August 7, 2025 • 57 mins
In this episode of BLK LIT, host Jacquees Thomas delves into the life and work of Cebo Campbell, author, creative director, and award-winning poet. Best known for his debut novel, Sky Full of Elephants, Campbell’s work has captured the attention of book clubs and literary influencers across the country.
The episode explores Campbell’s creative journey, including the personal experiences that shaped his voice, the inspiration behind his storytelling, and the challenges he faced while promoting his work. With powerful insights from Campbell himself and reflections from book influencers, this conversation examines themes of identity, culture, and the intentional removal of the white gaze in storytelling.
As the dialogue unfolds, listeners gain a deeper understanding of Campbell’s process, his richly drawn characters, and the emotional weight his work carries, on the page and beyond.
Connect: @_ThatsPeace @CeboCampbell
Read: SKY FULL OF ELEPHANTS
Learn More: CeboCampbell.com
Special Thanks To:
Jordan Hernandez @_CompletelyBooked
Chase Griffin & Shaquille Anderson @BookedandBusyBookClub_
Anne @LaGringaBaiana
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
My name is Jacquees Thomas, and you're listening to black Lit,
a podcast about black literature and the stories behind the storytellers.
Welcome back to black Lit. On this episode, we dive
a little bit deeper into the life the creator, the artist,
(00:21):
the designer, the storyteller of Cibo Campbell. Cibo allowed us
to learn a little bit more about his life growing
up on the last episode and the women in his
life who inspired his writing journey. Today, we'll go a
little bit further into the writing itself and the experiences
(00:44):
that he encountered while promoting and sharing his work with
the world. I thought it would be great to also
hear from some of the book influencers and book club
members who helped to promote this book to get the
acclaim that it has now. But before we do that,
(01:06):
I want you to know who Cibo Campbell is, who
I've learned him to be. He's an author, He's a creator.
He's a creative director based in London. Currently, he's the
winner of the Linda l. Ross Creative Writing Award and
the Stories Award for Poetry. His work can be seen
featured in numerous publications. He is the co founder of
(01:28):
the award winning creative agency Spiracle, where he leads a
team of creatives in shaping the best hotel brands in
the world. But when I first learned his name, my
curiosity peaked because it was everywhere book clubs, book talkers,
book influencers, book tube, friends, at the salon that I
(01:53):
go to, the book was calling me telling me to
read it, and so I did.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
I obliged.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
I had to, and I'm so grateful that I did,
because after reading it, it inspired me to contact him
to have a conversation. And what a remarkable being, what
a remarkable mind to have shared space with. And I
(02:22):
really hope you get a glimpse of the impression that
he left on me through this episode and the ones
to follow and the first. He's brilliant, He's poetry, and
I have to say, one of the most impressive writers
that I've come in contact with. If you have not
read Sky Full of Elephants, if it's not on your radar,
(02:46):
if you haven't heard about it yet, I encourage you
from whatever walk of life you may be on or
whatever culture you identify with. This is not just a
story about about white people disappearing. It into the ocean
It's a story about family, identity, grace, understanding, a willingness
(03:12):
to find yourself and once you do, how do you
accept it. Some of my favorite characters aren't even people
in this book, and it is a lasting impression after
reading it, even days and weeks later, new impressions were made,
new ideas surface. It has that type of impact, and
(03:36):
I really think that these are the type of books
that we need. Some might say that this book is gimmick, right,
because you know all of the book talkers and pretty
much anyone who has read this book. Leads with the
climactic event that opens the book, all the white people
(03:57):
disappear into the ocean, and at first glance, if you're
judging a book by its first page, then that might
deter you away from reading it. But you'll hear in
this episode from different perspectives, including Cebos, why it was
important to remove that gaze, even if only for a
(04:21):
fictational story, in order for other characters and other stories
to live freely. I for one, am very excited to
see the life of this book grow and change and
transform and to reach the hands of as many readers
(04:43):
as possible. And I'm also excited to learn more about
what he's writing now.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
If all the white people word to disappear tomorrow, what
would you write about?
Speaker 4 (05:03):
What would I write about the same thing you're writing
about now? To be honest with you, so I'm I'll
let you set. The next book written its a horrorook,
and it's it's sort of about spirituality.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
As well without waters as well without water.
Speaker 4 (05:19):
And then I'm also writing or a love story now,
and I think I would be doing that same because
it's a story in our lives and story in our culture.
(05:39):
It doesn't White people have nothing to do with that. Yeah,
And the topics that we write about, talk about, discuss
have at the barbershop, have at the beauty shop, sit
around a fire, you know, five hundre years ago talking
about that didn't require white people, and so I would
still needs telling those stories. The only reason this one
does is because I needed to have I needed to
(06:01):
break my own traumatic response to my reality. And I
was like, I'm struggling because I can't imagine the characters
I want to imagine that I want to, and the
only way I can is to like stop looking at
myself with white as the contrast against my sense of self.
And so then I was like, Okay, Tony, I got you,
(06:23):
Ms Morrison. We're going to remove the white gays entirely right.
And that was a catalyst, not an ending, if that
makes sense. So it's the beginning of the stories I
want to write, not the end of them.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
You know, you brought up centers and it made me
think about something I heard earlier today, and it said,
if white people go to a Jordan Pill film and
when they leave they say to themselves, I don't want
to be white, and then when they go to a
Ryan Cooler film, they come out and they say, I
want to be black.
Speaker 4 (06:58):
That's hilarious.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
I feel like your work is definitely going into that
realm of visual in television and film. But we'll start
from after white people read your book, what do you what?
Have you received any feedback of.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
What Lots of those thoughts are so much, so much,
so much because the book has had an interesting journey
where you know, Simon Chust advise it and they are
very like, you have created control. We're not going to
try to change anything. We're just going to support if
you're telling a story that you want to tell, and
we'll put it. It's going to be featured in our
(07:36):
Fall catalog. They put everything they get behind it, and
no publication. None of them wrote about it initially, No one, no,
not one.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
And is it because of the premise of the context
of the story or.
Speaker 4 (07:55):
I don't know. I know a lot of other people
came out at the same time as me, didn't sell
as many books, but they all got written about. I
had one person say to me as a writer, because
it eventually got two publications. It got AJC Atlantic Journal
two months after it launched, maybe three even, and then
I got this one the Advocate in Louisiana, I think,
(08:18):
and the woman at the Advocate talk, she came up
to me at the book event and she was like,
it's like, I was so excited to write about your book.
And she was like, I was shocked that they let me.
And I was like why, and she goes, they only
want nice stuff. And I was like, it's a nice book,
and she goes, she goes, well, I submitted it and
then it went through and it let me do it.
And as soon as it went to publication, the editor
(08:39):
in chief wrote her an email and was like, we
only want nice stuff. And so that says to me
that I think you know that.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Couldn't have been That's an interesting like hatchet story is
what is nice?
Speaker 4 (08:52):
What is that you know a great percentage of population
drowning at once is nice? It just that way, like
there's a lot of the stuff I happened to this story.
Have you read the stands like it's a lot worse
than this. But and so I didn't get anyone right
about it, anyone to write about it, which is fine.
(09:12):
But then all all of the people individuals were like, yo,
this book, this book, this book, and it sort of
developed its own following.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Here are some of my favorite book influencers speaking about
their first impressions of the book. But first let them
introduce themselves.
Speaker 5 (09:29):
My name is Jordan Hernandez and I am the founder
and curator of Completely Booked, which is a book community
mostly on Instagram page and book club. We meet once
a month for book club virtually.
Speaker 6 (09:42):
I do have members.
Speaker 5 (09:43):
From across the country and every month that we meet
our last Tuesday of the month for one hour, the
author is on with us live and having a conversation.
So it's a I picked books from the focus of
completely Booked is to read books of all different backgrounds,
so We've of course covered the gamut. When it comes
(10:03):
to race, We've had all of the races you can think.
I've have been part of my book club, but we
have also been blessed to read books by death, authors, veterans,
LGBTQ community, pretty much everyone, so making sure that we
are celebrating diversity in all of its forms.
Speaker 7 (10:21):
I'm Shaquilla Anderson from Oklahoma based out of Dallas, Sex
Is now currently and Jason myself both started Booked in
Busy book Club officially about five years ago now.
Speaker 6 (10:33):
My name is Chase Griffin, co founder per Se of
Booked and Busy book Club. We started the book club open.
Both of us really were, you know, there wasn't a
lot going on at the time. We both wanted to
get into reading and ultimately build a community around reading literature.
So we started there twenty twenty and similar to what
(10:56):
Jordan mentioned, we really run the gamut of genres and
books that we read. We really try and touch a
little bit of everything. We do virtual meetings twice a month,
and right now we're really starting to collaborate with other
book clubs in the Dallast community.
Speaker 8 (11:14):
My name is ann i Use I just have my
social media called La Gringa Buyana or at Lagdinga Bayana,
depending on your accent. I pretty much make videos based
on like languages that I speak. I speak English, Spanish,
and Portuguese, and I kind of just love to present
these weird crossovers that I noticed between those languages. And
(11:35):
I'm also an English teacher, so I work online. I
work with adults. In the past, I've worked with kids
with teenagers, and I think what happened was like I
was living in Brazil and I was kind of alone
in my englishness, and I was learning this language with
friends and family of my partner, and I was like,
this is weird, and so I just started like sharing
my experiences with people and it seemed to really connect.
(11:57):
And then I kind of alongside that, I was starting
to read again. I have ADHD, I have autism, and
so those were late diagnoses and getting into reading as
an adult with that in mind, because for a long
time I thought I couldn't read, or I didn't know,
like I was bad at it or it just wasn't
for me. And so like being in a country alone,
you start learning a language alone, you start being like,
(12:19):
what am I going to do? So you do audiobooks
in English or you do like ebooks, and so kind
of alongside those, I was like, I really am starting
to enjoy books and I started to want to just
share with people, be like, hey, I read this one thing.
It's cool. What do you think, just because I think
when we learn languages as well, like reading is relevant,
(12:41):
reading is very helpful. We learn vocabulary, perspectives, a variety
of voices, a variety of lived experiences. It enables us
to know that it's not just one way to speak,
one way to communicate, one way to be. And when
we learn new languages sometimes I think, especially English, we
get stuck in that hole of like this is what
it is and it's like is not. So I loved
(13:01):
bringing that into my platform and yeah, I just kind
of fell in love with it. And then somehow Decrees
is like this is cool. I was like, okay, I'll
talk to you about it because I read this book
and I was just like, oh my god. So yeah,
just kind of sharing my passion for language evolution, accents,
and human interaction through narratives and it's just fascinating.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Sky full of elephants. I don't think would be on
the long list for Mark Twain if it wasn't for
book clubs and book talk and book Tube and Bookstagram.
So I applaud you all for that, because every book
club that I follow, every book, I was like, Okay,
clearly I need to read skuy I fell ablepant.
Speaker 5 (13:47):
Yeah. A friend of mine actually texted to me and
he reads like very heavy books, right, like I hm
and I will do buddy reads sometimes, and we've read casts,
we've read The Message by tamahas Codes, and so when
he texts this book, I was like, all right, this
has got to be a good one. And he doesn't
read not he doesn't read fiction that often, and so
I was like, oh, this is interesting. And I reached
out to Seabo and immediately he got back right and
(14:09):
he was like, oh, I know a completely booked is
I was like, what, But I do find And this
is maybe a conversation for Chase and Shack that one.
You have to kind of like opposite ends of the
spectrum where you have black men who just do not
read and black men who do not read fiction. They
only read, you know, the like man who's standing with like,
you know, a real estate agent on the front of
(14:30):
a book cover like that those are ten ways or
you have then you have these black men who really
champion fiction and really champion our book accounts. And I
see that with So that was Seba when he first
answered Tao Oscar Yport I've met a few times and
I've been around him. Became Nana Kwame that wrote Changing
(14:50):
All Stars is exactly the same. Clarence hates exactly the same.
So there's these two different sides. And I very very
very much appreciate you know, of course, seb all of love,
but receiving that love back from the black men in
the book world specifically, is.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
That the reason?
Speaker 1 (15:08):
And this is a question for everyone as well, though,
is is it is that usually how you pick your
book that you highlight monthly? Or is it is it
usually like a right recommendation? Or is it how do
you usually pick the books that you choose to bring
to the club.
Speaker 6 (15:24):
We normally will take we take a democratic process. So
our approach to it we allow all of our members
to submit their recommendation. So we provide the genre or
the theme for the month, and we say hey, we're
opening it up and everyone can submit their recommendation, and
then we we vote on it. We'll we'll lock it
(15:47):
down after a day or two once we get a
good number of recommendations, and then we allow everyone to
vote on it, and to everyone wins, we uh that's
what we read. Check you want to add anything?
Speaker 7 (16:00):
No, I think it's a it's a fun process. Because
to to kind of piggyback off of Jordan's point, I
have been reading so many books that I would have
never touched or picked up, just because you know, just
just being honest. When you I think when you start reading,
you fall in love of reading, something resonates with you,
and then you go down that path until something else
(16:21):
kind of pulls you in another direction. So for me,
I was reading a lot of cell p Hehlpe books
and all that stuff, because books change my life. So
I was reading them like, oh, this is actually helping me,
Like this is a form of therapy, this is growth
all that. And then we started the book club and
to Chase's point, open it up and let people vote.
It's like, well, this is book one and it's our
book club, so I need to read it. And then
(16:42):
I started reading it, I'm like, oh, actually this.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Is pretty good, Like wow, I.
Speaker 4 (16:45):
Would have never picked up this book, but here we go.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
Is that the same for you, Anne? I know yours
is more like sporadic. Would you mind sharing the story
of how you came across Elephants?
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Yeah?
Speaker 8 (16:57):
So I don't like within my book realm. I tend
to just like go off of the videos that I
see kind of that just feed to me from Instagram.
So it's kind of like, well, these are great if
you like this, try that, and I just kind of
create the eternal list where I'm like, oh god, it's
just never ending. However, I also have a local black
(17:18):
owned bookshop that's just like down the street from me,
and it just happens to also just be like just
the closest thing I can just walk and that's like
a miracle. So I was like, yes, So I went
to that shop and I just wanted to support and
I went and I checked out the wall and one
of their suggestions there were two books, and one of
the suggestions was sky Full of Elephants, and it was
(17:40):
literally like she wrote such a beautiful kind of intro
and she was like, Okay, try this book out. But
then she goes, if you're a white person, you have
to be okay with opening your mind, but if you can,
it's a good book, like she had to literally put
at the bottom, and I was like, oh, yes, good,
thank you. I was like, yes, white.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
Person, be careful, thank you.
Speaker 8 (17:59):
Yes, because I think like so many of us are
like so like, oh, I shit, what do I do
with it? And I was like no, yeah, I think
we talked about where it's like being uncomfortable for me,
especially within books. It was like, ooh, I think this
would be good then, because we think about being uncomfortable
means that you're in a position for growth, and so
I love it when I find books that are just
(18:20):
like not on my radar at all. And sometimes my
husband does this with movies where it'll be like just
go in blind, where I'm like I like it, you
should watch it, and he's like, I'll just go in
blind and just see what it happens. Sometimes it's great.
Sometimes it's like what did I do that? But this one,
I was like a the first ten pages, I was crying,
and I was in the shop and they have wine
(18:40):
and books, so I'd gotten I bought the books, sat
down on the couch, got a glass of wine. Not
a good call, still very fun, and it was like quietly,
like just single tears movie with my glass of wine
I bought. The bartender was.
Speaker 6 (18:53):
Like what if I done?
Speaker 8 (18:55):
But it was great and I just ripped through it
and highlighted all over it and so and then I
just started telling people about it because in my bubble,
obviously this is not a book that was like absolutely
and so yeah, I just started talking about it because
it's like, I feel like a white chick probably wouldn't
talk about this book, and we need white chicks talking
about this book, so just to be like, hello, it's amazing.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
What was some of your reactions when you first heard
of With the premise of the book and the context
of the event that inspires the story, were some of
your first reactions.
Speaker 8 (19:30):
I think when I first read it, I was like,
I was kind of like, there there must be a
really good reason. That's kind of where I where. I
was like, I feel like, because I think when we
look at removing a whole chunk of a population, you
either go as a white person, I think you get
two options. You go ooh, okay, this is interesting, tell
(19:50):
me more. And the other is defend yourself be like
well I wouldn't be in that group, or like I
wouldn't do that, and I was like, what are we
going with where are we going with this?
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Tell me more?
Speaker 8 (20:03):
And so when you start to read it, and especially
like you dive straight in to his experience, and I
was like, oh, this is fat I was just ready
to see it. I was like, Okay, what is the
world that is kind of unfolded in this process? And
I had talked with you where I'm very aware of
the fact of like just whiteness being existent constantly, no
(20:24):
matter if there is a white person in the room
or not. It's just there's still this existence that is there.
And the book started into it so well that I
was like, oh, this is fascinating, and I just wanted
to continue to learn more about it versus that trigger
of that defense, and I just tried. I don't think
I ever really fully got that reaction from myself, but
(20:48):
I imagine for some people when you first give it to them,
if you said, hey, just read it, they would have
to like you have to remove yourself from that thing,
not in the way of like it's almost like, Okay,
this is a fictional story and the intent of the
storytelling is to kind of dig more into this idea
(21:11):
of what society would be. It's not about you've done
something wrong, you'll be out. It's just like, hey, just
sit and observe and absorb.
Speaker 5 (21:21):
We're we're removed so much from situations, right, from just
society in general, as people of color, black people specifically,
that I think when I first heard of the plot, right,
of course, everyone on BookTalk leads with that because it's
such like a like, no matter who was watching your
video or reading your review or reading the summary of
(21:41):
this book, as soon as you hear the fact that
white people are gone, it's like, wait, what I think
if if a book was to start with all black
people are gone, We're all you know, Middle Eastern people
are gone, you would not get the same poll as
all white people are gone. So I think it's a
very uh, you know, influencer tactic right to be able
(22:02):
to start your video with that, and then of course
a great plot for the book. And I think when
I first heard of that, that was the first thing
I thought of, like, okay, great, like let's just see
what happens, because they remove us from so many situations
every day, So for for us it's not the norm,
but for them it is.
Speaker 7 (22:21):
I mean, I was just like, this is about to
be crazy in the in the in the best, in
the best way. I'm like, oh, this is about to
be crazy, just because because I feel like you have
to be a part of it. Is that as a writer,
you have to be very bold to to kind of
go into and lean into that type of story and
publish it. But then also like obviously throughout the book
(22:43):
all the complexities and nuances that exists that they go
and elaborate on. So I was just like, yeah, this
is this is brilliant, and I think if you can
capture it. So many things are such a slow burn,
but I feel like the best things are when you
can capture somebody in the in the first teen minutes
of a movie and first fifty pages of a book.
Speaker 6 (23:02):
I agree. I think really quick, we won't add too much.
You all brilliantly covered my thoughts. I think the overall
concept was attention grabber for all the reasons you know
everyone had already mentioned, but I think for me it
was understanding and being curious about what would the future
(23:22):
look like. We obviously know, you know, black people in
general US, we are not a monolith. We you know,
we have many different cultures within our culture. So just
envisioning what would that look like, you know, in that
world that he's created was for me the thing that
(23:42):
got me in kind of curious, gonna be interested, and
I'm excited about seeing what would that look like.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
That's interesting because in the when I spoke with him,
he referenced that. He was like, you know that we
are not a monolith. He's like, but we need to
start thinking monolithically, Like we need to start thinking with
a cultural and in a universal consciousness that we are
all aware of so that we can progress forward. And
I think he meant that more as a culture, yes,
(24:11):
but also like as a as a human race, like
how do we all kind of honor each other and
the spaces that we need in order to become our
greater selves.
Speaker 4 (24:24):
Initially I was like afraid to tell people what the
book was about because I knew it was creating these
these confrontations. And then I realized, it's all right, Like
that's the reason you did it, Like, don't feel like
you you can't engage. So at two particular moments that
has several, but two ones that stood out during their
first book tour. So I've went I've gone on like
(24:44):
three book tours three different times. And the first one
I went to I went to I was invited to
Alabama and they were like, we want you to go
to this place in Alabama that is sort of near
Mobile and it'll be like, you know, a good opportunity
for you connect with the community. And I was like,
all right, it's not Mobile though, it's called fair Hope.
And I get there. I don't know if you ever
(25:06):
been to fair Hope, Alabama, but it's unbelievably beautiful. It's like,
you know, when you see a house and you go,
what does that person do for a living to own
that house? Imagine that, but like neighborhoods of it, and
you're like, how do all of what do all of
y'all do? Like I don't know enough people in my
life who can afford one of these houses, let along
(25:27):
all the neighborhoods. I know y'all is like, you can't.
You can't possibly all be doctors, you can't possibly all
be you know, super successful business people Like this does
it make sense? So I'm driving through the city who
kind of come out on the outskirts and you see
the whole thing is surrounded by cotton field from as
far as you can see, and I go, oh, I
(25:48):
see this a generational money.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (25:50):
Get downtown, beautiful downtown. There's like shops everywhere, and they're
like the shops that are just completely like arbitrary, like
it's like some woman selling like starves and that's it.
But it's a whole beautiful storefront. And I'm like, what,
you don't make enough money in this? You can't. It's hot,
you can't possibly sell as many scars, right. And I
get downtown. There are no black people. I brought my
(26:13):
mom with me and my daughter, and that's it. There
are no black people. And I get into the store
and she goes and every other event I do you know,
I sait I read and we'll have a conversation about
the book, sign some books. She was like, no, we
won't actually, there won't be a reading. We just want
you to greet people at the door. Excuse me, that's
exactly it My response exactly. She goes, we set you
(26:34):
up a table and there's like a little picture of
you at it, and I'm like, I'm here, you don't
need the picture, but that's fine, Like it's a picture
the book I wrote and when people come in the door,
we want you to greet them and tell them about
your book. And so I just was like anybody that
came up to me, which only two people did. I
was like, yeah, in this book, all the white people die,
(26:56):
and they did.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
And Charlie Burton that he was living in a one
day house.
Speaker 4 (27:00):
You could pick up any one of these houses. They
were like avoiding me, man, no one will talk to
me and that, and so that was like they didn't
have they knew what the book was about, and they
were like nope. And then the other one, which is it?
I love? That one I didn't love, but this one
I love. I'm doing this event. It's almost all white
people in the audience and they're all like, you know,
(27:22):
asking all the questions at the end. And this one
lady and they had a mic that they're passing around,
but there's like a mic on the stand like like
nearer to me. It's a big crowd. This old lady
gets up, walks down the aisle instead of letting the
micro one. And she walks down and everyone's looking at
her and she gets to the microphone and she goes,
your book made me angry, Okay, And I was like,
(27:43):
all right, talk to me, lady, let me hear it.
And she goes, I've never read anything that made me
feel like the other. And if that is how my
people have made you feel, then I'm angry. And I
was like, that's what I want, not for you to
be like, calm down, but you need to understand that
when people say things to me, which they say a lot,
(28:05):
like you wrote a book all the white people die,
it's just like genocide. And I was like, every book
I've read, every significant piece of literature that I read
that was a white author, and a lot of them
they don't have black people in the mad Off at
all at all, and if they do, they're relegated to
very specific conditions, very specific characters, very very specific points
of interaction. You've done it so much that is normalized.
(28:30):
It's so normalized. Now you read my book and you
feel like that's crazy. Yeah, it's not crazy. You go there,
You've got all of Middle Earth and there are no
black people in it, like it's made up their hobbits
and there ain't no black people, like come on, yeah,
you know. And so that interaction has happened a lot
with white people, a lot almost every stop somewhere and
(28:51):
kind of they're like, wow, I never thought I never
imagined that.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
I was like, I know, you are listening to black lits.
Speaker 4 (29:08):
But one of the funniest things I did when I
was a kid is we used to play this thing
called white people chickens, called white people chicken, and it's
not unseasoned. But what you do is you you if
you're ever walking down like a sidewalk and a white
person is walking towards, you don't move.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
And I already knew what you.
Speaker 4 (29:34):
Really don't you don't want to move for me.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
I already knew what you were going with that because
I played that game so many times. I don't know
if I called it white people Chicken, but I've definitely
done that just to see.
Speaker 4 (29:48):
Just to see. It's crazy. They're like when you talk
about they don't they don't have to think about it.
It's it's so much deeper than that, Like it's not
even that comes into their their the radius of their
thinking at all. There's so much so that you become
not just invisible but obstructive just by being you. And
(30:13):
so that that to me, when I think it was
Tony Morrison when she talked about Richard Wright and she
was like, you wrote invisible man, but invisible to whom right, Like, yes,
I love it.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
When she said that, I was like that question, Oh.
Speaker 6 (30:28):
That was it.
Speaker 4 (30:28):
That was it. But yeah, I get a lot of
white people like and I And you have to understand,
like I have lots of white friends. I'm like a
lot of a lot of people think I've written this
book and they go, you know, think of me as
like like super anti or pro black everything, and I'm like, no,
I just want black people to have the space and
freedom to be black people. I don't I don't have
(30:49):
to kill.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
The people that we want to be and the lives
that we want to live.
Speaker 4 (30:55):
That's all. It's like space in this world to become
I'm not I'm not trying to like I am a
sort of burgeoning Pan African and it's like I'm interested
in like the globality of our culture because black is cultural,
it's racial, and it's ethnical. Like I want all of that.
But at the same time, I'm like, I'm not. My
(31:16):
desire for that has nothing to do with you. And
so white people, I'm not mad at y'all, like you're
doing what you think you should do, and I'm saying
that I'm going to do it. I think we should
do it.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
Seems like that's always like a problem, right, Like when
there is a conversation of like unifying and coming together
and having that black consciousness, and that's when it's like, oh, well,
you just want to You're just turning the tables and
you just want to get rid of us, Like no, no.
Speaker 4 (31:45):
You wanted to far a great desire was to get
rid of you. There were a lot of other reasons
other than you just being in front of me to
do that. Like you enslaved a whole people, whole nation
in two different continents. If all of a sudden we
were just going to be like we want them going,
they would have We've already done that, because it's not
about I don't think that's our nature, you know. I
(32:05):
like I struggle with the whole the white people saying
that type of stuff because it suggests that we are
we take on their traits, and that is also incredibly
like privileged to think that someone else takes on your
traits like I don't. My desire isn't to enslave you.
(32:29):
My desire is to become who I'm going to be
And if that happens at the expense of the space
that you want to occupy, that's your problem, it's not
my problem. In the book, there's a line when she's
immobile and she meets with her aunt and her aunts
and he stands in front of her and she goes,
I just want you to get out of the way. Yeah,
that's it. And I don't want you to do like
(32:52):
reparations would be great, but mostly I just want you
to move because you know, you're you're up, you're standing
in the way. I'm playing why people chicken in life
and you're just standing in a way to move, you know.
And that's all.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
So I mentioned Charlie Burton, which is one of the characters,
and I had a question related to him. Who is
For listeners who have read it or haven't read it yet,
that's one of the main characters, the father figure. He
has gone through rehabilitation and is the father of the
Sydney character.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
But before we go into the.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
Characters completely, I want to know which character came first
in the writing and did they guide you through the
story or did dan vironment come first? What came first
in your process?
Speaker 4 (33:39):
The environment came first because after I had that whole
Varispueler moment, the next morning I went to the coffee
shop and I was like, what was this coffee shop?
Look up? There is no white people? And it was
it was really a profound exercise in like realizing the
spaces that we don't occupy, because it wasn't just about
the coffee. It was about, you know, how are the
(34:00):
beans sourced, Who's who's got the airplanes to go get
those beans, who's getting the gas who's got the access
to these bank accounts to even fund this place? Who's
building the furniture? Yeah, you know, I had all these questions,
and so I was moving through the world with those
questions in my mind and like looking at it through
that lens first. And then it was like, okay, if
(34:23):
if if there were no white people in this coffee shop,
how how would how would we operate it? Right? Like
what would we do? Would we figure out where to
grow own beans? Where we create different like relationships with
different nations to try to source it? We even have
this coffee shop, like what we do we do it differently?
And that began the like the sort of study of it.
(34:45):
And then I I couldn't answer it because I don't
think of myself as like I'm not that smart, Like
I'm like, I don't know the answers to these, but
let's figure out someone who could. And Charlie is based
off of my father, so my biological dad, who was
he was brilliant. Gosh, you're so smart. He could just
do it, like you could put anything in front of him,
(35:06):
you could figure it out kind of thing. And the
thing he was very good at was building houses. So
he could build a house from scratch. He can minx concrete,
get the foundation set. He can obviously do all the
carpentry work. He could do the plumbing, he can do
some of the electrical He was very very good. I
used to see him sketch blueprints for houses that he
wanted to build when I was a kid. Very smart,
(35:28):
but he was profoundly unfulfilled, just like like angry, angry
all the time because he I've always thought of it
like our potential is the like the sun the shine,
and we could feel the radius of that sun. And
when we're not reaching our potential, it condenses on itself
and it starts to explode out right, you know, and
(35:50):
it becomes angry and violent, and that's how he was.
And so I thought what it would look like if
he was, if he was fulfilled, and that was Charlie.
What would it look like if he had space to
become and react to the world as if he can
move through it freely. First he had has to figure
out how to do that because he doesn't fully know how,
(36:10):
and he would do it with his intellect, you know,
he would try to help firstly, and then he would
look to his children to give him a sense of self.
You know, I think we anyone who has kids that
think our kids teach us and show us the people
we are. And he doesn't know he has a kid.
He knows, but he doesn't know if she's alive. And
(36:32):
when he realizes she is, she could help him fulfill
that actualization in this reality, in this reality where now
his blackness is not a blight against him but an opportunity.
So it was based off my dad, and then when
I put that character in that world that I was imagining,
(36:55):
I just let him do what he was doing, and
then I was writing as a response to the things
that were happening to him.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
Well, first of all, I think we're cousins or something,
because I am. My family's all from Mobile, Alabama. Look
at that and you're in the way you describe your
father sounds it's so it's funny, like as you were saying,
is where as I read the book, I didn't even
put the two and two together. But as you describe
your father, I was like, Wow, that's my father. Mm,
(37:25):
Like he's just gotten to a place where he doesn't
have the anger anymore, but he still is fighting for
the fulfillment.
Speaker 4 (37:34):
I think it's a whole generation, multi generation of black
men in America that like, you know, they they they
they were. If you think about little boys, specifically little boys,
they will their mothers will say things to them like
you're you're so handsome, you can be whatever you want
to be, and they try to build their boys up,
(37:55):
and then they walk out into the world and literally
the opposite is happening. They learned to distrust what their
mother is saying with the simultaneity of like learning to
find their value in how what people are saying about them.
And in my dad's time, you know, he's growing up
in the sixties and the seventies, he's also watching all
of his black leaders getting killed on TV, like right
(38:18):
in front of them, all the black men, all the Martin, Luther, King, Malcolm,
you know, MegaR Evers, all of them, and he's like
trying to become in that.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
You know.
Speaker 4 (38:28):
It's it's it's difficult, and there is no space to heal.
There's no not only is there no space, but there's
no mechanism. You know, there's my father and I think
probably a lot of Southern black men they found their
sort of meditation in their work, and so a lot
of them would be like the carpenters, or they work
(38:50):
in the field or do whatever they do, and they
like disappeared into that right And you knew it because Saturday,
everybody's at the house is chilling and they can't stop
working right outside like breaking the yard, like come break
it with me. You're like, no, what is Saturday cartoons?
Let me do it. But they couldn't stop working because
that was the only way that they can kind of
separate from that sensation of not being enough and just
(39:13):
focus on the things that they were creating.
Speaker 1 (39:15):
Okay, I got another another line, some more lines from
the book here, but like the bulk of a mountain
broken down by wind and water.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
Truth evolves.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
With enough lies, one cannot defend themselves with his own truth,
no more than stone can stop at a river.
Speaker 4 (39:35):
Poetry love that line. That's good.
Speaker 3 (39:37):
Oh it's so good. I'm happy. You know it's good.
Speaker 4 (39:40):
It's good. You said when you like that'll work?
Speaker 1 (39:44):
That work?
Speaker 5 (39:44):
Right?
Speaker 2 (39:44):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (39:45):
Yeah, I think I think it's created. As an artist,
you got to know when it's good. If like you
got to have a standard that.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
One left that, like I said, I had to write
it down like I highlighted it. And then I was like, no,
I need to put my hand to this because it's
so who and it made me think about Charlie Brandon
and then also just our society and a hole in
our process of finding that truth and the lies that
(40:13):
we tell ourselves, the lies that we've been told of
who we are, what we can be. It's so many
layers to that. But I would love see you to
talk talk a little bit about it.
Speaker 4 (40:24):
And well, there's a there's a motif in the book,
the concept of the mountain that there's another line that
says we are we are alone and together like the
molecules of a mountain, and the idea that the mountain
you think of it as strength. In fact, when the
sun is at a certain point, it's a black bulk
(40:45):
in the sky, right, that's the elephant, that's the big
bulk in the sky. And and while it's powerful and
it's strong and it's enduring, all it takes is a
river to just keep flowing over it, to break it down,
break it down. And our lives are in a constant
state of a river flowing over us. And it's tough.
(41:07):
It's tough to like to make something of that that
doesn't cut you down. It doesn't you know, make you
feel weak even though you are this bulky, both as
individuals and as a culture. And so I still struggle
with this because I'm like, how does how does a
mountain defeat a river? How does a mountain become something
(41:30):
where you know, it isn't being curved? And then I'm like, oh,
it turns those rivers into waterfalls, right, it turns it
turns it into something else. It makes it where it
rolls off its shoulders. That's it exactly. And so I,
you know, I thought of Charlie and a lot of
the characters, once they've been happened, is they're not being
(41:51):
eroded anymore. By all the lies, and they are sort
of allowing it all to just roll off of them,
Like all of that grief, all this sadness, they shed
it at a certain point by the time we get
to mobile. Indeed, the whole machine, its function, its function
(42:11):
was really interesting because it was like people asked me
and say, like, did it kill white people? And I'm like,
I don't think it killed white people. I think it
just healed black people. And then so doing it was
it made white people confront everything that they've done to
other people. And imagine if you had to confront all
of that at once, you'll walk into that ocean and
(42:33):
drag you just couldn't you couldn't process. And so in
my mind that was the river. It's like all of
that tied coming back to get you, all that river
that you've been running over these mountains coming back to
get you. And so I yeah, I think of myself
as sort of becoming a better nature writer, Like I
(42:53):
find writing about nature and elements of nature relative to
who we are really enjoy it, Like I find that
there's something deeper in it, Like I have layers of
meaning in the mountain and the idea of water and
in every form, rivers, lakes, and of course oceans. It
(43:15):
gave me more dimension I think in the narrative and
dimension in the description of the characters and what they
were processing.
Speaker 1 (43:23):
Yeah, I mean I consider the ocean to be one
of the most strongest like hovering characters.
Speaker 4 (43:29):
Indeed in the book.
Speaker 1 (43:30):
When I first read it, the first thing that came
to my mind I was I was thinking about how hurricanes.
Have you ever heard about how hurricanes gone the same
trajectory as the Atlantic Middle Passage?
Speaker 4 (43:42):
And I was just like, oh man, oh man, ancestral.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
It really brought me to that thought and how just
the ocean plays a part in so many facets of history,
of our culture, of who we are.
Speaker 3 (43:58):
But it's also cleansing.
Speaker 4 (44:00):
Indeed, there's a lot of water in the in the book,
and the it all comes from the ocean. So no
matter what water people interacting with, where it's Charlie in
at bathtub getting cleansed, it's still the ocean, still a
connection to the ocean. One of the interesting things that
doesn't come out in the book, but it was in
the in the in the sort of concepting of it,
(44:22):
was the question of like when all the people walk
into the ocean bodies float, so why aren't they floating?
And the answer for me is really simple. It was like, Oh,
the ancestors are holding them down. They got them and
and it never even occurred to me that was a question.
And then people were like, but the bodies should be floating.
I was like, you heard of the Middle Passages. They
got us, Like we're good, They're going to hold them
all down. And that thing you just said about the hurricanes.
(44:46):
I had a friend we're watching he's like watching stuff
on Instagram and he saw this video of Paul Mooney
talking about He's like, they're no ghost because if there
were ghosts, the slaves would be haunting all you white people.
And I went, they are. He went, they are with
these hurricanes and keep saying these hurricanes, I try to
take them out. So so I agree with you, and
(45:09):
so yeah, that that the element of water in the
book was meant to sort of represent the sort of
ancestral tide returning and giving us back the land.
Speaker 1 (45:21):
I love that part so much and so much maybe
after I'll tell you about this dream.
Speaker 3 (45:25):
That I had. But when I was like, there's like
two personals.
Speaker 1 (45:28):
I want to say that, but it was a dream.
In short, I had a dream where I actually walked
the bottom of the ocean floor. Oh wow, and I
met my ancestors and it was like it was like
an island underneath the ocean, and it was I was.
Speaker 3 (45:45):
I woke up and I was like, what.
Speaker 4 (45:48):
Was that incredible?
Speaker 1 (45:50):
You know? It was one of those moments where it
was during COVID. I was just like home, meditating, thinking
and just kind of processing. And I woke up from
that dream and I was It's like, oh, I'm good.
Speaker 3 (46:01):
I'm so good.
Speaker 4 (46:02):
That's clarity of mine right there. That's clarity of mine.
That's beautiful.
Speaker 3 (46:06):
Yeah, it was really beautiful.
Speaker 4 (46:07):
Gave me the chills.
Speaker 2 (46:14):
You are listening to Black Lits.
Speaker 1 (46:20):
As I said before, you know, I think Sidney is
a very important character.
Speaker 3 (46:25):
But do you have a favorite? Is there a character
that most resonates with you?
Speaker 4 (46:30):
Or that I wrote myself into the book. So I
am a character in the story and no one can
guess where the character is.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
It's always fun when a writer adds themselves into the story,
whether they're adding themselves to a book, a story, a script,
it is fun to learn that a specific character is
actually the writer themselves. Sibel, although I know he is
more than this one character that he mentions, because as
a writer, our lives, our history, our experiences show up
(47:02):
in every character. During the round table, I gave a
little trivia to see if anyone can guess which character
Cibo Campbell was.
Speaker 6 (47:12):
Is it the pilot I'm talked.
Speaker 8 (47:15):
About Zoo the Sailor's No, he's the son.
Speaker 1 (47:20):
I was like, oh, yeah, it's not, it's not.
Speaker 7 (47:27):
I'm sure.
Speaker 3 (47:30):
My answer was the King of all. When I think,
what did I guess? I think I guessed Nona or something.
The first time.
Speaker 8 (47:38):
I was like, but I don't know why. I think
there was like just this like the contrast there.
Speaker 3 (47:44):
Nona's his sister.
Speaker 6 (47:46):
Yeah, I knew that. I knew that.
Speaker 1 (47:49):
Let me to tell you, Yes, it's such a small character,
so I don't feel bad I guess incorrectly as well.
Speaker 3 (47:58):
Malcolm.
Speaker 1 (48:00):
Please you remember when they go to the farm and
she has a conversation and Nonah since her over there
to ask him how does he do? How is he feeling?
And that's that Zibo. Yeah, interesting that.
Speaker 5 (48:17):
I do love a little like nuggets like that in
a book because it just it just makes you Unless
you have those those moments of like talking to the author,
you know, I'm not finding about no, no finding about
about Malcolm like you wouldn't know, and it's not really
necessary to know. So I do think it's just so
so clever, but authors are able to do that.
Speaker 4 (48:34):
I don't know if Malcolm is my favorite, but I
lean towards Zoo and I lean towards Sailor just because
they sort of represent identity and aggressiveness against protecting the identity,
and I like the two of those that dynamic together,
like I like everything Sailor says. I'm like my brother,
(48:57):
And how Zoo operates. Zoo was like a fixed point
in the story around which we can all project our identities.
So you can look at Zoo and be like, Zoo
knows who Zoo is, then I should be able to,
you know, if I'm with Zoo, I know who I am.
We are together and there's a moment where him and
Sydney are together looking at the King sin Eira, and
(49:20):
that was the first time she sort of settled down
because of her proximity to Zoo, and Zoo was like,
I'm Zoo. Yeah, that's it, like you know, not that
for me, it's like he Zoo represented the freest character
in the story. So I think it's a sailor.
Speaker 1 (49:38):
Yeah, you know, I will say maybe Nonah is my
favorite character, though she's like everybody's favorite character. Your sister
is probably the dopest person ever.
Speaker 4 (49:48):
My sister Wald'll be homies instantly, instantly. She's great.
Speaker 3 (49:53):
But I enjoyed her character because.
Speaker 1 (49:56):
There was I think she just had like this layer
of the She was like this generational like poise, like
she was younger, but she was so poised even in
the description. And when when Sydney goes into the room
and that moment we get to know, we know Nonah more.
Speaker 2 (50:16):
In the room and the room.
Speaker 4 (50:18):
Yes, you want to be in that room with it.
You want to sit on that couch and have that
tea and burn that instance. You want to listen to
the records. You there's a whole thing about like going
into someone's house when they're not there and you learn
so much about them. Like if you ever go to
like a party, rich person's party and they've collected a
bunch of things on the wall there are, it tells
you a lot about who they are. And and so
(50:39):
I wanted that moment for Nonah, but I love Nonah
as well, so like she's she is a queen no
matter where she is or what's going on, and you
know it when you read her character.
Speaker 1 (50:52):
Yeah, and she was just so humble. She's a very interest.
I just loved her character. Girls, but I also joy
really though it was that one scene and I actually
uh tweeted about it and tik talked about it because
I was like, ooh, if it wasn't for a chapter
to only one in that room scene, Sydney and I,
(51:14):
I don't know, I do not know how long I
can't take her anymore.
Speaker 2 (51:19):
It's tough.
Speaker 4 (51:20):
Sidney's Sydney's So I will tell you a couple of
things about Sydney that are important. One, there's a motif
throughout the book with the lavender and the laborda is
supposed to represent grace. And so when you hear Lavender's saying,
have grace for Sydney, she's been through a lot. She's
a kid, and she watched her old family die. Have
grace because it's her family, and literally lavender means grace.
(51:41):
And then there's there's two important moments that sort of
crash together. One is when Charlie leaves DC for the
first time. The first person he meets is Ethel and
the whole earth is burned and he has to he
arrives to her, which means he literally has to drive
through the blackness to get to her. He gets to her,
(52:03):
and she is like ancestral. She gives some wisdom, she
gives some nourishment food, She helps him orient to his
sense of self and it goes, go become who you're
going to be. She is a projection of his psyche
is unconscious psyche, not literally, but you know, in my mind.
And then Sidney when she leaves, the first person she
(52:24):
encounters as Little, and she arrives in Kenosha. The whole
town is spray painted white and chaos of white, and
Little is in the KKK hood grabs her and says,
you're one of us. You can't leave. That's her psyche,
that's white and a sanhacha. You cannot go, you can't go,
We won't let you go. And it was Charlie who
who saves her, and that begins the journey of her
(52:45):
separation from that psyche. And so it isn't easy for
her to shed that that kind of chaos she was
as close to that sort of mental breaks as Little was.
Where it's like to come back from the edge. It's
really really tough, and you have to learn things about yourself.
You have to arrive to things about your your your parents,
(53:06):
which is hard. Yeah, And so I thought I was
writing a character that people would go oh. But in
the end people was like, I can't stand that girl.
I want to burn her. And some people said to me,
I wish you'd just drown herself. I wish you would
go out now.
Speaker 1 (53:20):
I didn't go that far, but I was like, when
is she going to like embrace it? You know?
Speaker 4 (53:27):
The question I've asked people, and I think they should
carry it with them is when you're reading Sydney and
you're going I want her to embrace it, ask yourself,
what is it exactly that you want her to embrace? Like,
if you can identify it, if you can claim it,
then you can share it with other people and you
can protect it. But if you can't, if you can't
say what it is, can't articulate the sort of the
(53:48):
circumference of what that is, then it will be always
something that other people can exploit and so use Sydney
as a as a sort of backstop to understand what
blackness is to you.
Speaker 1 (53:59):
Yeah, you know, yeah, I mean, well one thing obviously,
like I've said this so many times, but Sydney, I
did not like she drove me crazy. But I really
understood the purpose of her character. And that's why I
was like, Okay, okay, I understand.
Speaker 4 (54:15):
She propulsive, why she's going you never put it down?
Speaker 3 (54:18):
So is that I did it.
Speaker 1 (54:20):
I had to do a podcast, but no, absolutely loved it.
But but I really her character the reason why after
I finished it, I was like, oh, there was so
many things that I could relate to her with and
becoming my own individual person, right and accepting some things
(54:44):
that I kind of think are weird or people have
told me are weird or whatever, or different, right. I
think that was the word that kind of that she
was really gravitated towards or felt anyways. And that wasn't
even you know, about my or my ethnicicity. It was
just about who I am, right and what I want
to be and being comfortable within that. And I think
(55:08):
once you remove the race element, that still was there
for her because even that conversation that she was having
with herself in Knowna's room was her questioning why why
am I uncomfortable exactly? Why do I not feel loved?
Why do I not feel like the same? Why do
I not have the same confidence, yes as this girl
(55:29):
who is the same age as me, but she she
just exudes.
Speaker 3 (55:34):
This what's what's? What am I missing?
Speaker 1 (55:37):
You know? And I think that that takes took me
on a journey of like my childhood essentially, like what
is it?
Speaker 3 (55:44):
Where?
Speaker 1 (55:45):
Where did that those thoughts come from? Like I'm good now,
we're good.
Speaker 3 (55:48):
Therapy is great, but therapy, meditation, you gotta do it.
Speaker 2 (55:53):
You gotta do it.
Speaker 1 (55:53):
And good and good friends and good people right, having
o those around your help as well. But it brought
me back to that thought of like adolescence and that
struggle and understanding that.
Speaker 3 (56:05):
So, yes, her character was a lot to do with.
Speaker 4 (56:10):
Yes, Yeah, there's another lot of her character into that narrative,
which is community and how community flows into ones transitioned
from like adolescence into adulthood. If you don't have community,
it becomes a wandering and opposed to a line that
feels straight and certain of it self. And she didn't
have any community any and she didn't know how to
(56:31):
accept the community that was offered to her because she
had heard so many terrible things about that community when
it was it didn't require her to claim herself for
it to claim her, Do you know what I mean?
She didn't have to be like I'm black for blackness
to be like you us. That was how I think
she began to arrive to community when she says finally
(56:53):
us or we or whatever she says towards the end,
like that moment is about community and communities sort of
ability to help us become.
Speaker 2 (57:04):
Black.
Speaker 1 (57:05):
Litt is a Black Effects original series in partnership with
iHeart Media. Is written and created by myself jack Queis
Thomas and executive produced alongside Dolly s.
Speaker 2 (57:16):
Bishop.
Speaker 1 (57:17):
Chanelle Collins is the director of production, Head of talent
Nicole Spence, writer producer Jason Torres, Our researcher and producer
is Jabari Davis, and the mix and sound design is
by the humble Duane Crawford. Gratitude is an action, so
I have to give praise to those who took the
time out to write a review. Please keep sharing and
(57:39):
we will promise to bring more writers and greater episodes
to you. Special thanks to everyone that you heard on
this episode La Gringa, Vianna, Shaquil and Chase from The
Booked and Busy book Club, Jordan and Hernandez from Completely Booked,
and of course c BO Campbell
My name is Jacquees Thomas, and you're listening to black Lit,
a podcast about black literature and the stories behind the storytellers.
Welcome back to black Lit. On this episode, we dive
a little bit deeper into the life the creator, the artist,
(00:21):
the designer, the storyteller of Cibo Campbell. Cibo allowed us
to learn a little bit more about his life growing
up on the last episode and the women in his
life who inspired his writing journey. Today, we'll go a
little bit further into the writing itself and the experiences
(00:44):
that he encountered while promoting and sharing his work with
the world. I thought it would be great to also
hear from some of the book influencers and book club
members who helped to promote this book to get the
acclaim that it has now. But before we do that,
(01:06):
I want you to know who Cibo Campbell is, who
I've learned him to be. He's an author, He's a creator.
He's a creative director based in London. Currently, he's the
winner of the Linda l. Ross Creative Writing Award and
the Stories Award for Poetry. His work can be seen
featured in numerous publications. He is the co founder of
(01:28):
the award winning creative agency Spiracle, where he leads a
team of creatives in shaping the best hotel brands in
the world. But when I first learned his name, my
curiosity peaked because it was everywhere book clubs, book talkers,
book influencers, book tube, friends, at the salon that I
(01:53):
go to, the book was calling me telling me to
read it, and so I did.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
I obliged.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
I had to, and I'm so grateful that I did,
because after reading it, it inspired me to contact him
to have a conversation. And what a remarkable being, what
a remarkable mind to have shared space with. And I
(02:22):
really hope you get a glimpse of the impression that
he left on me through this episode and the ones
to follow and the first. He's brilliant, He's poetry, and
I have to say, one of the most impressive writers
that I've come in contact with. If you have not
read Sky Full of Elephants, if it's not on your radar,
(02:46):
if you haven't heard about it yet, I encourage you
from whatever walk of life you may be on or
whatever culture you identify with. This is not just a
story about about white people disappearing. It into the ocean
It's a story about family, identity, grace, understanding, a willingness
(03:12):
to find yourself and once you do, how do you
accept it. Some of my favorite characters aren't even people
in this book, and it is a lasting impression after
reading it, even days and weeks later, new impressions were made,
new ideas surface. It has that type of impact, and
(03:36):
I really think that these are the type of books
that we need. Some might say that this book is gimmick, right,
because you know all of the book talkers and pretty
much anyone who has read this book. Leads with the
climactic event that opens the book, all the white people
(03:57):
disappear into the ocean, and at first glance, if you're
judging a book by its first page, then that might
deter you away from reading it. But you'll hear in
this episode from different perspectives, including Cebos, why it was
important to remove that gaze, even if only for a
(04:21):
fictational story, in order for other characters and other stories
to live freely. I for one, am very excited to
see the life of this book grow and change and
transform and to reach the hands of as many readers
(04:43):
as possible. And I'm also excited to learn more about
what he's writing now.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
If all the white people word to disappear tomorrow, what
would you write about?
Speaker 4 (05:03):
What would I write about the same thing you're writing
about now? To be honest with you, so I'm I'll
let you set. The next book written its a horrorook,
and it's it's sort of about spirituality.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
As well without waters as well without water.
Speaker 4 (05:19):
And then I'm also writing or a love story now,
and I think I would be doing that same because
it's a story in our lives and story in our culture.
(05:39):
It doesn't White people have nothing to do with that. Yeah,
And the topics that we write about, talk about, discuss
have at the barbershop, have at the beauty shop, sit
around a fire, you know, five hundre years ago talking
about that didn't require white people, and so I would
still needs telling those stories. The only reason this one
does is because I needed to have I needed to
(06:01):
break my own traumatic response to my reality. And I
was like, I'm struggling because I can't imagine the characters
I want to imagine that I want to, and the
only way I can is to like stop looking at
myself with white as the contrast against my sense of self.
And so then I was like, Okay, Tony, I got you,
(06:23):
Ms Morrison. We're going to remove the white gays entirely right.
And that was a catalyst, not an ending, if that
makes sense. So it's the beginning of the stories I
want to write, not the end of them.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
You know, you brought up centers and it made me
think about something I heard earlier today, and it said,
if white people go to a Jordan Pill film and
when they leave they say to themselves, I don't want
to be white, and then when they go to a
Ryan Cooler film, they come out and they say, I
want to be black.
Speaker 4 (06:58):
That's hilarious.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
I feel like your work is definitely going into that
realm of visual in television and film. But we'll start
from after white people read your book, what do you what?
Have you received any feedback of.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
What Lots of those thoughts are so much, so much,
so much because the book has had an interesting journey
where you know, Simon Chust advise it and they are
very like, you have created control. We're not going to
try to change anything. We're just going to support if
you're telling a story that you want to tell, and
we'll put it. It's going to be featured in our
(07:36):
Fall catalog. They put everything they get behind it, and
no publication. None of them wrote about it initially, No one, no,
not one.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
And is it because of the premise of the context
of the story or.
Speaker 4 (07:55):
I don't know. I know a lot of other people
came out at the same time as me, didn't sell
as many books, but they all got written about. I
had one person say to me as a writer, because
it eventually got two publications. It got AJC Atlantic Journal
two months after it launched, maybe three even, and then
I got this one the Advocate in Louisiana, I think,
(08:18):
and the woman at the Advocate talk, she came up
to me at the book event and she was like,
it's like, I was so excited to write about your book.
And she was like, I was shocked that they let me.
And I was like why, and she goes, they only
want nice stuff. And I was like, it's a nice book,
and she goes, she goes, well, I submitted it and
then it went through and it let me do it.
And as soon as it went to publication, the editor
(08:39):
in chief wrote her an email and was like, we
only want nice stuff. And so that says to me
that I think you know that.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Couldn't have been That's an interesting like hatchet story is
what is nice?
Speaker 4 (08:52):
What is that you know a great percentage of population
drowning at once is nice? It just that way, like
there's a lot of the stuff I happened to this story.
Have you read the stands like it's a lot worse
than this. But and so I didn't get anyone right
about it, anyone to write about it, which is fine.
(09:12):
But then all all of the people individuals were like, yo,
this book, this book, this book, and it sort of
developed its own following.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Here are some of my favorite book influencers speaking about
their first impressions of the book. But first let them
introduce themselves.
Speaker 5 (09:29):
My name is Jordan Hernandez and I am the founder
and curator of Completely Booked, which is a book community
mostly on Instagram page and book club. We meet once
a month for book club virtually.
Speaker 6 (09:42):
I do have members.
Speaker 5 (09:43):
From across the country and every month that we meet
our last Tuesday of the month for one hour, the
author is on with us live and having a conversation.
So it's a I picked books from the focus of
completely Booked is to read books of all different backgrounds,
so We've of course covered the gamut. When it comes
(10:03):
to race, We've had all of the races you can think.
I've have been part of my book club, but we
have also been blessed to read books by death, authors, veterans,
LGBTQ community, pretty much everyone, so making sure that we
are celebrating diversity in all of its forms.
Speaker 7 (10:21):
I'm Shaquilla Anderson from Oklahoma based out of Dallas, Sex
Is now currently and Jason myself both started Booked in
Busy book Club officially about five years ago now.
Speaker 6 (10:33):
My name is Chase Griffin, co founder per Se of
Booked and Busy book Club. We started the book club open.
Both of us really were, you know, there wasn't a
lot going on at the time. We both wanted to
get into reading and ultimately build a community around reading literature.
So we started there twenty twenty and similar to what
(10:56):
Jordan mentioned, we really run the gamut of genres and
books that we read. We really try and touch a
little bit of everything. We do virtual meetings twice a month,
and right now we're really starting to collaborate with other
book clubs in the Dallast community.
Speaker 8 (11:14):
My name is ann i Use I just have my
social media called La Gringa Buyana or at Lagdinga Bayana,
depending on your accent. I pretty much make videos based
on like languages that I speak. I speak English, Spanish,
and Portuguese, and I kind of just love to present
these weird crossovers that I noticed between those languages. And
(11:35):
I'm also an English teacher, so I work online. I
work with adults. In the past, I've worked with kids
with teenagers, and I think what happened was like I
was living in Brazil and I was kind of alone
in my englishness, and I was learning this language with
friends and family of my partner, and I was like,
this is weird, and so I just started like sharing
my experiences with people and it seemed to really connect.
(11:57):
And then I kind of alongside that, I was starting
to read again. I have ADHD, I have autism, and
so those were late diagnoses and getting into reading as
an adult with that in mind, because for a long
time I thought I couldn't read, or I didn't know,
like I was bad at it or it just wasn't
for me. And so like being in a country alone,
you start learning a language alone, you start being like,
(12:19):
what am I going to do? So you do audiobooks
in English or you do like ebooks, and so kind
of alongside those, I was like, I really am starting
to enjoy books and I started to want to just
share with people, be like, hey, I read this one thing.
It's cool. What do you think, just because I think
when we learn languages as well, like reading is relevant,
(12:41):
reading is very helpful. We learn vocabulary, perspectives, a variety
of voices, a variety of lived experiences. It enables us
to know that it's not just one way to speak,
one way to communicate, one way to be. And when
we learn new languages sometimes I think, especially English, we
get stuck in that hole of like this is what
it is and it's like is not. So I loved
(13:01):
bringing that into my platform and yeah, I just kind
of fell in love with it. And then somehow Decrees
is like this is cool. I was like, okay, I'll
talk to you about it because I read this book
and I was just like, oh my god. So yeah,
just kind of sharing my passion for language evolution, accents,
and human interaction through narratives and it's just fascinating.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Sky full of elephants. I don't think would be on
the long list for Mark Twain if it wasn't for
book clubs and book talk and book Tube and Bookstagram.
So I applaud you all for that, because every book
club that I follow, every book, I was like, Okay,
clearly I need to read skuy I fell ablepant.
Speaker 5 (13:47):
Yeah. A friend of mine actually texted to me and
he reads like very heavy books, right, like I hm
and I will do buddy reads sometimes, and we've read casts,
we've read The Message by tamahas Codes, and so when
he texts this book, I was like, all right, this
has got to be a good one. And he doesn't
read not he doesn't read fiction that often, and so
I was like, oh, this is interesting. And I reached
out to Seabo and immediately he got back right and
(14:09):
he was like, oh, I know a completely booked is
I was like, what, But I do find And this
is maybe a conversation for Chase and Shack that one.
You have to kind of like opposite ends of the
spectrum where you have black men who just do not
read and black men who do not read fiction. They
only read, you know, the like man who's standing with like,
you know, a real estate agent on the front of
(14:30):
a book cover like that those are ten ways or
you have then you have these black men who really
champion fiction and really champion our book accounts. And I
see that with So that was Seba when he first
answered Tao Oscar Yport I've met a few times and
I've been around him. Became Nana Kwame that wrote Changing
(14:50):
All Stars is exactly the same. Clarence hates exactly the same.
So there's these two different sides. And I very very
very much appreciate you know, of course, seb all of love,
but receiving that love back from the black men in
the book world specifically, is.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
That the reason?
Speaker 1 (15:08):
And this is a question for everyone as well, though,
is is it is that usually how you pick your
book that you highlight monthly? Or is it is it
usually like a right recommendation? Or is it how do
you usually pick the books that you choose to bring
to the club.
Speaker 6 (15:24):
We normally will take we take a democratic process. So
our approach to it we allow all of our members
to submit their recommendation. So we provide the genre or
the theme for the month, and we say hey, we're
opening it up and everyone can submit their recommendation, and
then we we vote on it. We'll we'll lock it
(15:47):
down after a day or two once we get a
good number of recommendations, and then we allow everyone to
vote on it, and to everyone wins, we uh that's
what we read. Check you want to add anything?
Speaker 7 (16:00):
No, I think it's a it's a fun process. Because
to to kind of piggyback off of Jordan's point, I
have been reading so many books that I would have
never touched or picked up, just because you know, just
just being honest. When you I think when you start reading,
you fall in love of reading, something resonates with you,
and then you go down that path until something else
(16:21):
kind of pulls you in another direction. So for me,
I was reading a lot of cell p Hehlpe books
and all that stuff, because books change my life. So
I was reading them like, oh, this is actually helping me,
Like this is a form of therapy, this is growth
all that. And then we started the book club and
to Chase's point, open it up and let people vote.
It's like, well, this is book one and it's our
book club, so I need to read it. And then
(16:42):
I started reading it, I'm like, oh, actually this.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Is pretty good, Like wow, I.
Speaker 4 (16:45):
Would have never picked up this book, but here we go.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
Is that the same for you, Anne? I know yours
is more like sporadic. Would you mind sharing the story
of how you came across Elephants?
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Yeah?
Speaker 8 (16:57):
So I don't like within my book realm. I tend
to just like go off of the videos that I
see kind of that just feed to me from Instagram.
So it's kind of like, well, these are great if
you like this, try that, and I just kind of
create the eternal list where I'm like, oh god, it's
just never ending. However, I also have a local black
(17:18):
owned bookshop that's just like down the street from me,
and it just happens to also just be like just
the closest thing I can just walk and that's like
a miracle. So I was like, yes, So I went
to that shop and I just wanted to support and
I went and I checked out the wall and one
of their suggestions there were two books, and one of
the suggestions was sky Full of Elephants, and it was
(17:40):
literally like she wrote such a beautiful kind of intro
and she was like, Okay, try this book out. But
then she goes, if you're a white person, you have
to be okay with opening your mind, but if you can,
it's a good book, like she had to literally put
at the bottom, and I was like, oh, yes, good,
thank you. I was like, yes, white.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
Person, be careful, thank you.
Speaker 8 (17:59):
Yes, because I think like so many of us are
like so like, oh, I shit, what do I do
with it? And I was like no, yeah, I think
we talked about where it's like being uncomfortable for me,
especially within books. It was like, ooh, I think this
would be good then, because we think about being uncomfortable
means that you're in a position for growth, and so
I love it when I find books that are just
(18:20):
like not on my radar at all. And sometimes my
husband does this with movies where it'll be like just
go in blind, where I'm like I like it, you
should watch it, and he's like, I'll just go in
blind and just see what it happens. Sometimes it's great.
Sometimes it's like what did I do that? But this one,
I was like a the first ten pages, I was crying,
and I was in the shop and they have wine
(18:40):
and books, so I'd gotten I bought the books, sat
down on the couch, got a glass of wine. Not
a good call, still very fun, and it was like quietly,
like just single tears movie with my glass of wine
I bought. The bartender was.
Speaker 6 (18:53):
Like what if I done?
Speaker 8 (18:55):
But it was great and I just ripped through it
and highlighted all over it and so and then I
just started telling people about it because in my bubble,
obviously this is not a book that was like absolutely
and so yeah, I just started talking about it because
it's like, I feel like a white chick probably wouldn't
talk about this book, and we need white chicks talking
about this book, so just to be like, hello, it's amazing.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
What was some of your reactions when you first heard
of With the premise of the book and the context
of the event that inspires the story, were some of
your first reactions.
Speaker 8 (19:30):
I think when I first read it, I was like,
I was kind of like, there there must be a
really good reason. That's kind of where I where. I
was like, I feel like, because I think when we
look at removing a whole chunk of a population, you
either go as a white person, I think you get
two options. You go ooh, okay, this is interesting, tell
(19:50):
me more. And the other is defend yourself be like
well I wouldn't be in that group, or like I
wouldn't do that, and I was like, what are we
going with where are we going with this?
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Tell me more?
Speaker 8 (20:03):
And so when you start to read it, and especially
like you dive straight in to his experience, and I
was like, oh, this is fat I was just ready
to see it. I was like, Okay, what is the
world that is kind of unfolded in this process? And
I had talked with you where I'm very aware of
the fact of like just whiteness being existent constantly, no
(20:24):
matter if there is a white person in the room
or not. It's just there's still this existence that is there.
And the book started into it so well that I
was like, oh, this is fascinating, and I just wanted
to continue to learn more about it versus that trigger
of that defense, and I just tried. I don't think
I ever really fully got that reaction from myself, but
(20:48):
I imagine for some people when you first give it to them,
if you said, hey, just read it, they would have
to like you have to remove yourself from that thing,
not in the way of like it's almost like, Okay,
this is a fictional story and the intent of the
storytelling is to kind of dig more into this idea
(21:11):
of what society would be. It's not about you've done
something wrong, you'll be out. It's just like, hey, just
sit and observe and absorb.
Speaker 5 (21:21):
We're we're removed so much from situations, right, from just
society in general, as people of color, black people specifically,
that I think when I first heard of the plot, right,
of course, everyone on BookTalk leads with that because it's
such like a like, no matter who was watching your
video or reading your review or reading the summary of
(21:41):
this book, as soon as you hear the fact that
white people are gone, it's like, wait, what I think
if if a book was to start with all black
people are gone, We're all you know, Middle Eastern people
are gone, you would not get the same poll as
all white people are gone. So I think it's a
very uh, you know, influencer tactic right to be able
(22:02):
to start your video with that, and then of course
a great plot for the book. And I think when
I first heard of that, that was the first thing
I thought of, like, okay, great, like let's just see
what happens, because they remove us from so many situations
every day, So for for us it's not the norm,
but for them it is.
Speaker 7 (22:21):
I mean, I was just like, this is about to
be crazy in the in the in the best, in
the best way. I'm like, oh, this is about to
be crazy, just because because I feel like you have
to be a part of it. Is that as a writer,
you have to be very bold to to kind of
go into and lean into that type of story and
publish it. But then also like obviously throughout the book
(22:43):
all the complexities and nuances that exists that they go
and elaborate on. So I was just like, yeah, this
is this is brilliant, and I think if you can
capture it. So many things are such a slow burn,
but I feel like the best things are when you
can capture somebody in the in the first teen minutes
of a movie and first fifty pages of a book.
Speaker 6 (23:02):
I agree. I think really quick, we won't add too much.
You all brilliantly covered my thoughts. I think the overall
concept was attention grabber for all the reasons you know
everyone had already mentioned, but I think for me it
was understanding and being curious about what would the future
(23:22):
look like. We obviously know, you know, black people in
general US, we are not a monolith. We you know,
we have many different cultures within our culture. So just
envisioning what would that look like, you know, in that
world that he's created was for me the thing that
(23:42):
got me in kind of curious, gonna be interested, and
I'm excited about seeing what would that look like.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
That's interesting because in the when I spoke with him,
he referenced that. He was like, you know that we
are not a monolith. He's like, but we need to
start thinking monolithically, Like we need to start thinking with
a cultural and in a universal consciousness that we are
all aware of so that we can progress forward. And
I think he meant that more as a culture, yes,
(24:11):
but also like as a as a human race, like
how do we all kind of honor each other and
the spaces that we need in order to become our
greater selves.
Speaker 4 (24:24):
Initially I was like afraid to tell people what the
book was about because I knew it was creating these
these confrontations. And then I realized, it's all right, Like
that's the reason you did it, Like, don't feel like
you you can't engage. So at two particular moments that
has several, but two ones that stood out during their
first book tour. So I've went I've gone on like
(24:44):
three book tours three different times. And the first one
I went to I went to I was invited to
Alabama and they were like, we want you to go
to this place in Alabama that is sort of near
Mobile and it'll be like, you know, a good opportunity
for you connect with the community. And I was like,
all right, it's not Mobile though, it's called fair Hope.
And I get there. I don't know if you ever
(25:06):
been to fair Hope, Alabama, but it's unbelievably beautiful. It's like,
you know, when you see a house and you go,
what does that person do for a living to own
that house? Imagine that, but like neighborhoods of it, and
you're like, how do all of what do all of
y'all do? Like I don't know enough people in my
life who can afford one of these houses, let along
(25:27):
all the neighborhoods. I know y'all is like, you can't.
You can't possibly all be doctors, you can't possibly all
be you know, super successful business people Like this does
it make sense? So I'm driving through the city who
kind of come out on the outskirts and you see
the whole thing is surrounded by cotton field from as
far as you can see, and I go, oh, I
(25:48):
see this a generational money.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (25:50):
Get downtown, beautiful downtown. There's like shops everywhere, and they're
like the shops that are just completely like arbitrary, like
it's like some woman selling like starves and that's it.
But it's a whole beautiful storefront. And I'm like, what,
you don't make enough money in this? You can't. It's hot,
you can't possibly sell as many scars, right. And I
get downtown. There are no black people. I brought my
(26:13):
mom with me and my daughter, and that's it. There
are no black people. And I get into the store
and she goes and every other event I do you know,
I sait I read and we'll have a conversation about
the book, sign some books. She was like, no, we
won't actually, there won't be a reading. We just want
you to greet people at the door. Excuse me, that's
exactly it My response exactly. She goes, we set you
(26:34):
up a table and there's like a little picture of
you at it, and I'm like, I'm here, you don't
need the picture, but that's fine, Like it's a picture
the book I wrote and when people come in the door,
we want you to greet them and tell them about
your book. And so I just was like anybody that
came up to me, which only two people did. I
was like, yeah, in this book, all the white people die,
(26:56):
and they did.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
And Charlie Burton that he was living in a one
day house.
Speaker 4 (27:00):
You could pick up any one of these houses. They
were like avoiding me, man, no one will talk to
me and that, and so that was like they didn't
have they knew what the book was about, and they
were like nope. And then the other one, which is it?
I love? That one I didn't love, but this one
I love. I'm doing this event. It's almost all white
people in the audience and they're all like, you know,
(27:22):
asking all the questions at the end. And this one
lady and they had a mic that they're passing around,
but there's like a mic on the stand like like
nearer to me. It's a big crowd. This old lady
gets up, walks down the aisle instead of letting the
micro one. And she walks down and everyone's looking at
her and she gets to the microphone and she goes,
your book made me angry, Okay, And I was like,
(27:43):
all right, talk to me, lady, let me hear it.
And she goes, I've never read anything that made me
feel like the other. And if that is how my
people have made you feel, then I'm angry. And I
was like, that's what I want, not for you to
be like, calm down, but you need to understand that
when people say things to me, which they say a lot,
(28:05):
like you wrote a book all the white people die,
it's just like genocide. And I was like, every book
I've read, every significant piece of literature that I read
that was a white author, and a lot of them
they don't have black people in the mad Off at
all at all, and if they do, they're relegated to
very specific conditions, very specific characters, very very specific points
of interaction. You've done it so much that is normalized.
(28:30):
It's so normalized. Now you read my book and you
feel like that's crazy. Yeah, it's not crazy. You go there,
You've got all of Middle Earth and there are no
black people in it, like it's made up their hobbits
and there ain't no black people, like come on, yeah,
you know. And so that interaction has happened a lot
with white people, a lot almost every stop somewhere and
(28:51):
kind of they're like, wow, I never thought I never
imagined that.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
I was like, I know, you are listening to black lits.
Speaker 4 (29:08):
But one of the funniest things I did when I
was a kid is we used to play this thing
called white people chickens, called white people chicken, and it's
not unseasoned. But what you do is you you if
you're ever walking down like a sidewalk and a white
person is walking towards, you don't move.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
And I already knew what you.
Speaker 4 (29:34):
Really don't you don't want to move for me.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
I already knew what you were going with that because
I played that game so many times. I don't know
if I called it white people Chicken, but I've definitely
done that just to see.
Speaker 4 (29:48):
Just to see. It's crazy. They're like when you talk
about they don't they don't have to think about it.
It's it's so much deeper than that, Like it's not
even that comes into their their the radius of their
thinking at all. There's so much so that you become
not just invisible but obstructive just by being you. And
(30:13):
so that that to me, when I think it was
Tony Morrison when she talked about Richard Wright and she
was like, you wrote invisible man, but invisible to whom right, Like, yes,
I love it.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
When she said that, I was like that question, Oh.
Speaker 6 (30:28):
That was it.
Speaker 4 (30:28):
That was it. But yeah, I get a lot of
white people like and I And you have to understand,
like I have lots of white friends. I'm like a
lot of a lot of people think I've written this
book and they go, you know, think of me as
like like super anti or pro black everything, and I'm like, no,
I just want black people to have the space and
freedom to be black people. I don't I don't have
(30:49):
to kill.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
The people that we want to be and the lives
that we want to live.
Speaker 4 (30:55):
That's all. It's like space in this world to become
I'm not I'm not trying to like I am a
sort of burgeoning Pan African and it's like I'm interested
in like the globality of our culture because black is cultural,
it's racial, and it's ethnical. Like I want all of that.
But at the same time, I'm like, I'm not. My
(31:16):
desire for that has nothing to do with you. And
so white people, I'm not mad at y'all, like you're
doing what you think you should do, and I'm saying
that I'm going to do it. I think we should
do it.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
Seems like that's always like a problem, right, Like when
there is a conversation of like unifying and coming together
and having that black consciousness, and that's when it's like, oh, well,
you just want to You're just turning the tables and
you just want to get rid of us, Like no, no.
Speaker 4 (31:45):
You wanted to far a great desire was to get
rid of you. There were a lot of other reasons
other than you just being in front of me to
do that. Like you enslaved a whole people, whole nation
in two different continents. If all of a sudden we
were just going to be like we want them going,
they would have We've already done that, because it's not
about I don't think that's our nature, you know. I
(32:05):
like I struggle with the whole the white people saying
that type of stuff because it suggests that we are
we take on their traits, and that is also incredibly
like privileged to think that someone else takes on your
traits like I don't. My desire isn't to enslave you.
(32:29):
My desire is to become who I'm going to be
And if that happens at the expense of the space
that you want to occupy, that's your problem, it's not
my problem. In the book, there's a line when she's
immobile and she meets with her aunt and her aunts
and he stands in front of her and she goes,
I just want you to get out of the way. Yeah,
that's it. And I don't want you to do like
(32:52):
reparations would be great, but mostly I just want you
to move because you know, you're you're up, you're standing
in the way. I'm playing why people chicken in life
and you're just standing in a way to move, you know.
And that's all.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
So I mentioned Charlie Burton, which is one of the characters,
and I had a question related to him. Who is
For listeners who have read it or haven't read it yet,
that's one of the main characters, the father figure. He
has gone through rehabilitation and is the father of the
Sydney character.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
But before we go into the.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
Characters completely, I want to know which character came first
in the writing and did they guide you through the
story or did dan vironment come first? What came first
in your process?
Speaker 4 (33:39):
The environment came first because after I had that whole
Varispueler moment, the next morning I went to the coffee
shop and I was like, what was this coffee shop?
Look up? There is no white people? And it was
it was really a profound exercise in like realizing the
spaces that we don't occupy, because it wasn't just about
the coffee. It was about, you know, how are the
(34:00):
beans sourced, Who's who's got the airplanes to go get
those beans, who's getting the gas who's got the access
to these bank accounts to even fund this place? Who's
building the furniture? Yeah, you know, I had all these questions,
and so I was moving through the world with those
questions in my mind and like looking at it through
that lens first. And then it was like, okay, if
(34:23):
if if there were no white people in this coffee shop,
how how would how would we operate it? Right? Like
what would we do? Would we figure out where to
grow own beans? Where we create different like relationships with
different nations to try to source it? We even have
this coffee shop, like what we do we do it differently?
And that began the like the sort of study of it.
(34:45):
And then I I couldn't answer it because I don't
think of myself as like I'm not that smart, Like
I'm like, I don't know the answers to these, but
let's figure out someone who could. And Charlie is based
off of my father, so my biological dad, who was
he was brilliant. Gosh, you're so smart. He could just
do it, like you could put anything in front of him,
(35:06):
you could figure it out kind of thing. And the
thing he was very good at was building houses. So
he could build a house from scratch. He can minx concrete,
get the foundation set. He can obviously do all the
carpentry work. He could do the plumbing, he can do
some of the electrical He was very very good. I
used to see him sketch blueprints for houses that he
wanted to build when I was a kid. Very smart,
(35:28):
but he was profoundly unfulfilled, just like like angry, angry
all the time because he I've always thought of it
like our potential is the like the sun the shine,
and we could feel the radius of that sun. And
when we're not reaching our potential, it condenses on itself
and it starts to explode out right, you know, and
(35:50):
it becomes angry and violent, and that's how he was.
And so I thought what it would look like if
he was, if he was fulfilled, and that was Charlie.
What would it look like if he had space to
become and react to the world as if he can
move through it freely. First he had has to figure
out how to do that because he doesn't fully know how,
(36:10):
and he would do it with his intellect, you know,
he would try to help firstly, and then he would
look to his children to give him a sense of self.
You know, I think we anyone who has kids that
think our kids teach us and show us the people
we are. And he doesn't know he has a kid.
He knows, but he doesn't know if she's alive. And
(36:32):
when he realizes she is, she could help him fulfill
that actualization in this reality, in this reality where now
his blackness is not a blight against him but an opportunity.
So it was based off my dad, and then when
I put that character in that world that I was imagining,
(36:55):
I just let him do what he was doing, and
then I was writing as a response to the things
that were happening to him.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
Well, first of all, I think we're cousins or something,
because I am. My family's all from Mobile, Alabama. Look
at that and you're in the way you describe your
father sounds it's so it's funny, like as you were saying,
is where as I read the book, I didn't even
put the two and two together. But as you describe
your father, I was like, Wow, that's my father. Mm,
(37:25):
Like he's just gotten to a place where he doesn't
have the anger anymore, but he still is fighting for
the fulfillment.
Speaker 4 (37:34):
I think it's a whole generation, multi generation of black
men in America that like, you know, they they they
they were. If you think about little boys, specifically little boys,
they will their mothers will say things to them like
you're you're so handsome, you can be whatever you want
to be, and they try to build their boys up,
(37:55):
and then they walk out into the world and literally
the opposite is happening. They learned to distrust what their
mother is saying with the simultaneity of like learning to
find their value in how what people are saying about them.
And in my dad's time, you know, he's growing up
in the sixties and the seventies, he's also watching all
of his black leaders getting killed on TV, like right
(38:18):
in front of them, all the black men, all the Martin, Luther, King, Malcolm,
you know, MegaR Evers, all of them, and he's like
trying to become in that.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
You know.
Speaker 4 (38:28):
It's it's it's difficult, and there is no space to heal.
There's no not only is there no space, but there's
no mechanism. You know, there's my father and I think
probably a lot of Southern black men they found their
sort of meditation in their work, and so a lot
of them would be like the carpenters, or they work
(38:50):
in the field or do whatever they do, and they
like disappeared into that right And you knew it because Saturday,
everybody's at the house is chilling and they can't stop
working right outside like breaking the yard, like come break
it with me. You're like, no, what is Saturday cartoons?
Let me do it. But they couldn't stop working because
that was the only way that they can kind of
separate from that sensation of not being enough and just
(39:13):
focus on the things that they were creating.
Speaker 1 (39:15):
Okay, I got another another line, some more lines from
the book here, but like the bulk of a mountain
broken down by wind and water.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
Truth evolves.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
With enough lies, one cannot defend themselves with his own truth,
no more than stone can stop at a river.
Speaker 4 (39:35):
Poetry love that line. That's good.
Speaker 3 (39:37):
Oh it's so good. I'm happy. You know it's good.
Speaker 4 (39:40):
It's good. You said when you like that'll work?
Speaker 1 (39:44):
That work?
Speaker 5 (39:44):
Right?
Speaker 2 (39:44):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (39:45):
Yeah, I think I think it's created. As an artist,
you got to know when it's good. If like you
got to have a standard that.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
One left that, like I said, I had to write
it down like I highlighted it. And then I was like, no,
I need to put my hand to this because it's
so who and it made me think about Charlie Brandon
and then also just our society and a hole in
our process of finding that truth and the lies that
(40:13):
we tell ourselves, the lies that we've been told of
who we are, what we can be. It's so many
layers to that. But I would love see you to
talk talk a little bit about it.
Speaker 4 (40:24):
And well, there's a there's a motif in the book,
the concept of the mountain that there's another line that
says we are we are alone and together like the
molecules of a mountain, and the idea that the mountain
you think of it as strength. In fact, when the
sun is at a certain point, it's a black bulk
(40:45):
in the sky, right, that's the elephant, that's the big
bulk in the sky. And and while it's powerful and
it's strong and it's enduring, all it takes is a
river to just keep flowing over it, to break it down,
break it down. And our lives are in a constant
state of a river flowing over us. And it's tough.
(41:07):
It's tough to like to make something of that that
doesn't cut you down. It doesn't you know, make you
feel weak even though you are this bulky, both as
individuals and as a culture. And so I still struggle
with this because I'm like, how does how does a
mountain defeat a river? How does a mountain become something
(41:30):
where you know, it isn't being curved? And then I'm like, oh,
it turns those rivers into waterfalls, right, it turns it
turns it into something else. It makes it where it
rolls off its shoulders. That's it exactly. And so I,
you know, I thought of Charlie and a lot of
the characters, once they've been happened, is they're not being
(41:51):
eroded anymore. By all the lies, and they are sort
of allowing it all to just roll off of them,
Like all of that grief, all this sadness, they shed
it at a certain point by the time we get
to mobile. Indeed, the whole machine, its function, its function
(42:11):
was really interesting because it was like people asked me
and say, like, did it kill white people? And I'm like,
I don't think it killed white people. I think it
just healed black people. And then so doing it was
it made white people confront everything that they've done to
other people. And imagine if you had to confront all
of that at once, you'll walk into that ocean and
(42:33):
drag you just couldn't you couldn't process. And so in
my mind that was the river. It's like all of
that tied coming back to get you, all that river
that you've been running over these mountains coming back to
get you. And so I yeah, I think of myself
as sort of becoming a better nature writer, Like I
(42:53):
find writing about nature and elements of nature relative to
who we are really enjoy it, Like I find that
there's something deeper in it, Like I have layers of
meaning in the mountain and the idea of water and
in every form, rivers, lakes, and of course oceans. It
(43:15):
gave me more dimension I think in the narrative and
dimension in the description of the characters and what they
were processing.
Speaker 1 (43:23):
Yeah, I mean I consider the ocean to be one
of the most strongest like hovering characters.
Speaker 4 (43:29):
Indeed in the book.
Speaker 1 (43:30):
When I first read it, the first thing that came
to my mind I was I was thinking about how hurricanes.
Have you ever heard about how hurricanes gone the same
trajectory as the Atlantic Middle Passage?
Speaker 4 (43:42):
And I was just like, oh man, oh man, ancestral.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
It really brought me to that thought and how just
the ocean plays a part in so many facets of history,
of our culture, of who we are.
Speaker 3 (43:58):
But it's also cleansing.
Speaker 4 (44:00):
Indeed, there's a lot of water in the in the book,
and the it all comes from the ocean. So no
matter what water people interacting with, where it's Charlie in
at bathtub getting cleansed, it's still the ocean, still a
connection to the ocean. One of the interesting things that
doesn't come out in the book, but it was in
the in the in the sort of concepting of it,
(44:22):
was the question of like when all the people walk
into the ocean bodies float, so why aren't they floating?
And the answer for me is really simple. It was like, Oh,
the ancestors are holding them down. They got them and
and it never even occurred to me that was a question.
And then people were like, but the bodies should be floating.
I was like, you heard of the Middle Passages. They
got us, Like we're good, They're going to hold them
all down. And that thing you just said about the hurricanes.
(44:46):
I had a friend we're watching he's like watching stuff
on Instagram and he saw this video of Paul Mooney
talking about He's like, they're no ghost because if there
were ghosts, the slaves would be haunting all you white people.
And I went, they are. He went, they are with
these hurricanes and keep saying these hurricanes, I try to
take them out. So so I agree with you, and
(45:09):
so yeah, that that the element of water in the
book was meant to sort of represent the sort of
ancestral tide returning and giving us back the land.
Speaker 1 (45:21):
I love that part so much and so much maybe
after I'll tell you about this dream.
Speaker 3 (45:25):
That I had. But when I was like, there's like
two personals.
Speaker 1 (45:28):
I want to say that, but it was a dream.
In short, I had a dream where I actually walked
the bottom of the ocean floor. Oh wow, and I
met my ancestors and it was like it was like
an island underneath the ocean, and it was I was.
Speaker 3 (45:45):
I woke up and I was like, what.
Speaker 4 (45:48):
Was that incredible?
Speaker 1 (45:50):
You know? It was one of those moments where it
was during COVID. I was just like home, meditating, thinking
and just kind of processing. And I woke up from
that dream and I was It's like, oh, I'm good.
Speaker 3 (46:01):
I'm so good.
Speaker 4 (46:02):
That's clarity of mine right there. That's clarity of mine.
That's beautiful.
Speaker 3 (46:06):
Yeah, it was really beautiful.
Speaker 4 (46:07):
Gave me the chills.
Speaker 2 (46:14):
You are listening to Black Lits.
Speaker 1 (46:20):
As I said before, you know, I think Sidney is
a very important character.
Speaker 3 (46:25):
But do you have a favorite? Is there a character
that most resonates with you?
Speaker 4 (46:30):
Or that I wrote myself into the book. So I
am a character in the story and no one can
guess where the character is.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
It's always fun when a writer adds themselves into the story,
whether they're adding themselves to a book, a story, a script,
it is fun to learn that a specific character is
actually the writer themselves. Sibel, although I know he is
more than this one character that he mentions, because as
a writer, our lives, our history, our experiences show up
(47:02):
in every character. During the round table, I gave a
little trivia to see if anyone can guess which character
Cibo Campbell was.
Speaker 6 (47:12):
Is it the pilot I'm talked.
Speaker 8 (47:15):
About Zoo the Sailor's No, he's the son.
Speaker 1 (47:20):
I was like, oh, yeah, it's not, it's not.
Speaker 7 (47:27):
I'm sure.
Speaker 3 (47:30):
My answer was the King of all. When I think,
what did I guess? I think I guessed Nona or something.
The first time.
Speaker 8 (47:38):
I was like, but I don't know why. I think
there was like just this like the contrast there.
Speaker 3 (47:44):
Nona's his sister.
Speaker 6 (47:46):
Yeah, I knew that. I knew that.
Speaker 1 (47:49):
Let me to tell you, Yes, it's such a small character,
so I don't feel bad I guess incorrectly as well.
Speaker 3 (47:58):
Malcolm.
Speaker 1 (48:00):
Please you remember when they go to the farm and
she has a conversation and Nonah since her over there
to ask him how does he do? How is he feeling?
And that's that Zibo. Yeah, interesting that.
Speaker 5 (48:17):
I do love a little like nuggets like that in
a book because it just it just makes you Unless
you have those those moments of like talking to the author,
you know, I'm not finding about no, no finding about
about Malcolm like you wouldn't know, and it's not really
necessary to know. So I do think it's just so
so clever, but authors are able to do that.
Speaker 4 (48:34):
I don't know if Malcolm is my favorite, but I
lean towards Zoo and I lean towards Sailor just because
they sort of represent identity and aggressiveness against protecting the identity,
and I like the two of those that dynamic together,
like I like everything Sailor says. I'm like my brother,
(48:57):
And how Zoo operates. Zoo was like a fixed point
in the story around which we can all project our identities.
So you can look at Zoo and be like, Zoo
knows who Zoo is, then I should be able to,
you know, if I'm with Zoo, I know who I am.
We are together and there's a moment where him and
Sydney are together looking at the King sin Eira, and
(49:20):
that was the first time she sort of settled down
because of her proximity to Zoo, and Zoo was like,
I'm Zoo. Yeah, that's it, like you know, not that
for me, it's like he Zoo represented the freest character
in the story. So I think it's a sailor.
Speaker 1 (49:38):
Yeah, you know, I will say maybe Nonah is my
favorite character, though she's like everybody's favorite character. Your sister
is probably the dopest person ever.
Speaker 4 (49:48):
My sister Wald'll be homies instantly, instantly. She's great.
Speaker 3 (49:53):
But I enjoyed her character because.
Speaker 1 (49:56):
There was I think she just had like this layer
of the She was like this generational like poise, like
she was younger, but she was so poised even in
the description. And when when Sydney goes into the room
and that moment we get to know, we know Nonah more.
Speaker 2 (50:16):
In the room and the room.
Speaker 4 (50:18):
Yes, you want to be in that room with it.
You want to sit on that couch and have that
tea and burn that instance. You want to listen to
the records. You there's a whole thing about like going
into someone's house when they're not there and you learn
so much about them. Like if you ever go to
like a party, rich person's party and they've collected a
bunch of things on the wall there are, it tells
you a lot about who they are. And and so
(50:39):
I wanted that moment for Nonah, but I love Nonah
as well, so like she's she is a queen no
matter where she is or what's going on, and you
know it when you read her character.
Speaker 1 (50:52):
Yeah, and she was just so humble. She's a very interest.
I just loved her character. Girls, but I also joy
really though it was that one scene and I actually
uh tweeted about it and tik talked about it because
I was like, ooh, if it wasn't for a chapter
to only one in that room scene, Sydney and I,
(51:14):
I don't know, I do not know how long I
can't take her anymore.
Speaker 2 (51:19):
It's tough.
Speaker 4 (51:20):
Sidney's Sydney's So I will tell you a couple of
things about Sydney that are important. One, there's a motif
throughout the book with the lavender and the laborda is
supposed to represent grace. And so when you hear Lavender's saying,
have grace for Sydney, she's been through a lot. She's
a kid, and she watched her old family die. Have
grace because it's her family, and literally lavender means grace.
(51:41):
And then there's there's two important moments that sort of
crash together. One is when Charlie leaves DC for the
first time. The first person he meets is Ethel and
the whole earth is burned and he has to he
arrives to her, which means he literally has to drive
through the blackness to get to her. He gets to her,
(52:03):
and she is like ancestral. She gives some wisdom, she
gives some nourishment food, She helps him orient to his
sense of self and it goes, go become who you're
going to be. She is a projection of his psyche
is unconscious psyche, not literally, but you know, in my mind.
And then Sidney when she leaves, the first person she
(52:24):
encounters as Little, and she arrives in Kenosha. The whole
town is spray painted white and chaos of white, and
Little is in the KKK hood grabs her and says,
you're one of us. You can't leave. That's her psyche,
that's white and a sanhacha. You cannot go, you can't go,
We won't let you go. And it was Charlie who
who saves her, and that begins the journey of her
(52:45):
separation from that psyche. And so it isn't easy for
her to shed that that kind of chaos she was
as close to that sort of mental breaks as Little was.
Where it's like to come back from the edge. It's
really really tough, and you have to learn things about yourself.
You have to arrive to things about your your your parents,
(53:06):
which is hard. Yeah, And so I thought I was
writing a character that people would go oh. But in
the end people was like, I can't stand that girl.
I want to burn her. And some people said to me,
I wish you'd just drown herself. I wish you would
go out now.
Speaker 1 (53:20):
I didn't go that far, but I was like, when
is she going to like embrace it? You know?
Speaker 4 (53:27):
The question I've asked people, and I think they should
carry it with them is when you're reading Sydney and
you're going I want her to embrace it, ask yourself,
what is it exactly that you want her to embrace? Like,
if you can identify it, if you can claim it,
then you can share it with other people and you
can protect it. But if you can't, if you can't
say what it is, can't articulate the sort of the
(53:48):
circumference of what that is, then it will be always
something that other people can exploit and so use Sydney
as a as a sort of backstop to understand what
blackness is to you.
Speaker 1 (53:59):
Yeah, you know, yeah, I mean, well one thing obviously,
like I've said this so many times, but Sydney, I
did not like she drove me crazy. But I really
understood the purpose of her character. And that's why I
was like, Okay, okay, I understand.
Speaker 4 (54:15):
She propulsive, why she's going you never put it down?
Speaker 3 (54:18):
So is that I did it.
Speaker 1 (54:20):
I had to do a podcast, but no, absolutely loved it.
But but I really her character the reason why after
I finished it, I was like, oh, there was so
many things that I could relate to her with and
becoming my own individual person, right and accepting some things
(54:44):
that I kind of think are weird or people have
told me are weird or whatever, or different, right. I
think that was the word that kind of that she
was really gravitated towards or felt anyways. And that wasn't
even you know, about my or my ethnicicity. It was
just about who I am, right and what I want
to be and being comfortable within that. And I think
(55:08):
once you remove the race element, that still was there
for her because even that conversation that she was having
with herself in Knowna's room was her questioning why why
am I uncomfortable exactly? Why do I not feel loved?
Why do I not feel like the same? Why do
I not have the same confidence, yes as this girl
(55:29):
who is the same age as me, but she she
just exudes.
Speaker 3 (55:34):
This what's what's? What am I missing?
Speaker 1 (55:37):
You know? And I think that that takes took me
on a journey of like my childhood essentially, like what
is it?
Speaker 3 (55:44):
Where?
Speaker 1 (55:45):
Where did that those thoughts come from? Like I'm good now,
we're good.
Speaker 3 (55:48):
Therapy is great, but therapy, meditation, you gotta do it.
Speaker 2 (55:53):
You gotta do it.
Speaker 1 (55:53):
And good and good friends and good people right, having
o those around your help as well. But it brought
me back to that thought of like adolescence and that
struggle and understanding that.
Speaker 3 (56:05):
So, yes, her character was a lot to do with.
Speaker 4 (56:10):
Yes, Yeah, there's another lot of her character into that narrative,
which is community and how community flows into ones transitioned
from like adolescence into adulthood. If you don't have community,
it becomes a wandering and opposed to a line that
feels straight and certain of it self. And she didn't
have any community any and she didn't know how to
(56:31):
accept the community that was offered to her because she
had heard so many terrible things about that community when
it was it didn't require her to claim herself for
it to claim her, Do you know what I mean?
She didn't have to be like I'm black for blackness
to be like you us. That was how I think
she began to arrive to community when she says finally
(56:53):
us or we or whatever she says towards the end,
like that moment is about community and communities sort of
ability to help us become.
Speaker 2 (57:04):
Black.
Speaker 1 (57:05):
Litt is a Black Effects original series in partnership with
iHeart Media. Is written and created by myself jack Queis
Thomas and executive produced alongside Dolly s.
Speaker 2 (57:16):
Bishop.
Speaker 1 (57:17):
Chanelle Collins is the director of production, Head of talent
Nicole Spence, writer producer Jason Torres, Our researcher and producer
is Jabari Davis, and the mix and sound design is
by the humble Duane Crawford. Gratitude is an action, so
I have to give praise to those who took the
time out to write a review. Please keep sharing and
(57:39):
we will promise to bring more writers and greater episodes
to you. Special thanks to everyone that you heard on
this episode La Gringa, Vianna, Shaquil and Chase from The
Booked and Busy book Club, Jordan and Hernandez from Completely Booked,
and of course c BO Campbell
Popular Podcasts
CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist
It’s 1996 in rural North Carolina, and an oddball crew makes history when they pull off America’s third largest cash heist. But it’s all downhill from there. Join host Johnny Knoxville as he unspools a wild and woolly tale about a group of regular ‘ol folks who risked it all for a chance at a better life. CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist answers the question: what would you do with 17.3 million dollars? The answer includes diamond rings, mansions, velvet Elvis paintings, plus a run for the border, murder-for-hire-plots, and FBI busts.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.