black woman, okay? I never had a choice. I was raised like that, right? I'm I'm I'm there, I'm down, right? I had Miss Griffe in the second grade, and we were like doing stuff. We had Black History Month week in school at Bagley Elementary School when I was young. Um, but I think that we also have to understand, and this is something that I contend with, that injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere. And that we have to have the kind of empathy where if we're gonna build a better world, it can't be now we're on top black people, and we have these people underneath us. Well, it's a good thing that Mexicans are taking black jobs. When we start thinking like that, then we become part of a system that's corrupt. Um, or when we are become older and we make it and we start looking down on the people who don't have what we have, then we're part of the power structure that oppresses people. And so anybody can abuse power, anybody can be oppressive. And I think that's one of the things I just also want us to say is that when we look at Detroit, the Detroit after white flight, was a Detroit that was mostly black people in charge, and we have black people in Detroit exploiting black people in Detroit, if we're being honest. And until we're willing to own that, until we're willing to understand that I can be a slumlord just because I'm a black person doesn't mean I'm not a slumlord. I can, you know, sell these predatory, you know, things to people. I can make money doing predatory things just like anybody else can. And being black does not absolve me of responsibility. And so I think in this world, we also have to get beyond easy answers and get to really what justice means, and that's what divining freedom is all about, me trying to say that. But also, there is no freedom without women. There is no freedom without women. You cannot knock us down, and too many liberation movements. What it uh who said this? The only position for a black woman in my organization is prone? Stokely Carmichael said that. As long as we have those narratives around which diminish us and treat us like the enemy, that the real problem is women get out the way so real men can lead, we're gonna have problems in our community. And that's one of the other things that I just want to end with. So thank you, thank you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_05 42:17

I want to ask uh Jawan, you're up here. Um take me through. I mean, people might here might not know that that you have a book, and uh, I want to highlight that while we're talking about our great authors of Detroit now. Talk about your book and why you wrote it.

SPEAKER_06 42:34

Yeah, so um I wrote a book titled A Message to Black College Students. I wrote that back in 2020. Um, I started writing that book in March of 2020. I was the president of the Black Student Union um on Western Michigan's campus. And prior to the pandemic start in March 2020, I would give lectures every week to the black student body on a variety of different things. Um, what our role was, what our responsibility was, what we were obligated to do for our community. At the same exact time, um, then the pandemic happened. And although the content and the research I had done, I just kind of had it because our meetings went went virtual. So we really weren't meeting like that. And as a form of self-expression, I just found myself just writing essays and writing essays and writing essays. And I looked up and I was reading, I was rereading Dr. Carter G. Woodson's Miseducation of the Negro. And I think that book was written in 1931, if I'm not mistaken, um, somewhere around there, nearly a hundred years old, and it was so relevant. It was still very relevant to me in 2020. And I was looking at what I wrote, say, you know, maybe these words might be relevant to someone else. And so I just started to, you know, kind of get a book together, wrote one chapter and chapter after chapter. And the main, you know, synopsis of that book is kind of taking a look at how we define black excellence. Every year, um, at that time, too, I was frustrated. I I had seen people, lawyers, doctors, engineers, you name it, graduating in black excellence, and I would come home to my Communities and they will look the same. And so in that book, uh it pretty much just outlines what I think the role of the black college student, the black college graduate. If you're gonna be excellent for somebody, you gotta be excellent for your own community.

SPEAKER_05 44:13

I know that Donna can you you resonate with that message.

Donna Givens Davidson 44:16

You know I do.

SPEAKER_05 44:17

Yeah, I know you do.

Donna Givens Davidson 44:18

I wanted to point out something because I forgot to mention this, and this is important to me. Um there's also in my book a queer character, gay character. And I did that on purpose because I think that, you know, when you look at James Baldwin, and we take his message, we take his power, but we don't take his sexuality, right? If you look at um um, oh my goodness, I'm sorry, the guy who was with Martin Luther King, what's his name? Yes. Bayer Rustin. Same thing. And so power means inclusion, period. Justice means inclusion, period. You cannot exclude anybody. And so um, as I'm writing this, I realize I cannot write a book about a city that my son, who does not live here, can't live in, right? That he has to be able to live in this city of Detroit. He has to be part of the story of Detroit because that's part of who we are too. And so um I try to be as inclusive of people. There are sex workers in the story, there are people from different walks of life because it's not respectability. And like you said, um, black excellence, we have to be excellent for people who don't have voice and power.

SPEAKER_05 45:33

Yeah. Uh voice and power, Donna. Um, one thing that I want everybody to know here is that you know, instead of shopping around, you you didn't wait and you just created the press yourself. Uh, and so, you know, Juwan, or if I have any other books that we want to publish, there is uh available now uh Authentically Detroit Press, which is who uh this book is being published through. I didn't hear that.

Donna Givens Davidson 45:58

Yes. So the easy thing to do would be to sell it on Amazon. It is on Amazon, but that's not what I'm focusing on. The easy thing to do would be to sell it on Amazon and just sit back. I wanted to have a black printer, so these were printed at maze printing.

SPEAKER_05 46:14

Yes, yeah.

Donna Givens Davidson 46:16

Let me say, you cannot beat the the price of Amazon. But Amazon does not is not in Detroit, right? And I want to throw it through local bookstores, right? Right. But I'm I'm saying I want to sell it, I want to contribute to this. But as I was writing, I'm talking to people who've already written. They're like, I have a book. I'm like, oh, well, if we could republish to authentically Detroit press, then we could create a collective space for us to really push our books. Because I'm talking to agents, no agent ever wrote me back. Um I I like wrote a thought, but you know, my this this is not they're not interested in Detroit, but no, they weren't interested in anything I had to put here. And so my son, to his credit, he said, Why are you even trying? Why don't you just do it yourself? And so um Kevin was like, You're not gonna be carrying around boxes of books in the trunk of your car, Donna. We're not doing that. We need to do something different, but you don't even have to do that now. And so the other thing I want to do is I want to help people understand everything I had to find out in the process of how to write a book without spending thousands of dollars of your own money because there are so many predatory entities that will help you, you know, and then you're walking, you're trying to sell these books out your your trunk, your car because you're trying to make your money back, yeah, right? So um, thank you for pointing out um authentically Detroit Press. And I want to partner with the Howard Family um bookstore. So I actually wrote a proposal and submitted it, in which we are partnering. Um, I just figured because we already had a conversation. Um I wrote it to um Night Cities, um, this whole idea of trying to create that because we own our voices. We most of the books you read about Detroit, Detroiters are not written by people who are here. Think about it. If you grew up in Detroit, like I I was here, you know, I grew up, I was hanging out in the 1970s, 1980s with the new law underneath. We were we had fun. Um, and and it was it was a good time, right? We saw the Renaissance Center get built. We saw the new Charles Wright Museum and the one right before that get built. We saw House Music in Detroit. I was there in the very beginning at the the Music Institute over there on Broadway and watching those the Techno brothers, what are they, whatever those brothers are or forget what they call them. I was there.

unknown 48:31

Bellevue, yeah.

Donna Givens Davidson 48:32

Yeah, yeah, Bellevue 4. I was there with Bellevue 4. My friend George Baker actually built the Music Institute, and so we used to hang out. If you go to the Michigan Union, Michigan Central Train Station, and you see the little the the little film they have, the biography of Detroit, it stops with the Supremes and it starts again with Mike Dugan. I'm like, well, and and there's not, has anybody bought Detroit Monopoly? Detroit Monopoly doesn't have the Rinse, doesn't have the Right Museum. It it I'm not even sure it has a multi museum. It doesn't have anything that resonates, it has things like um Detroit Boxing Gym. And I'm not saying that's not cool, but I am saying that we get lost in these narratives. And you have two types of narratives, right? So one type of narrative we have is this, oh, Detroit has come back. And then the other type of narrative is these poor people were exploited and blah, blah. It's like I don't I want something that feels that I can resonate and I can feel those people. And I'm not saying nobody else writes it, I'm saying those books don't make it onto a lot of bookshelves because nobody wants to publish our stories in the way that we write them. Um does anybody remember anybody remember the movie American Fiction? There's an author, um, Jeffrey Wright Place's author, who is a famous author. And he's he's he's he wants to write a book, and there's a book written by um this woman who is clearly it's just a really it's a ghetto fabulous book, right? And it's got all the stereotypes, and so he decides he's gonna write a book um using that same thing, and he becomes really famous and he's furious because he's famous writing this book that is really ignorant, that's beating on stereotypes, um, but that's how you do it. And so that was my other thing is I didn't want to be like American fiction, I wanted to write something that resonates with Kim. You watched American fiction, didn't you? The movie. Okay, so I knew.

SPEAKER_02 50:37

I knew nobody else saw American fiction, Kim did. Yes. The movie was, yeah. But I know about yes, yeah.

Donna Givens Davidson 50:48

So anyway, I'm just saying that that that's what we're trying to do, is we're trying not to weigh into that. So I I can't wait to read your book.

SPEAKER_06 50:56

Okay.

Donna Givens Davidson 50:56

I can't wait for you to read mine.

SPEAKER_06 50:58

Yeah, yeah, I'm looking forward to it.

Donna Givens Davidson 50:59

I need people to read my book. I really do, and then I need you to review my book. I really do, because I want people to know, not because of what I said, but other people read it and they've enjoyed it, and they read the whole thing, not just the first five chapters. I know when you write a book, there's 400 and it's like a commitment. It is a commitment. I love I love people who read it, but it is a commitment because it's a lot, right? But I hope that you enjoy it and that you review it and that you purchase it, and that you also look at Authentically Detroit Press as a place to look at other stuff. So um Arlene Garner actually wrote um with some children a children's story some teenagers. Yes. And I want that book to be on our Authentically Detroit Press so that we can because these are actually these are great children's stories that we published a couple years ago. Nobody sees them unless you show them.

SPEAKER_05 51:53

Yeah, so we want to again thank all of you for joining us in this live studio audience version of Authentically Detroit, I suppose. I don't know, Orlando. Have you guys done a live in front of an audience before? You guys have had this? Yeah, I figure, yeah, yeah. So you know, this is like, you know, 10 years of Authentically Detroit, guys. Um we want to say thank you so much uh for supporting Donna's book, Divining Freedom. We want to say thank you so much for supporting Juwan Howard and the Howard Family Bookstore. If you guys have topics that you want discussed on Authentically Detroit, you can hit us up on our socials, uh Authentically Detroit on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or visit our website at authentically-detroit.com. We want to go into our annual weekly shout-outs. Before we do, I we we have to I have to acknowledge something. Me and Juwan um went to college at Western Michigan. Uh we were Broncos, we say uh it's a great day to be a Bronco. Um we just lost one of our classmates yesterday.

SPEAKER_06 52:58

Yeah, and and we want to um recognize her. Absolutely. So uh as mentioned earlier, I was the president of the Black Student Union while at Western Michigan. My vice president's name at the time was Kiera Kelly. Kiera Kelly, um, dynamic young lady, dynamic leader, um, poured a lot into the organization, to the lives of others. Um so we'd be remiss if we didn't acknowledge her and her work and contributions to our people, uh, the campus, and everyone she came in contact with.

SPEAKER_05 53:29

Alright, Donna. Um, I want to shout out Joan today. We're at his bookstore. We do an annual uh shout-outs. Joan, man, uh you read it in my Detroit free press. You have always been a person that uh opens your doors as you're doing with all these people. Like, you guys didn't you guys didn't know this guy, but he's the exact same as he was when he was like 19. That's when when I met you when you were like 20, 21, yeah. And so, man, just watching your journey and how far that you've come since Kalamzu, Michigan, has really been like it's been special, man. Like, a lot of people are proud of you. People that you know you may never meet are inspired by you, dude. So keep going. I know that there are battles that you know the people on that are just watching it along on Instagram or just getting this space ready, you know. I'm saying I know that it's it's a lot of work that doesn't get um recognized. I know that it's a lot of of hardships that you've overcome. So, Juwan, this is your shout-out from me, Sam Robinson. Thank you. Man, I appreciate you. Yeah, thank you.

Donna Givens Davidson 54:32

Yeah, can I say that before anybody came today? There's gentlemen who walked through the door and he said, Are you the owner or the manager? And I said, No. He said, Oh, I want to do a uh a poetry, uh spoken word event there. Can I speak to him? I work at Dexter's, he works at the barbershop. Oh, is it John? I don't know, was he Ball?

SPEAKER_06 54:51

No, no, no, no, no, no, John. John got a little bit of hair.

Donna Givens Davidson 54:55

No, he has I just told him you'd be here in about an hour, but it was just so cool to see him inspired and wanting to have an event here. That's what your space created. And uh, so yeah, shout out to you.

SPEAKER_06 55:06

I appreciate that.

Donna Givens Davidson 55:07

I want to shout out um Michael Johnson. Um, yesterday, as you know, was Mother's Day, and so um he said, I'm working on Michael is our communications manager at ECN. And so yesterday he said he was working on a um video, it's Friday. He said, I'm working on a Mother's Day video. If you have not been to our Facebook page and seen the Mother's Day video, he actually brought tears to my eyes. So you have to, isn't it beautiful? And he did that on his own. It was so thoughtful and well done. So thank you for honoring mothers so well and for uh making us look good, Michael.

SPEAKER_07 55:46

Um similar to lost my mom in 2021. And uh ever since then, Mother's Day has been something that's very uh impactful for me, and I make sure to no matter what um medium that I work in, I want to make sure to highlight mothers because they are the foundation for any of the great things that we do on a day-to-day basis. So I appreciate that. Thank you.

SPEAKER_06 56:18

Do you want to get a shout out? Do you want to shout anybody out? Um, do I want to shout anyone out? I I do, actually. Um so I'm the director of youth affairs for the city of Detroit currently. And there's um there's an individual who this her last week was Shamir Duncan. Um, Shamir Duncan, prior to the current administration, she worked uh for the previous administration, but she was the one that kind of got youth affairs back up and running for the city of Detroit. She's 22 years old. Um so huge shout out to Shamir, all she's been able to contribute again to the city, to youth affairs. Um she makes my job a lot easier. So shout out to her.

SPEAKER_05 57:01

All right, we yeah, go ahead, Sarah. Oh, yeah, putting you on the spot.

SPEAKER_00 57:06

I'm going to shout out my daughter Luna because she got me the cutest hat and candle for Mother's Day.

SPEAKER_04 57:11

How fun she's the biggest.

SPEAKER_00 57:16

Yes, and it got lost. I was devastated.

SPEAKER_05 57:19

And shout out to all of you guys for showing up for us today. Give yourselves a round of applause.

Donna Givens Davidson 57:27

There is pizza and there are drinks. Yes. Please have some.

SPEAKER_05 57:31

Thank you guys so much.

Donna Givens Davidson 57:33

Right here. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 57:35

Come by a book.

Donna Givens Davidson 57:36

Pardon me. Your coffee here. Yes. I have a pen.

SPEAKER_02 57:39

I actually have a special pen of Tucson coffees.

SPEAKER_05 57:44

Thank you guys so much for listening. We're gonna hear you next time on Authentically Detroit.

unknown 58:18

I thought you