Imagining a World Without White People ft. Sky Full of Elephants Author Cebo Campbell

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You have to understand that the majority of the time
that Black Americans is spent in this country, it's been
spent on the side of being an other and it
still is today, and it's important for someone to understand
what the other feels like so that they can have
compassion for someone else. You can get into the complexities

(00:20):
of the stories and the complexity of the individual characters
and everything they're going through. Ultimately, it's like, listen, this
is what it feels like. And if you look at
that book and you go it makes me uncomfortable. Understand
that that discomfort is what other people are feeling when
you aren't recognizing them in their context of what's really
going on in the country.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
Hey va, fam, I am honestly what an amazing idea.
I had to create a podcast where I can just
get incredible people to talk to me and people whose
work I have gotten to enjoy. And this is the
first time I feel like I don't think I've had
an author of a fiction novel. We do lots of

(01:06):
author interviews at Brown Ambition BA fan, you know, we
do because we love our career in our finance books.
But I am such a fiction fan. I mean, my
guilty secret as a personal finance and negotiation expert is
that the majority of what I read has nothing to
do with business and finance. It is escapism, It is

(01:29):
science fiction, it is fantasy, little romance. I love books.
They are so especially at a time like this, crucial,
as like an escape route from reality. Sometimes and then
there are books like sky Full of Elephants by today's
guest ce Bo Campbell, not Williams. Even though I will

(01:51):
never live down the mistake I made when I don't
know why I want you to be Williams so bad,
we'll just leave that alone. I have the author of
the novel sky Full of Elephants with us today, be
a fan, and I couldn't be more grateful. This is
just such a treat and such a joy for me
to be here. And he's in New York at Simon
and Schuster. On the seventh we talked about the seventeenth

(02:14):
floor on the celebrity floor. Now as someone who has
always loved books, and like also we'll talk about your
career path. You know you you work full time, you
have your own business. I'm just geeked for you, like
I am excited for you as a person who has
written this book who has which has become such a
massive success, and everybody black is talking about this book.

(02:39):
Everybody black. It's like sky full of elephants cinners. That's
my thread speed.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
That's it, that's the that's what I want, that's what
I want. I want. It was for black people, so
it was it was important to me, indeed, And when
we did the initial marketing, I was like, I know,
you want to like try to get it in your times.
You want to try to get it in you know,
Alley Town's a possim Clobelet's find the black bookstrogrammers. Let's
go talk to them first. Let's give them arcs, Let's
give them space. And I put it out. I was like,

(03:06):
anyone that's trying to do a book club, there's four
people in that book club. There's twenty people in that
book club. I'm coming. Or you got to do is
say the word and I'll be there. And I did.
I mean, I was, I don't even know. I did
like a hundred book clubs. I've done so many, and
it's like I want to have a conversation with black people.
And that the impetus came from like coming to my
aroun I first wrote the book my mom. I went

(03:27):
home to visit a mom and she invited all of
her church friends to the house and she was like,
they all need to talk to you about this book.
And I was like okay, and I said how they
had read it? My mom had an arc, so I
gave her a couple of early arts and she was
passing the minds all beat up, and they just they
were like, we want to talk to you. And it
was the range of conversation, the things that they really

(03:49):
didn't have space to communicate, didn't have space to get into,
they did and it was really remarkable, and I realized,
that's what that's what it's all about. The book is
a flat tape that we can gather around.

Speaker 2 (04:03):
That's metaphor number two that I will steal.

Speaker 1 (04:09):
And the anchor, fine, you can have it, you can
have it.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
What a book? All right? I got to tell you something,
so bea fam I'm by the way, spoilers are ahead.
I'm not Terry Gross. I don't know how to do
a book interview and not reveal spoilers about the plot.
And the great thing about Sky Full of Elephants is
that the plot feels like a spoiler, And that's when
you know it's going to be good, because they're telling
you upfront. All the white people in the in America,

(04:35):
in North America, I think that's what we established in
the book, have found the nearest body of water and
unlive themselves, just walked on in. And we come to
this New America about a year after this so called event,
and we meet a couple of characters. We first meet Charlie,
who I love and do you are you someone? Cibo?

(04:57):
Like do you have? Do you picture someone in your
mind when you're writing your characters like we readers do?
Can I tell you the guy I was picturing the
whole time was the boxing coach from the Wire? Did
you watch the Wire? Whoever that boxing was?

Speaker 1 (05:15):
That's good. That's pretty accurate. That's pretty accurate.

Speaker 2 (05:17):
Who all the moms in the neighborhood would come up
and be like, Oh, we got a pie for you, coach.

Speaker 1 (05:21):
I don't even know his name. That's pretty accurate. Though
I don't know his name either, but I honestly I
had whenever I write, I will have like I'll make
my sort of outline, and outline is literally just a
sentence free chapter and then I will start to accumulate
photos of people places, and I have a whole board,

(05:41):
like a Pinterest board, like a visual Pints board of
just like celebrities that I think, people that I think
will fit the characters sort of way, not necessarily always
how they look, but their way of being. And then
I have a whole bunch of like places that I
can describe them, you know, And so you're not far off,
you know, for who did you picture? Tell me? I

(06:02):
actually actually actually had my dad. I know it sounds
that's lame, but my dad was trying because my dad
was just like Charlie. He was very He was really
really gifted. He could he could make anything. He could
make anything. So watch him sketch houses that he wanted
to build when I was a kid, and he was
sketching in blueprint and he could do most of it.

(06:22):
He could, you know, he could do he could make
his own concrete before the foundation, he could do the
carpentry work, he could do the plumbing. He was really gifted.
But he was just not fulfilled, and like his potential
sort of crashed down onto itself and he became angry
all the time. And you know, he went from having
the potential of being extraordinary father to being a really

(06:43):
terrible one. And I wanted to imagine a world in
which he was fulfilled, like he got to achieve all
the things that he wanted. What would that look like?
And so Charlie was the arc of that, that transition
into feeling unworthy to feeling worthy.

Speaker 2 (06:58):
Wow, I'm just blown away. I mean I'm not blown away,
but when you hear something like that, you know, we're
both parents now and you look at these little humans
and it's like our only jobs as parents really feels
like giving you the tools to cope with this world.
And it's a miracle when parents are damaged and aren't

(07:24):
able to heal that their kids go on to, you know,
become such a great dad. Like I can already tell
that you're a great dad and an artist, and like,
in spite of all that, it's just really beautiful. And
the way that you incorporated that story into your art

(07:44):
is just like, that's what it's about.

Speaker 1 (07:46):
Yeah, that's what That's how we process these process those
the feelings that we don't have language for. We try
to articulate them in such a way that other people
can share in it too. In whatever form that they
they sort of experience it. And so yeah, I think
I've always thought that our kids are like and and
Charlie it was the same way he looked at Sydney's

(08:08):
sort of like she was the she could redeem it.
Any our children came in, Oh my god, my dms
are all Sydney. Everybody's Sydney. They they're so it's either
love or hate, and that there's no in between, knowing between.
Hard to write that character Sydney, but yeah, the idea
is that she reflects he reflects back to Charlie his

(08:32):
own sort of value system. I think I think as
a dad of girls, and in particular the girls will
look I look at them and I see, you know,
how they're developing. I see the space that they feel
like they occupy. I see, you know, whether or not
they're aspirations no matter what they are, or at least
have the space to be fulfilled if that's not happening.

(08:53):
It's reflection on me. It's reflection on the type of
father that I am, the type of person that I am.
It's reflection on what I've given them. And so when
you think of it from a cultural standpoint, my wife
is biracial, and so our kids are multiracial in that way,
and I go, we live in a predominantly white area
in the UK, and I go, I gotta take them

(09:17):
to Florida so they can see my mom. I gotta
take them Florida so they can have this chicken. They
take them in Florida, taken experience this culture because it
needs to be balanced. And I want to be the
person that gives them that, Like, that's my gift, and
so I wanted Charlie to experience that too.

Speaker 2 (09:34):
Love that stopped giving me so many distracting things to
talk about, because now I'm going to be like, that's
why we had the insane. I like, my family's from Georgia,
and my dad's from Georgia. Oh, I'm going to get
into my history. It's going to blow your mind. But
so my dad's from Georgia. I'm obviously biracial. Maybe not obviously,
but I am, and my kids are half Hispanic. My

(09:56):
husband's Dominicans, so they're multiracial. And the world I think
we'll see them racially as Hispanic or Dominican or whatever,
because that's how they present. And I'm just like, oh no,
they're gonna know they have a black mama from the
South and back. And it's like I want them to
see so many different like iterations, like so many different

(10:18):
examples of what blackness can look like, and to love it,
like they love my dad, they love my aunt, their
great aunt Brenda, who's like my grandma, Like they love
their cousins on that side, like I want them to
see and be around, you know, and to feel like
I love that, you know, so that they can grow

(10:40):
up without a doubt, like being consciously aware of the
beauty of blackness and the pride of it, and to
know that they are. And I mean it's a brag,
but my son colors himself with a brown cranky talk
about the appear at night. They do their like their

(11:02):
giant portraits of themselves. I was like Leo, his name
is Rio, like baby, not even in the brightest summer
would you ever achieve that shape. But I love that
he wants to be chalk.

Speaker 1 (11:16):
I love it. That's beautiful. That gives me a lot
of joy. That gives me a lot of joy.

Speaker 2 (11:22):
And he did girls on his hair.

Speaker 1 (11:24):
That's magical. It's magical. Honestly, the idea of the culture
is really funny because like it's when you almost have
to claim it. It claims you, but you almost have
to claim it. But when you leave America, the specifically
the black American experience is the American experience. For so
many people outside of the country they think of like

(11:44):
when they think of America, so many of the traits
they're thinking are part of the black culture. It's not
necessarily the white culture, right or not shocking at all.
It's fascinating they you know, they're they're wearing the j's,
they're they're talking to talk you know of maybe like
occasionally acting like a Texan or a Californian. Everything else

(12:05):
is just black, Like they think of it as black,
and it's and it's a counterweight to the concept of
like like trump Ism. You get to like they almost
treat it like it's odd and over there. They're like,
that's why are you guys doing that? And I'm like,
I know why i a'll be doing that. And to them,
it's like that the export is blackness, not trump Ism,

(12:25):
and not these other elements.

Speaker 2 (12:28):
So the art, the music, the films, the TV, the
pop culture that is us and so deeply it's very insidious.
The other side. Okay, well I stopped distracting me, all right,
We're gonna get to Charlie. So to establish Charlie, we
meet and you know and thank you for telling that.

(12:49):
Example of how that you know your father is woven
into Charlie's character. We meet him twenty years after he's
been imprisoned and he is released after the event they
break out because all the white people are unalive, they're dead.
And he is a professor at Howard when we meet him,
he's teaching what is he teaching? Solar solar Yeah, it's.

Speaker 1 (13:11):
Like electrical systems, and he's teaching a portion of that
class is solar panels.

Speaker 2 (13:18):
Oh gotcha. I selfishly, I really wanted to like see
what one of his classes would sound like and what
the kids are asking him about and if they're kids whatever.
But anyway, maybe the sequel And he gets a call
from someone he never knew existed, his daughter, Sydney, who
lives in far Flung, Wisconsin, and basically tells him she's in.

(13:40):
Sydney's mother is white, and she tells him you're my dad,
and I need you to come. I need you to
come get me because I've been here for a year. Surviving,
and I'm trying to get to, of all places, Alabama.
She wants to go to Alabama for some reason. Sydney
feels like Alabama is where the world hasn't changed, and

(14:02):
she's going to find her people, her people, her people,
her people, the ones that could be left in Alabama.
And Charlie gets in his little Prius or whatever whatever
it is.

Speaker 1 (14:16):
It's definitely a prius, says, no doubt. There's a lot
of preous So well, Prius.

Speaker 2 (14:22):
I know just a picture that it's very like interesting.
The blackmail hero not driving like a muscle car or something.
She gets into the electric car. He finds his way
to Wisconsin, so I'll pause there. He's about to meet
his daughter. She's nineteen. Will we meet Sydney nineteen? And

(14:43):
I'll tell you that I actually started to read The
Sky Full of Elephants, or listen. I listened to it.
I did a combo listening and reading on my on
my on my phone, like an e book thing. And
I was visiting my sister in Wisconsin and my mother
in Wisconsin where my mother's from. What my mother is white?

(15:05):
My mother is white, She's born and raised in Wisconsin. Oh,
my gosh, my sister and I have different fathers, so
my older sister and my older brother are fully white.
We were raised as siblings, so you know whatever. And
then my younger brother and I are both biracial. And
when we meet Sydney, she's not only in Wisconsin, she's

(15:26):
also the biracial, the only biracial child in her family.
So she's had to watch her brothers, her mother, her
stepfather walk into the lake behind their house and kill themselves,
and she's tried to save them, you know, at that
scene where she's trying to save them and she can't
and she can't make herself drown because her will to live,
Like whatever. I got chills just telling you that. And

(15:49):
I started to read it, and I was in the
kitchen with my mom and my sister, and I was like, so,
I'm reading this book. No, no, I don't know why
sometimes I choose violence. It is really uncomfortable to tell
your white mom that you're reading a book about how

(16:11):
all the white people are dead. She was like, now, listen,
we've she and I we have gotten through two Trump terms,
you know, like two Trump elections, and in the first one,
she did not vote on the right side of progression
and she's come around, like she's made so many strides,
but that was a tough one for her to swallow.

(16:33):
She wasn't pleased about the premise. And then I realized,
I can't explain this to her. It's not for her.
You know, Hey, ba fam, we got to take a
quick break, pay some bills, and we'll be right back.
All right, ba fam, We're back. But the way that, like,
there is so much overlap with my story in Sydney's story,

(16:53):
and like I would have been Sidney Devin, I could
I could actually kind of put I could put myself
and how she might have put myself in her shoes?
Like what if it had been in my teenage years
when we all did live together and only my brother
and I would be left because my mom and dad
split up, So then I would have had to go

(17:13):
find well, he wasn't there, he was in Atlanta anyone
that party.

Speaker 1 (17:18):
But wow, I don't think I've ever met anyone that
has that close to parallel.

Speaker 2 (17:26):
That's incredible, right, So I was like, why, Wisconsin, why
you know what? How did Sydney the character get formed?

Speaker 1 (17:34):
Well, she was initially based off of my wife and
my older daughter to some degree, right, so my wife,
like when I first wrote the first chapter with just
Charlie early on, I gave it to my wife and
she responded to it like she was like, this isn't
my experience. She goes my experience growing up bi racial
in West London, I didn't have black culture around me.

(17:57):
I didn't indeed, I didn't even know how to interact
with it. There were times when I would see a
bunch of black women together, I didn't feel like I
could just roll up on them like that. I didn't
feel my blackness. And she traveled back and forth to
New York quite a lot as a kid, and she
goes the only time I felt when I was in
New York with my grandmother, who was from Trinidad. But
then she'd go back to London and she would be disconnected,

(18:18):
and so I started to think, well, I want to
incorporate her experience. At the same time, my daughter was
having trouble with her hair and she was just like, Dad,
I just want you to like either shave it or
just do dreadlocks, because I don't even want to have to.
I don't want to have to comb these curls out
every day, I don't want to deal with it. And
I realized how much her hair as signed itself to
her identity and she didn't understand it. I hadn't done

(18:39):
the work to help her understand how important it was.
Now she loves her hair, and so I started there.
And then Wisconsin was for two reasons. One that there
are cities in Wisconsin. I'm sure you know that are
like the whitest cities literally in America. Like one I
was looking at her. I want to say it was
maybe Kenosha. It was ninety eight point one per white,

(19:00):
which is like, that's crazy, Like that's a lot. That's
like a lot of not it's a lot of homogeny
happening right like it's it's real strong and so. And
it just so happened that many years before I wrote
this book, I was profiled in the store one time.
And it wasn't bad, but it was one of those
things that you know, you're just annoyed that somebody comes

(19:21):
up to you asking a bunch of stupid questions, wanted
you to show them your bag to make sure you
didn't steal anything, like come on, So I walk out
of this store. This was this was in Florida. But
I was with I was with a bunch of friends
who were from Wisconsin. They're from White white Fish Bay
and from Milwaukee. And I walk out and I tell
them I was like, this thing just happened. And I

(19:42):
was kind of like, you know what happens, you know
to black people. And one of the people, this girl
shoes there, she goes, she goes, could you just be
making that up? I was like, why the world would
I make that up? And she goes, well, black people
say that type of stuff all the time and more
if you're just maybe picking up on it because you
just feel connected to other black people. And I'm looking
at her like that doesn't need one does it even
makes sense? But two, It's like I'm trying to tell

(20:06):
you the sky is full of elephants, and I can
see the elephants and you can't. And one day those
elephantsre gonna crash down. And you said it just like
that to her, And that became eventually the title of
the book. And because she was from Wisconsin, and because
Wisconsin was such a strong concentration of whiteness and sort
of culturally in my experience at least, I was like
this feels right, and then you know, Kenosha with that

(20:29):
guy Kyle Rittenhouse happened and I was like, yeah, let's
go there, let's do it there, and so it worked
out that way. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:38):
Way, let me tell you what I thought about hit
me and you know your name? I couldn't tell. I'm like, oh,
is this a guy written who's written this? Or a woman?
So I found out I don't like to necessarily go
into a book understanding everything about the author because it's
not always super relevant. But I did.

Speaker 1 (20:59):
I had.

Speaker 2 (20:59):
The more I got into the book, we meet Sydney
and she has internalized so much. Well, I mean, I'll
tell you what my perception is, and you can kind
of tell me. But when I feel like when we
meet her, she's so she's so traumatized and devastated by
the death of her family that she looks to the
only people that she feels like she can blame. Who

(21:20):
is who's left? And who's left? Yes, appear to be
you know, well, actually I don't think I'm even clear
on who's all left. Is it just black people who
are left? Or are there others?

Speaker 1 (21:31):
It's there are others, there's you know, Latinos are left
and Asians are left, and Native Indigenous people are left.
But I had this image in my head or to
sound bite in my head, and it was a James Baldwin.
He has said something along the lines of he goes,
I know white people don't know a lot of things,
but I do know this, you don't want to be

(21:52):
black here. And it was that. I was like, it
was the concept of like sort of anti blackness that
created the event, and it was less about you know,
if a person is this type of black or this
type of black, but rather the desire to not be
black was what sort of inspired it. And that was
how I was picturing it in my mind. Is like,
because people ask me all the time that like is

(22:13):
this is this white? Or is this white? And I'm like,
I'm not really thinking about what it's white. I'm thinking
about what doesn't want to be black? What is avoidant
of black? And that's what was important to me.

Speaker 2 (22:21):
Well, when we meet Sydney, she definitely doesn't want to
be black.

Speaker 1 (22:24):
I know she does not.

Speaker 2 (22:26):
She is so much internalized well even like delusion, because
I don't even think she really fully accepts her blackness.
You know, she's kind of grown up in this all
white area, and I too. I mean, I mean I
grew up in the suburbs of Atlanta, so I wasn't
as isolated from you know, diversity in a good way.
But then I would still go to schools where I

(22:47):
was the only chocolate chip in the pancake. And then
it's like, do you feel othered? And my dad was
in my life, so I couldn't, but I still, you know,
I did have that tug of war that she feels
when she finally does does get to have community and
meet other you know, black people, that feeling of like
does she belong here?

Speaker 1 (23:07):
And all of that.

Speaker 2 (23:08):
I definitely grapple with that is just like your wife,
you know, did feeling like, well, if there's a that's
who I want to be around, but do they want me?
Am I gonna like pass the test to get you know?
And but yeah, it was really difficult to read the
character of Sydney because she has internalized so much racism
and bigotry and prejudice. And I was like, all right,

(23:32):
Sydney girl, I'm gonna trust we are gonna go on
a ride.

Speaker 1 (23:36):
You're gonna figure this out. That's it.

Speaker 2 (23:38):
That's it. So people, I'm not surprised people. It's been
so polarizing. Like you said the response to her, I
also feel like it was a brave character choice for
her because those feeling are very real, Like they're very

(24:02):
believable if we give into the idea that like, humanity
is capable of incredible racism and prejudice and self hatred,
self loathing. Those are human feelings and emotions that exist,
and at a time like this, I think it's I
think it's important to acknowledge that they exist so that

(24:23):
we can try to change them or you know, or
be aware of them. We can't be in this like
state of you know, a state of like I don't
know a little bit of delusion or ignorance about what's
really happening, because then we end up being like, wait,
what how is tack here again?

Speaker 1 (24:43):
I definitely think it's an ignorance. It's in part because
we're constantly sort of distracted and put in the teams,
and then you go, the only community I have is
this team that I'm on, and you haven't really vetted
in because it's probably distracted all the time about something else.
And Sydney, for her part, you're exactly right in that
you know, she was internalized and she had developed, you know,

(25:04):
these similar feelings about about black blackness and black culture.
But simultaneously, the loss of her mother, the loss of
her her family, made her want to hold on to it.
And so at once she's gripping in order to claim
something and unwilling to release that claim to claim something else,

(25:27):
claim claim more. And there's this tension. And so there's
actually two parts in the book, and I realized they
sort of I wrote them to be ripped quite subtly,
but there were projections of both Charlie and Sidney Psyche.
So you had when Charlie leaves DC and he's driving

(25:47):
across to go meet Sidney. The first person Charlie encounters
is is uh the woman? The woman? And again I
like that she was she was, I really like it.
I know she was great. The earth was burned black
all around. And he arrives to her and she immediately
like sort of reorients him to himself. She gives him

(26:10):
some food, nourishes him, she gives him wisdom, and she
sort of goes, you know, who are you going to be?
And sends him on his way to become it. In
my mind, that was a projection of his psyche. He
literally had to drive into the blackness in order to
reach a person that felt ancestral, who could go, let
me point you in the right direction. Right, And she says,

(26:30):
she's like, you're going to Wisconsin to figure out your life, right,
to find something. When Sydney leaves Wisconsin, or leaves Oscosch,
the first place she comes as Kenosha, and that town
is spray painted in white and a chaos of whiteness.
And she meets Little, and Little is wearing the KKK uniform.
His blackness is shrouded in white. And he grabs Sydney

(26:53):
and he says, you're one of us, and he doesn't
want to let her go. That's her psyche, that's her
whiteness going. You can't leave this place, you can't leave
this way of being, and it is chaotic, and the
whole town is the only town is busted again. All
the other towns are actually intact, but that one's busted up.
And when she falls into Charlie's arms, that's when her

(27:15):
journey towards claiming blackness begins. But up until then, she's
sort of starting to go the route of Little, where
it's breaking something's breaking in her mind, and so both
of those things are true.

Speaker 2 (27:29):
What's the total I'm trying to think like that the
novel takes place over how many days? It doesn't feel
like that long.

Speaker 1 (27:36):
No, it's not that long. It's I'm gonna say maybe
like seven eight days something like that.

Speaker 2 (27:40):
Yeah, it's like a week. So for me, when I
realized that, like towards the end of the novel, I
don't want to give anything away. Also, Doug, go buy
the novel. I'm trying to give Sydney grace because she
has such a long way to go. Like it's not
like I'm glad that she got her hair moist and
she got loved on by some beautiful black queens like,

(28:05):
but Homegirls still doesn't know how to do her hair
by herself. If she ever has children, like she's gonna
have to deal with it all again. Like she needs
a lot of therapy. And you know, I tried to
have compassion for her. Yeah, it was definitely painful to
you to see her be in so much pain and
to like miss out on all the love she could

(28:25):
have for herself. But I try to like what gave
me peace was like it's only been a week. She
has a long life ahead.

Speaker 1 (28:32):
Of her working away. I think that was that was
something that kind of got lost as well. There are two.
The one there is like a constant motif of the lavender,
and the lavender was a nod to have.

Speaker 2 (28:45):
Great my mom's favorite scent. I didn't even mention that, Oh, that's.

Speaker 1 (28:49):
So funny, weird. And Elizabeth Laura Jane.

Speaker 2 (28:58):
I have not talked about your book with her since
I read it because she really didn't like. I was like,
I was like, Mom, it's not like I want you
to die. She's like, but you're reading this book. I'm like, yeah,
but I didn't think it. This guy did.

Speaker 1 (29:14):
Let me talk to your mom to get jump in
a book?

Speaker 2 (29:17):
What would you say? I mean, you don't have to
answer to her, like or anybody really about it's your book.

Speaker 1 (29:22):
But it's not about answering. The whole point is to
expand us a little bit, to make us, you know,
to expand our minds towards imagining a different reality. Because
the truth is is, while your mom might go, you know,
I don't this this is suggestive of like killing all
the white people. You have to understand that the majority

(29:43):
of the time that Black Americans is spent in this country.
It's been spent on the side of being an other,
and it still is today. And it's important for someone
to understand what the other and feels like so that
they can have compassion for someone else. You can get
into the complexities of the stories and the complexity of

(30:03):
the individual characters and everything they're going through. Ultimately, it's like, listen,
this is what it feels like. And if you look
at that book and you go it makes me uncomfortable,
understand that that discomfort is what other people are feeling
when you aren't recognizing them in the context of what's
really going on in the country, what their needs are.

(30:23):
And so if you feel that that's an important feeling,
it's an important feeling to process, an important pathway towards empathy.
I think then you get into the characters. You know,
when you get into the characters, you understand that the
idea that some of these characters in the story could
endure what would be a massive, massive, massive change in

(30:44):
the country. To have that many people, I mean, that's
sixty percent of the country disappearing. Like to see that
and to go, that's really really bad. And somehow I
feel free. Like if someone said that to you, saying
that because they're mean. They're not saying that because they
dislike you. They're saying that because that is the degree

(31:04):
to which they feel oppressed. And I want people to
understand that, like, that's not if someone says to you
they will feel freer. That's that's an orient yourself to that,
to like where they at, because that means that they're
in a place that they feel really really restricted and
half for a long time, so much so that they
are breath of this, like they've been indoors for the
last two hundred years and all of a sudden they're like,

(31:27):
this is what air feels like. It's amazing. And I
think there's there's certainly a need for understanding and compassion,
but I think when I think about it, the word
is always empathy. It's like, just exchange the emotion and
you'll see, and when you see, hopefully it impacts your emotions.
And there's no reason to be angry, no no reason
to be mad, there's no reason to feel I mean,

(31:48):
I say this to people all the time, like the
whole of Middle Earth was created in a book and
they're ain't a single black person like they're elves. Man,
there's like hobbits where they're no black people.

Speaker 2 (32:00):
You know, there's so much logic. People don't listen. I mean,
there's so much logic. We don't have time for logic.

Speaker 1 (32:09):
I mean, like it's not this datage. So but yeah,
I like that conversation and I and frankly, I think Sidney,
you know, ultimately, I think she represents the grace that
black people have had towards what is an astounding amount
of racism over a long period of time. It's always

(32:29):
been with grace. It's always been with like you you
slap me, and yet I'm still standing here, willing to
be at the table with you. I'm still here, you know.
And I feel like that is Sidney sort of represents
the other side of that, and it does. It's like
Lavender is like a reminder of grace, and then at
the end of the book without giving away the full inning,

(32:51):
and she has to go off man and go figure
that out. And a lot of people say that to me,
They're like, I want more. I want to see what
happens after that, and it's like, I know, you do.
That's why I wrote it that way, because at the point.
That's the point, like think, like take it with you
and imagine, like imagine what that that the healing feels like,
you know, and so yeah, Sidney's I would love it.

(33:13):
I would love that conversation with your mouths. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:17):
I just wanted Sydney to know that that what was
a guy's name, the cutie that she was crushing on.

Speaker 1 (33:22):
Sugar fella fella.

Speaker 2 (33:25):
Oh what a beautiful name. Fella fella. Uh yeah, tell
me little things. I wondered, is it too much on
the nose too, like the parallel between the Great Passage,
you know, like slaves being brought across the sea and
dying in the water and then that's how the white
people die. Was that too much of a parallel for

(33:47):
me to draw? What was the water?

Speaker 1 (33:50):
The water? No, no, no, The water was meant to
be an erasure. So it was partially tactical because I
wanted I didn't want a whole bunch of dead bodies
lying around, so I couldn't like have you know, Stephen
Kenby wanted it to feel right. It just wont me
to look, so I needed the erasio. I definitely wanted
the idea of the tide coming back to be prevalent,

(34:11):
and then I wanted to be visible that no matter
where you went, you couldn't escape this sensation. If you
saw a river, if you saw a lake, if you
saw a bath, the water suggested a rebirth and a
change in a sort of evolution. And you know it.
When Charlie had his bath, when Sydney had her bath,
they were changed. You know, there's a lot of these
sort of interactions with water, but the Middle Passage specifically

(34:34):
one of the early questions I got. And I don't
think they think I had an answer. They were like, well,
bodies float. This was my first book talk I did
in New York. I think this guy thought he had
in the corner. He was like, well, bodies float. So
if the body's walking into the water, water were they're
foating all over? And I just went, have you heard
of the Middle Passage? He's like yeah. And I was like,
our ancestors held them down, and so they got us.

(34:58):
That's all. That's all you need to know. In that water,
they got us, and so they gave the world back
to us. So there was a connection. It wasn't as
as clear as like, it wasn't as metaphoric for me
as quite literal in that they were there, the spirits
of them, you know, held them down and wouldn't let
those bodies float. They sort of allowed the world to
come back to us. There's a scene where Sydney's where

(35:20):
her parents walked to the water and she says she
tried to pull them up as she physically couldn't. It
was like trying to pull the whole earth up with him.
And that is the idea is they were being held.

Speaker 2 (35:31):
Hey, ba fam, We're going to take a quick break,
pay some bills, and we'll be right back. Welcome back,
be a fam. Let's get back to the show. Well,
I haven't had a chance to read it again. Like
I said, I have two small children. I read a
book through one time. So that's a win. That shows
you how much I wanted to.

Speaker 1 (35:49):
Read the book.

Speaker 2 (35:50):
Huge if she wanted and I really wanted to read
this book, you like, I haven't even read the plot twist.
I know there's going to be we're going to find
out who did this and what did this? But I
want to read it again because I'm still trying to
My brain is still trying to unravel the last like
twenty five percent of the book because the emotion, you know,

(36:13):
and yeah, it's the emotions were carrying me through the
first part of the book and the feeling and the whoa,
I'm just like on this ride, and then the technical
stuff comes in and I'm like, I can't.

Speaker 1 (36:22):
I can't process this exactly. It's a lot, but it's
it's it's complex, and I wanted it to be really
complex because a lot of there's a there's like an
excavation of history and if I'm tangenting, just tell me,
but there's a lot of excavation of history about America
and then Haiti and I wanted to give a nod
to the relationship is something larger than that, something big.

(36:45):
And the Shango bone is a note in that that
that bone is real, Like I didn't make that up.
That bone is literally twenty five thousand years old and
it has we talk about the bone.

Speaker 2 (36:54):
You decided to say, I don't want to be super
spoiling spoilery.

Speaker 1 (36:57):
But got it. Got it. The bone it's called the
jungle bone, and it was found on the Nile, not
far from the Congo and they when they discovered this bone,
it's not big bones like the size of a pencil.
There are striations on the bones. Marking on the bones
that did note it a very complex mathematical system. I
think it's the equivalent of computational binary, like really complex

(37:19):
like mathematics on a bone the size of a pencil.
And when they first found it, they did the carbon
dating on it, and they thought it was five thousand
years old. Now, for context, the Greeks are three thousand,
so it's still older than the Greeks. And what we're
talking about is like Pythagoras and all that is two

(37:41):
thousand years older than they thought. It was two thousand
years older than Pathagonas America is only two hundred, two
hundred and seventy years old, So two thousand years before Pythagoras.
They found his bone, and then they a couple of
years later they redid the carbon dating on it. Because
of the technology for carbon dating evolved, they found it
was twenty five thousand years That's it's hard for me

(38:03):
to comprehend. It's not hard now, but like when I
first heard about this, I'm like, wait a minute. The
people that you've been telling me all of my life
are like living in huts and trees. Were able to
put the equivalent of computational mathematics on a bone twenty
five thousand years ago. That happened, and it had and

(38:26):
then I started to look at more stuff discover such
amazing stuff like the Dogon and Mali and all these
different places they were doing extraordinary things, and so I
wanted the book to sort of have a turn towards
that and go, hey, what we're talking about here is
we're talking about America. We're talking about this the healing
of all of the trauma of enslavement and Jim Crow

(38:51):
and all of it. But there's a whole lot more
stuff that you still don't know yet that are signals
in the air that you can have access to, and
it's really found is really complex, and so the whole
nod to Nikola Tesla was was to that because he's
doing a lot of the experiments that he did was
based off of experiments that were already done in Egypt

(39:12):
and different parts of Kimmit, and so I was like,
I want to give a nod to that. And so
it went a bit complex, but I like it.

Speaker 2 (39:19):
But our history is complex and it's it's it's deep,
you know. I think being black in America you do
kind of grow up with the understanding and like our
history was stolen from us and we don't know where
we come from and all of that. But but we
we have to do more work. But it's there. So
if you were picking, if you were like putting together
a great like like you know, read Sky Full of

(39:42):
Elephants and then go to this museum or read this
book or you know what kind of if someone's really
curious to learn more about these topics, what we're in,
sources of inspiration for you or places you can point
be a fan too.

Speaker 1 (39:55):
Yeah, I mean I love the book anything about France Fanan.
His work is a lot about decolonization and colonization and decolonization.
Uh Chinwa Chepe who wrote Things Fall Apart, and he
wrote it, I want to say he wanted in the sixties,
but it was like telling the actual stories of people

(40:16):
that were living in nations when a colonization was happening.
Things Fall Apart is great or God is Great, and
anything about Friends for on. But I really love Wretched
of the Earth. It's like, man, it's intense, really intense.
And then I would say Maladoma Patrisse some who wrote

(40:43):
of Water and Spirit and I love this book so much.
It's about this kid who's growing up in Burkina Fosso,
which Burkina Fosso right now is like leading the sort
of African ascendency right now. They're doing amazing stuff. He
was he was Braisen Bikino fossil in a tribe that
had a specific religion called Tagara, and he was kidnapped.

(41:06):
Although the children were kidnapped and taken to a monastery
to become you know, preachers and nuns, and then they
were sent back to sort of bring the people to Christ,
and so he was. And this was happening over generations
and many jurations. So he was kidnapped when he was
like eight, taken to this place and he was never

(41:29):
able to do his When they turned thirteen, they do
their ceremony to become an adult. He was never able
to do it. He ran away when he was nineteen.
He goes back to his tribe and he's begging them
to take him back, and they're like, no, we can't.
You're encoded with a completely different system because you went
and he begged him. He got his father to beg him,

(41:49):
and they were like, we're going to put you through
this ceremony. And it's probably going to kill you, but
if you get through the ceremony, you'll be reconnected with
our people and the story. And it's a it's not
it's an audible, it's like it's a true story. It's
what he experienced going through that, what he had to
shed and what he had to gain. It's extraordinary, extraordinary.

Speaker 2 (42:09):
Oh, I can see how that might have inspired the
bath and yeah, exactly some of those. Okay, I'm trying
to like use my time wisely and I have questions
just career wise, Like you wrote this book. You run
your own creative brand agency. You're not a professional author
as a job. Turns out that's really hard to do

(42:30):
and make.

Speaker 1 (42:32):
Money from a struggle.

Speaker 2 (42:36):
Talk about, like I know, on very much time, but
tell me a little bit about your career trajectory and
how it led you to, you know, getting the time
to write this book.

Speaker 1 (42:47):
Now, Yeah, I was. I went to college on a
football scholarship. But while I was there, I sort of
became a writer, which is on an interesting story, but
I sort of became a writer. And I was trying
to decide if I wanted to write and I wanted
to do film, or if I wanted to try to
actually go to the NFL, which was my dream. And
then I realized I was a little too small to

(43:08):
go to the NFL, even though I made go to college,
and I decided to write. I wrote, right, we got
to step into it, America, We got to step into it.
But I wrote my first book when I was like
twenty at four to as a part of the course
that I was in, and it got published, but it wasn't.
It was terrible novel.

Speaker 2 (43:29):
I was what, this was your debut novel? Oh, you
have a secret.

Speaker 1 (43:32):
It was, but this other book was like it was
like a small press and it just wasn't. And they
fell apart like it was a whole mess.

Speaker 2 (43:42):
Well, it's just that you're human and you also can
write terrible stuff. So that's fine.

Speaker 1 (43:46):
Oh, which.

Speaker 2 (43:49):
His first novel was like this out the Ballpark, I.

Speaker 1 (43:55):
Write, I write, this is the thing. This is the
thing I tried to teach everyone, which is a relative
to this story, is we have to give ourself room
to fail. We have to give ourself room to make
the mistakes. I teach my team, my design team, you
have to you're literally bringing something that doesn't exist in
this world to a three dimensional space. When you're being
a creative, it doesn't exist. It's up here in this,

(44:16):
in this sort of ethereal realm. When you're bringing it
into three dimensions, that's not easy, and it's wrought with
with mistakes, especially if you go from that ethereal space
to a program, because the program has to interpret whatever
you're hearing in your head. Don't do that. Get you
yourself a pencil and a piece of paper and start sketching,
start writing, and you will iterate faster that way. You'll

(44:39):
make your mistakes faster that way. I wrote All the
Sky Full of Melphons by hand first, all of every
single page, what in every single page, I'm not kidding,
Every single page I wrote by hand first, and because
because I well, interestingly enough, I wrote it my remarkable.
Let's go, I'll show you actually have it here. I'll

(45:01):
actually show you the whole book. This is my remarkable.
It's like an electronicy. Yeah, it's like an electronic writing pad.
Situation a little I'm going to show you. I'm gonna
show you the entire novel right now, Skott Full of Elephants,
because it's on here. All of my books in my
writing I used to write everything on a on a
sketch like a like a proper notebook.

Speaker 2 (45:23):
But then I don't know if I had all hand
strength to do that.

Speaker 1 (45:27):
It's it's it's no joke. Here look this is you
see the pages here, and I'm gonna show you.

Speaker 2 (45:33):
Oh, I see why you wrote it. You have nice handwriting.
I don't have nice hands.

Speaker 1 (45:37):
Look at that every page you can scroll for days?

Speaker 2 (45:42):
And does this converted to type after you're done? Thank
the Lord, because I'm like for your editor.

Speaker 1 (45:50):
But I know right, And so I as a when
I graduated college, I written my first book and I
was like, I'm going to go be a writer and
I but it did. It didn't. It wasn't a good
book and it didn't. I didn't make any money off
It was like I think I got a thousand dollars
bands or something. And so I moved back home. Didn't
know what I wanted to do, and I started working

(46:11):
at the front desk of a hotel and I was
doing it just to write books. I was like, Okay,
I'm gonna sit at this desk check people in and
keep messing around. And the job that I had, they
were offering another position for someone in marketing. They were like,
we need a marketing person and they didn't have a website.
They were like, me a marketing person, and I went,
I could do that. And the boss at the time,

(46:33):
he goes, I need someone that can build me a website.
Can you build a website? And remind you this is
two thousand and four, and I was like, no, I
you know, I don't even have a computer, but I
can build your website. And he goes, Okay, I'm gonna leave.
I'm going to Did you.

Speaker 2 (46:49):
Leave with the fact that you don't have a computer
or was that internal dialogue?

Speaker 1 (46:53):
That was internal dialogue. I just said to him, I
got it, don't worry, I got it. I could do.

Speaker 2 (46:57):
This is like very low. We're talking like Zanga vibe.

Speaker 1 (47:03):
This is I still had Zanga back then. So you're
you're exactly spot on.

Speaker 2 (47:07):
What was your background music.

Speaker 1 (47:10):
Back then? I want to say it was tried. I
think it was tried because they had a Yeah, it
was tribe.

Speaker 2 (47:18):
It was.

Speaker 1 (47:20):
Oh my gosh, I could tell you the song Midnight Marauder.
That's what it was. That's what I'm not here. And
I remember I remember how I did it. I sinked
it m P three into it and I was able
to like upload it somehow.

Speaker 2 (47:32):
So that was if you could figure out. Because I
was coding on Zanga, I was full on doo and
I was like, I want mine was John Legends, ordinary people,
and I wanted it. I wanted it to scroll with
the page like I had all the.

Speaker 1 (47:46):
All ages space that you play. Man. I wasn't. I
wasn't like at that time because websites require like real
high functionality, and that website required booking integration, so I.

Speaker 2 (47:59):
Had to hotel website is not like creating someone's like
portfolio page. That's a big ask.

Speaker 1 (48:05):
Okay, It's pretty pretty complicated coding, and so I designed first.
I have no idea how to design, but I ended
up buying a cheap deal computer. I pirated a copy
of Photoshop on lime wire back then and basically gave
my computer aids.

Speaker 2 (48:20):
To do it. I was about to say that for
its life.

Speaker 1 (48:27):
Works works on my on my laptop. It's crazy. And
so I got photoshopped, like figured out how to code
or design and then like break it into slices and
then export the slices into dream Weaver. And I was
like tinkering with it, and then I and then it clicked.

(48:47):
It clicked. I was like, wait a minute, the design
and the code they're working together and I and it
wasn't like someone's designed and someone's a coder. I was like, Oh,
I need to be both of these things, because ultimately,
what I'm trying to do is tell a story. Hotel
is a physical space that needs to be sold in
a digital environment, and it needs to be sold at
what is the equivalent of a luxury purchase right now?

(49:09):
A luxury purchase is anything over seventeen hundred dollars. If
you go and you stay at a hotel that's three
hundred dollars a night and you stay for a week,
guess what you're hitting that luxury status. And so you're like,
it's a very difficult online purchase to make unless you're
going through a third party. If you're going through hotels
dot car, you feel a little bit more comfortable. But
if you're doing it direct at the hotel, it's got

(49:30):
to be a nice experience otherwise you're gonna feel comfortable
doing it, and the hotel has to sell you on
it to sell you on yourself in that space. And
so I was like, I'm going to design something that
makes other people feel the energy of the physical space.
It isn't going to be just about like empty bedroom shots.
It's going to make you feel something. I want a

(49:51):
beautiful lifestyle. I want video. I wanted to feel like
a thing. And so I started to start to design,
trying to evoke a sense of place and then coding
functionality that matched that sense of place. So like over states,
that made sense. Having the filtration of all of the
rooms make feel smooth and intuiting, and so that hotel

(50:13):
did not have a website experience. Within a year they
had made over a million dollars in digital on web
web based.

Speaker 2 (50:20):
Bookings over that person from the site you made.

Speaker 1 (50:23):
From the film site that I made, and so they
were like, you're doing great, and I was like, I
still didn't didn't know what I was doing. I was
just tinkering, messing around. And then I realized I that
by the end of it, I have learned to write PHP,
I learned to write a little bit of job script,
I learned to write HTML. And I learned this pretty quickly.
And so did you get the job.

Speaker 2 (50:42):
Though, or they weren't paying you as a front desk person.

Speaker 1 (50:45):
They gave me the job.

Speaker 2 (50:46):
The promotion.

Speaker 1 (50:47):
I got the promotion as soon as I finished the website.
They gave me the promotion. It wasn't a lie. It
was like twenty seven a year or something. And I
was jumping for joy back then because I does the
first salary. Yeah, it was enough. It was enough. You know,
I wasn't eating McDonald's every day, so or ramen, and
so I did that. And then as I've done it,

(51:09):
I was getting a lot of people asking me, you
did do building this website? Can you do something for me?
And I had a spring break group that was coming
from Canada come down and they were like, Hey, we
want to build a co op site. Can can you
do that? And I'm like co op in one way
and they go, well, we want anyone is booking spring
break travel to come to our website and be able
to book any of the hotels on beach. And I thought, okay,

(51:33):
so like you want the hotels to advertise on the
site and they're like yeah. And then I had to
suddenly learn s CEO. I had to learn organic, I
had to learn like conversion optimization, like all of these
things that I wasn't thinking about before to think of
it more like an e commerce experience, and so I
built that and it was but pre dates Google Ads.

(51:54):
So I had to create a function that allowed the
ads to rotate on a certain amount of click and
then clock the clicks for pay for us. And it
was ridiculous. And then all of the hotels they didn't
they didn't have anyone to design the ads, so then
they paid me to design all their ads and then
they paid they were like, can you build our websites?

(52:15):
And then I had to open a business. And that
was the first business I opened. That was two thousand
and six, and I have no idea what I was doing.

Speaker 2 (52:21):
So you've been doing it for almost twenty years now
full time because now you in your company Creative Design Agencies.

Speaker 1 (52:27):
I was sorry, Creative Work Circle Circle.

Speaker 2 (52:31):
Sorry, I just made that up out of nowhere at all.

Speaker 1 (52:35):
What your company's going Creative Creative Arts is DC, and
they're amazing. They're amazing. But we did that. We were
like back then I had that was my first company
and it was fine, like we did I It was
mostly me and I had one person that was an assistant,
But I did the best I could and then I
had a friend come up to me and he was like,

(52:56):
you want to be the creative rector of my agency?
And his agency was did humanitarian work all over the world,
and so he took on that job and he was amazing.
Just he's still my dear friend, but he's one of
those people that's like, we're not just doing work, We're
here to change the world. And so we did. I
travel everywhere with him and doing all sorts of stuff

(53:19):
from working with Shakespeare, shakespeare Birthplace Trust to you know,
doing like campaigns with UNICEF, all the stuff. And then
I while I was doing that, my other friend Adam,
he was like, hey, I got this opportunity to do
these hotel websites. I know that's what you used to do.
Do you want to do it again? And I was like, well,
let's let's look at it. And flew to New York

(53:41):
and he had five pitches to do in one day,
and I didn't know what he was doing. He was
just like, come with me on these pitches, and I'm
like okay, And that day we win all those five pitches.
One after together, we went four out of the five
and the fifth one the person we were pitching came
to work for the agency, and those out of those four,
two of them were the top two hotel operators in

(54:02):
all of New York. And so all of a sudden,
it went from like zero business to more business than
we had any business doing, right, Like it was ridiculous
amount of business. And I was just me. Right, it
was like me in my dark bedroom trying to get
these websites coded up. But we did it, and it
was you know, we ended up branching out and it

(54:24):
was like, Okay, we need to hire a photographer, we
need to hire writers, we need to hire if we're
going to try to make a sense of place and
a digital experience, it needs it needs to do the work.
And so i'd be I was sort of the creative
director for that agency, co founder and creative director of
that agency, and then still the creati director for the
other agency. And I did that for four or five years,

(54:46):
and then I just then I was like, I want
to go back to writing. That's that's because I'm still
telling stories at this point. Is that's all I released.
And I was like, I want to go back to writing.
And so I focused on one agency and then I
started tinkering, and I wrote I think three novels that
I've just shelved because I was like, Nope, that isn't right,

(55:07):
Like that's not the test of writing from one from
the beginning to the end of a narrative. Like a
lot of people only they're only gonna try that once.
And I'm like, nah, try it, like, get the feeling
of the fullness of it. Don't write like the first
chapter and go this isn't working right the whole thing.
And this is why. And this is really important for
anybody listening who thinks of themselves as a creative in

(55:28):
any capacity. It doesn't matter if it's because critical thinking
is creative. Writing specifically is one of the few artistic
endeavors where you don't have a tool if you want
to If you want to paint, you get a brush,
you get some you get some colors. If you want
to be a photographer, you get a camera, you get
a videographer, you get a camera. But with writing, particularly storytelling,

(55:52):
you can just speak it and require a tool. The
trick is is your first draft has to be the clay.
If you're not. If your first draft isn't perfect, it's
the clay that you're molding to perfection. You create the clay.
And I see too many people they think of their
draft as that. They're like, this is the book. It's

(56:13):
not the book, that's the clay. If you get your clay,
you can you can really make something magical and don't
be discouraged. Know that that's the beginning, not the end.
Build your clay first. And so I was keen on
like figuring out what kind of clay I wanted to
work with. So I write whole books and be like Nope,
that's not right, that's not right. Then I almost gave up.
It was very close to giving up on writing. And

(56:36):
my wife, she was the one that was like, you
got it. You can do it. You can do this.
Get back to write and get back to focusing on
like what are there was stories you want to tell?
But I didn't have an agent at that time, and
so I was like, okay, let me marry my two realities.
In my agency life, I do a lot of strategy.
So what's the strategy for getting an agent and getting

(56:57):
a successful book? What does that look like? I thought, Well,
someone needs any agent wants to know that you have
some sort of profile, right, so you need to be indexible.
Someone needs to type your name in. They need to
be able to see you first. Second platform. Secondly, you
need to have some form of sort of self distribution,

(57:18):
which is to say, if all they see when they
Google is your ur L and all the things that
you've done your US not enough, You've got to be
able to expand it. And then you need to have
pieces that resonate towards what could be a novel, which
is the business proposition, which is any any publishers going,
I need a novel, and I need to be able
to serialize that novel into a lot of work so

(57:40):
over the course of a career. And so I went, okay,
I'm going to write a book of poems, and I'm
going to use the poems to be indexible, because now
if I can, if I can write a book of poems,
and even if I just self published them, it'll have
distribution across Google, and people can type my name very easily.
They can find me on Amazon, they found you all

(58:01):
the places. It just so happened in that book of
poems end up winning an award and being published and
it got full distribution. But that was my initial plan.
And then I thought, I'm going to write a collection
of short stories, and I'm gonna take each one of
those short stories and I'm going to send them to
different magazines and see if they'll publish a short story,
because if they do, I'm not indexible on their websites
as well. And then I'm going to roll that short

(58:22):
stories short stories up into a collection and use that
to go get an agent. And then once I get
the agent i'll get, I'll write a novel and that
I'll get published. That was my plan, and Mandy, that
plan was exactly that way. Everything I just described happened
exactly with that. I just described it just like that,
just that.

Speaker 2 (58:39):
Kid on his Dell computer figuring it.

Speaker 1 (58:41):
Out, backing away with my my very very slow LimeWire
affected computer.

Speaker 2 (58:49):
So but.

Speaker 1 (58:51):
That's it.

Speaker 2 (58:52):
That's grind. I mean, I want to give respect to
the grind. Thank you for sharing all that the grind,
and like the I mean, and you we're also living
a full life, like you're meeting your wife, you're having children,
like you're traveling, and then you're dealing with the doubt.
I love your wife for you know, motivating you and
bringing you, giving you that space and that encouragement, because

(59:16):
that's all you need in those I mean, I I
just submitted my clay to my editor, and I think,
what can happen when you're when you're making the clay,
is you try to compare your clay to someone's oz
that has been the final product. I ain't about to
We can't compare the clay to what's on the bookshelves
that you know, because that's been Yeah, there's been multiple, many,

(59:40):
many different hands in that final product. But I just
submitted my clay. Took me three years to make that clay.

Speaker 1 (59:50):
Listen, get yourself a bottless champagne, because that's that's a celebration.
That's a real celebration.

Speaker 2 (59:56):
To night we celebrate. I submitted it on Monday. The
book change from when like the Sky full of Elephants?
Did it change like the premise of it or was
it pretty much like I know I'm writing this book,
the event's going to happen, and I know it'll be
Charlie and Sidney's story and then you move forward from there.

Speaker 1 (01:00:14):
Yeah, it didn't change very much. Indeed, part of the
the this sounds I realize what I'm about to say
sounds pretentious, but I was able to sort of choose
the publisher. And I know that does not happen very often.

Speaker 2 (01:00:29):
If a pretentious is a fact, but you earned it,
just as you had a proof of product already.

Speaker 1 (01:00:36):
I was able to, like, you know, there were a
few different publishers that were ruying for the book, and
it just so happened that Simon Schuster and Olivia they preempted.
They were like, nope, we want it, and they came
in early. And so I was like, well, let me,
let me meet with different ones, let me see, because
I don't want my book to change.

Speaker 2 (01:00:56):
I want it to be you wrote it at that point.
I mean, it's a novel. You'd write a chunk of it,
if not the whole thing.

Speaker 1 (01:01:03):
I written the whole thing because, like I say, I
become accustomed to like, I'm trying to get to something
I don't want. I don't want. I don't want it
to mean the work of art if you think of
it in those terms, you want it to at least
feel complete enough that no one else is going to change.
If I was writing a song and I gave it
to another musician, they'd be like, well do this and
do that, and I don't want that. I wanted it

(01:01:24):
to be. I want to be mine. So I wrote
the whole thing, and then I gave it to I
gave it to my agent that he sensed around and
they know Olivia a wonderful one of our editors. She
preempted it and she was I was like, let's get
on a call. Get on a call. And the first
thing she says, she goes, She's like, I recognize that
you know I'm Jewish and white. I die in this book,

(01:01:45):
and I want to make sure that everyone that that
does not change. We needed to be exactly what you
want it to be. I was like, that's what I'm
talking about. Was like, so what type of stuff?

Speaker 2 (01:01:55):
I was going to ask if your editor was black?

Speaker 1 (01:01:57):
Hard to find she's wonderful, remarkable. She was like, I
want to figure out how we can expand the story
and make it bigger. I don't want to change it.
They want to make it bigger. And so the whole,
the whole Vivian Hoseiah piece, like I knew they would
get to they would be in Alabama because I'd already
written that, but I didn't write how they got to
Alabama and how that all that that was all, Olivia,

(01:02:20):
we wrote a couple of additional scenes that that we
sort of tinkled through, we reorganized some bits, so she
was she was pivotal in getting it into that boss
as you described, but we'd never changed from its its concept,
and she was she I don't think she would have
even allowed it because she wanted She was like. The

(01:02:40):
one thing that it did say, which was which was
really fun is they were like, well, your book is
going to come out around the election, so maybe maybe
we'd wait until the year after, and I was like, nope,
let's do it the year before.

Speaker 2 (01:02:53):
And uh.

Speaker 1 (01:02:53):
And that was when what's his name, Ron DeSantis was
everyone thought he was going to be it and he
was burning in Florida and all that, and I was like,
let's be confrontational, like let's let's let's do it. And
even that she was like, all right, let's do it.

Speaker 2 (01:03:08):
That's so funny to me because I'm like, this book
is meant to be a lightning rod, Like right, I
mean it's not that, it's not a quiet book. I'm
just gonna scoot this. Just excuse me. I'm just gonna
casual white people.

Speaker 1 (01:03:25):
There you go.

Speaker 2 (01:03:25):
Yeah, how many banned books list. Is it on if any?

Speaker 1 (01:03:29):
So far, I don't think. I don't think it's on.
I haven't seen it on any So it's going to
be that I know of, because I'm sure it's going
to be, but not that I know of. I've heard
a lot of people saying, like, you know that it
will be banned, lots of that, like people constantly get
it now before it's banned, that type of stuff. But
I kind of think of it. If it ever was banned, I'd.

Speaker 2 (01:03:49):
Be like, great marketing. I mean it's like, literally they're
banning the most innocuous, you know books and this I
know they're bugging you, like, hey, where are you come
do your paperback?

Speaker 1 (01:04:01):
And that was just was also amazing. She's the publicist.
She was like, are you done. I'm like, I'm ALMOSTO.

Speaker 2 (01:04:08):
I know a little side to the to the handler.

Speaker 1 (01:04:10):
I know that.

Speaker 2 (01:04:12):
I do a lot of these, but I'm also selfish
and I will not make you leave unless.

Speaker 1 (01:04:18):
Tell me this is this is this is your time,
This is your time.

Speaker 2 (01:04:22):
You owe me because you use my life for this book.
You stole my life story.

Speaker 1 (01:04:25):
And made me stole it. Laura Laura Jane, Laura Jane,
sorry her too.

Speaker 2 (01:04:34):
So yeah, my sister's Mallorie Anne. I'm a Manda Lee.
You know, my mom moved to the South, so she
had a little bit of Southern in her no But
I I just want to congratulate you, and I'm so
excited for you. I think that this novel, I don't know,
I don't look at like I don't want to, you know,
become obsessed about like numbers and all sales and stuff

(01:04:56):
like that. But I know people are talking about it,
so I really hope that they are buying this book.
I feel like it's good, you know, you know good.
Any awards on the horizon is that important for this book?

Speaker 1 (01:05:10):
I realized It's funny was on they were in La
at Reparations Club and had this talk and said talked
about wanting awards, like wanting to win all the awards,
but then realize that she couldn't. They couldn't have the
awards at the expense of the audiences that they were

(01:05:32):
trying to speak to. And so I was nominated for
It was longest before the Aspine Award. I think the
Wrap Games Award as well. But I've kind of I've
already say this all the time, like I already won
like to even write a book and get it published
you want, you want, but then to have people read
it and care about it. To be on this call

(01:05:53):
makes me feel like I don't want anything. I'm not
desirous in that way. I just want to be able
to sit and talking contributes something to literature. You know,
Tony Morrison is to me the greatest American writer, if
not the greatest writer in the history of the world
as far as I'm concerned. And I always imagine that
I would write something that she would touch, she would

(01:06:17):
nudge someone. But have you have you heard of this book?
You know? Like in that that's it? Like I don't
really to me, that's the height, and I know that
won't happen. But perhaps that's as we sort of find
the book, and different people find a book in different
environments and they share it with someone else. That's all.
That's all that. I can't imagine anything greater than you know,

(01:06:38):
so I don't find myself desirous in that way.

Speaker 2 (01:06:40):
Well, I have an award for you. It's not really
an award, but it is a first. So I'm going
to use this time to let you know that Brown
Ambitions launching a book club, and sky Full of Elephants
is going to be the first.

Speaker 1 (01:06:56):
Do I get? Can I get like a button or something?
I get like a yeah, sure, I just.

Speaker 2 (01:07:01):
Made this up, So yeah, we can make a button.
Can I use canvas to do that?

Speaker 1 (01:07:07):
I don't know. Yeah, listen, that's that's amazing. Can I
do get to come? Can I be like in it?
Can I come and like? Sure?

Speaker 2 (01:07:16):
Yeah, I'd love for you to come. I think, well,
ba Fam, you're just finding out about it. So Ba Fam,
you can go to brown Envision podcast dot com and
find details about the book club and how you can
join it. BA fan has been asking for a book club.
But like I said, when I read books, I don't
necessarily want to be reading about the same stuff that
we talk about all the time on the show. I
don't think that life is just money. That's why we

(01:07:38):
do more than just money and finance here. It's about
the human experience and you know, our wellness. And I
can create the book club that I would like to
be a part of, which is a mix of everything.
And so I think sky Full of Elephants we barely
scratch the surface of what we could have dived into.
But I would love to bring ba fam into this
because it's like when you see a really good film Sinners,

(01:08:00):
I'm waiting for other people to read and watch and
experience it so that I can then have a PhD
level breakdown discussion, like I want to get into the weeds.
So bea fam. I need you to like be my
reading buddies. So we're going to read Sky full of Elephants.
We're going to reconvene. We're going to reconvene this summer.
And Cibo Campbell, thank you so much for taking the

(01:08:23):
time for writing this book, for staying true to your
art for any aspiring writer. There's so many aspiring writers
out there work in nine to five. So I want
to write a novel. And I hope the takeaway for
y'all is, you know Cibo's anecdote about making a plan
incrementally understanding that there's small things you can do now

(01:08:44):
to put yourself in a position so that the really
amazing opportunities can come to you. That was so smart,
so strategic, and so lacking. I feel like among many
creators is like those incremental steps to getting it done.
So someone else who's like an incremental steps girl, I
am Yeah, just huge kudos. It's an honor to have

(01:09:06):
met you.

Speaker 1 (01:09:07):
Thank you, thank you, stay, thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:09:09):
Can we be Lena locked in? Are we like friends?

Speaker 1 (01:09:11):
Now?

Speaker 2 (01:09:12):
I'll be I'll be a mind off. I would come
to London. Oh, I'm going to be in London for Beyonces,
for Beyonce's concert. Almost see how they get down in London.

Speaker 1 (01:09:23):
Saying that to me, Everyone's like, yo, are you I'm
going to be there for Beyonce. You don't even know
how many people said.

Speaker 2 (01:09:27):
This to me.

Speaker 1 (01:09:28):
I want to be in I'm going to be in
the States when Beyonce. I'm going to see my mom.
I'm going to be be Aflorida.

Speaker 2 (01:09:37):
Oh good boy, Now go see your mom. That's okay,
London's not that far.

Speaker 1 (01:09:42):
No, no, no, And congratulations on getting your book submitted.
Congratulations on finishing it. It's it's I know, it's like
it's a weight off of your shoulders that will only
come back when when it's time to do all of
the edits and do all of the stuff to get
it ready.

Speaker 2 (01:09:58):
But I think I might have a summer. I don't know.
I think I might have a partial summer. I didn't
expect having a summer. I guess I got to make
plans now.

Speaker 1 (01:10:07):
Yeah, I don't expect summers with kids in general, but
like with you kids and a book that you're now editing,
it's going to be.

Speaker 2 (01:10:13):
It's going to be a good bit of fun. So congrats,
thanks so much. All right, good luck. The paperback is
coming out this fall. Go make an incredible, brilliant marketing
plan for that. I'm sure you will. Until next time,
Yay browny Mission book Club.

Speaker 1 (01:10:29):
Vik can't wait, I can't wait?

Speaker 2 (01:10:31):
Please okay v a fan, thank you so much for
listening to this week's show. I want to shout out
to our production team, Courtney, our editor, Carla, our fearless
leader for idea to launch productions. I want to shout
out my assistant Lauda Escalante and Cameron McNair for helping

(01:10:51):
me put the show together. It is not a one
person project, as much as I have tried to make
it so these past ten years. I need help, y'all,
and thank goodness I've been able to put this team
around me to support me on this journey and to
y'all be a fam I love you so so so
so much. Please rate, review, subscribe, make sure you signed

(01:11:12):
up to the newsletter to get all the latest updates
on upcoming episodes, our ten year anniversary celebrations to come,
and until next time, talk to you soon via bye.

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Mandi Woodruff-Santos

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;} Imagining a World Without White People ft. Sky Full of Elephants Author Cebo Campbell