September 17, 2024 • 23 mins
Nicola Yoon, the best-selling author of One Of Our Kind, joined Danielle for a conversation about the desire for a place of liberty and how that formed the foundation for her novel.
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Speaker 1 (00:11):
Good morning, peeps, and welcome to wok F Daily with
me your girl, Daniel Moody, recording from the home Bunker. Folks,
let's take a break from oh I don't know, the
serious amount of crazy that has been circulating around since
the quote unquote assassination attempt of Donald Trump for a
(00:33):
second time in two months, the influx of violence into Springfield,
Ohio because of Donald Trump and JD Vance's stochastic terrorism,
the just overwhelming amount of fuckery that is Trump and
Laura Lumer and whatever the hell is happening over there.
And friends, for those of you who have yet to
(00:54):
venture over to my YouTube channel, I am have done
a couple of videos on that, so do head over.
You can go into the YouTube search button and put
in Danielle Moody channel and woila, there I will be
Also it is Danielle Moody Underscore the same on TikTok,
(01:15):
so absolutely do head over there where I'm creating new,
fresh videos on a daily basis. But we need a break.
I mean I know that I need a break. So
I am very excited to bring you a fantastic interview
that I did with author Nikola Yun, who wrote the
(01:36):
book Our Kind of People. It is a novel. It
is a thriller. As is written on the inside of
the book, it is like get Out the movie get
Out meets Stepford Wives. It is set in a suburb
(01:56):
of Los Angeles. A black utopian neighborhood is created and
the lead character, Jasmine, and her husband and their young son,
move into this black utopia and things kind of go
left from the beginning. The book is fantastic. The conversation
(02:18):
on race, on racism, on what it means to create safety,
and the lengths that people will go to in order
to create safety. It was such a fantastic conversation the book.
I turned every single page faster than the next. For
the last eighty pages of the book, I could not
(02:40):
put it down until it was finished. I highly highly
recommend it. So check out my interview with Nikola Yune. Folks.
I am so excited to welcome to WOKF Daily New
York Times bestselling author Nikola Yun, whose new book, latest book,
(03:05):
One of Our Kind, is your first adult novel. And
when you open up, it says get Out meets the
Stepford Wives. Yeah, And I'm like, oh, you sold me
because two iconic movies about what the character thought something
(03:29):
was and what it actually turns into. And I think
that for me, why those two movies And I want
to ask you why those two movies are kind of
how you ground the description of the book. Why those
two stand out for you. Does it have something to
do with the fact that we often enter into situations
(03:51):
experiences in our lives where we think they're going to
be one thing and then you know, outside of it
being a thriller or a horror, it turns out to
be something else. And is that why you think that
people are so inclined to this kind of art, this
kind of genre.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Thanks for having me on, And that's a great question,
actually get out. I think it's one of the first
sort of social horrors, or certainly one of the first
ones that got the public mindset thinking about a way
you can do horror and something that's like, you know,
sort of consumer friendly and also talk about deep social issues, right.
(04:29):
And so for me that was a really big inspiration
because I really did want to talk about race and
racism in America, but I also wanted people to want
to read the book, right, Like I really wanted people
to stay up all night because they needed to know
what was going to happen and turn those pages, you know,
and then maybe fling the book across the room at
the end. And then after that, I really wanted people
(04:51):
to have, you know, sort of interrogate themselves and call
their friends and just sort of talk about the ending
and why the book ends the way it does. I
don't know why happens in the book in a deep
and meaningful way, right, and also a graceful way where
we actually listen to each other and pay attention to
what the other person is saying and believe people when
they say this hurts or this doesn't hurt, or what
(05:14):
have you. So for me, get Out was a really
big inspiration because it allowed people to do that. And
then the Stepford Wise, I actually hadn't read that book
until I started writing this one, or I read it
a few years ago, and I was listening to this
podcast called You're Wrong About and was talking about the
Steppard Wise and how most people misremember that book because
(05:37):
people think of Stepford Wise as being like a pejorative
that we beat women over the head with, right, like
she's such a Stepford wife, and we sort of make
fun but actually The book is really really feminist because
it's about the men who would do this thing to
their wives, right, who would make them into Stepford wives,
which I hadn't really known. I sort of had an
idea of it, but then I read the book and
(05:58):
I was like, oh, this is fiercely feminist. And so
that happened and I sort of put it into my brain.
And then a few years later, after George Floyd's murder,
like a lot of things merge in my mind, and
Stepford Wise was one of them. Because it's also a thriller,
also talks about important social things and importantly talks about
the ways in which you don't know the world. If
(06:20):
a world is putting you in danger, there's a way
in which that if you're walking into a world that
is often problematic, you never know what situation you're going
to walk into and what that does to a person.
So the main character in One of Our Kind, her
name is Jasmine. She's my most complicated character. I love Jasmine,
but she's also judgmental, and she's kind of a pain
(06:44):
in the butt right like she does. She sees terror
and fear and trouble everywhere, but she has a reason
to see terror and trouble and fear everywhere, and it's
mostly about the world that would make a person like
Jasmine behave the way she does.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
I think that there are a couple of things there
that I want to dig into, and I think that
in reality, I feel like black people, particularly Black women,
are always gasolt into believing that the issues that we
bring to the forefront don't actually exist. That whether it
is in your workplace, in dealing with microaggressions, whether it
(07:20):
is in relationships and seeing all of these red flags
but being told like, no, you're just angry, or no,
it's your trauma, not mine. I think that there is
this idea that any time that black women in particular
bring up an issue to the forefront, whether it's Michelle
Obama saying nearly two decades ago that she was proud
(07:43):
of her country for the first time, right, and being
dragged for articulating something that was very true. This country
is inherently racist, and look at you, your embrace of
my black husband and family, and I'm proud for the
first time, right, I'm not shameful, But being gasoled into
believing that that made her unpatriotic. So how is your
(08:07):
understanding of the perpetual gaslighting that happens in this country,
but particularly for black women. How does that feed into
what could be seen as hysterical or anxiety driven by
your character. But it's like, no, these things are really happening,
(08:30):
Like I'm not making it up.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
I mean, I think that you're tapped into exactly the issue, right.
So I mean in a world where you can turn
on the news one day and see the murder of
a person and see his body left on the street
for just hours, it makes you vigilant, right, It makes
you hyper vigilant in a way that's not healthy actually
for anyone. But how could you not be, How could
(08:54):
you not be at any moment a terrifying and a
horrific thing can happen, Right. I think for Jasmine, she's
so hyper vigil and she has a young son, she
has a black husband, she has a baby on the way,
and she is a public defender. She's steeped in the news,
she's steeped in all the trauma, just all the time, right,
And I think there's a way in which that can
(09:14):
make you just sort of go, oh my god, everything's
a threat. And I think that's where Jasmine is right.
I mean, and sometimes things are a threat and sometimes
they're not, but it's hard to tell the difference when
there's so many horrors. And I think, you know, I
want to really talk about a world. I mean not
just for black women, I mean especially for black people
in this country, but in general. The world is on
(09:37):
fire a lot. Right. You can wake up and turn
on the news and you're like, there's climate change, and
there are several wars and genocides, and if you're a
reasonably good person, you want to fix it and you
don't want to just sort of retreat into your bubble.
But also you cannot possibly fix everything. And I mean
it can make you crazy, right, And you can make
(09:59):
you so see threats when there are no It can
make you mistake when there is a threat that you
should be looking at. I think you know, it turns
you upside down. And I think that's where Jasmine is.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
I want to talk a bit too about liberty, about
the place that you created in the book, this idea
of a black utopia. It's something that I think about often.
I don't know if you have visited Martha's Vineyard and
Oak Bluffs and this historical black town and place where
(10:34):
the affluent have gone to vacation throughout history and time,
and in a lot of places it had been one
of the only places where you get to see black
people on vacation. I know that when I travel there
are sometimes when I may see one or two other families,
but largely we're not seeing ourselves. Talk to us about
(10:57):
the creation of this place of liberty, of this black utopia,
and the why around it for.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
You, So you know, Jasmine moves along with her husband
and her young son to liberty. Right, So it is
a black utopia. It's in the suburbs of Los Angeles.
It's very, very wealthy, and she's hesitant to move because
she is, as I say, a public defender, and she
has a sense of community and wanting to help the
less fortunate and moving to a place where she gets
(11:26):
safety feels wrong to her because there's so many people
who don't have safety. But she does move for safety. Right.
She wants it to be that when her husband and
young son walk down the street and they get stopped
by a cop, that cop is going to be black
and presumably on their side and is not going to
be horrible. Right. She wants to revel in black excellence.
She wants mostly to feel safe, I meaning being a
(11:49):
black woman myself and a mother too. I know that
wanting to have psychic safety and also physical safety for
my kid, right, so like I want my child to
be he is innocent for as long as possible, but
I also wanted to be saved physically right from the
world that is dangerous. And so Jasmine moves to liberty
because everyone's black. What could possibly go wrong? Right when
(12:12):
you are in a community where presumably everyone wants and
cares about the same thing.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Yeah, And it's like I feel it because you brought
up George Floyd and can think about Mike Brown, We
can think about Trayvon Martin being killed inside of a
gated community. You can think about all of these different aspects,
and whenever those horrific events happen, my first thought is like,
I'd like to leave here. I'd like to leave here,
(12:39):
and I'd like to go someplace where I don't have
to worry. And there is this seeming feeling of guilt
that Jasmine has about Like you said here, I am
believing that like I should be here to make a difference,
not just book spa appointments, not just pretend that things
aren't happening. And I wonder when you see in our
(13:02):
society people who don't want to be as tapped in
as a way too maybe for themselves have that psychic
safety that if I am so tapped in on a
regular basis, I may not get out of bed, because
there are multiple genocides that are happening, because there are
kids that are going hungry, that are right down the street,
(13:23):
because there is a possibility that if my loved one
leaves and they get stopped by the police, they're not
going to return. Like, is there this place where we
can both understand and not be judgmental about people who
want to tap out because everything can be so overwhelming.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Yeah, And honestly, that's part of what the book is about.
I mean, it's important for me to say that the
book isn't prescriptive, But the question that you just ask
is the conversation I think that we all need to
be having right Because so Jasmine moves celebrity, and where
Jasmine is hyper vigilant, some of the people in Liberty
are not. Some of the people in Liberty bookspot appointments
(14:05):
all day and turn away from the world entirely. It's
not like they're taking a break or looking out for
their own mammas. They're just completely gone and they find
their own kind of safety in that, right, they find
their own kind of you know, turning away from the world,
a world that's too hard to look at, and is
there some happy medium? Is that a thing that's possible
(14:27):
in a world that's so violent and so dangerous for
black people, you know at certain times? So like, I
don't know, but I know that I want to ask
the question as a part of the book, and I
really want people to start to talk about it. Right.
There are villains in this book, But the villains in
the book are also victims, right, They're also victims of
(14:48):
like an overarching system that's racist, like a system that
puts people into boxes and forces them to make absurd
choices a lot of the times. Right. You Know, there
is a character the book where I think West She's
got to figure it out, and she has a good
way of looking at the world. She loves her blackness,
she loves the black culture. She sees the world for
(15:11):
what it is, and she chooses to hold on to
her joy when she can. But I think it's hard, right,
and I think it's worth talking about what kind of
world we've made.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
I want to ask you too again, We're living in
a really wild time, and we're living at a time where,
in this moment, as you and I are speaking, we're
sixty some odd days away from the most consequential election
of our lifetime. Yep, where for the first time ever
(15:45):
in America's history, a black and Indian woman is at
the top of the Democratic ticket. There are two very
clear pictures that are being painted about this country. One
that is steep in white Christian nationalism and exclusivity, and
(16:06):
one that is imperfect, Yes, incredibly imperfect, but steeped in
the desire to be more inclusive with each generation than
we have. Yeah, and the decision is so weighty for me,
it seems so friggin' obvious, right, like duh, you know,
like pick the one that isn't run by a criminal,
(16:29):
like just you know, duh.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
It's a really obvious decision.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Yes, it's just so obvious. And yet and yet here
we are. When you kind of look at the world,
you have a daughter, when you look at the world
and you think, like, what have we become? Do you
see the possibility. Do you see it as a horror?
(16:53):
Do you see you know, like, is there still like
I don't know. I find this mix of feeling where
I both feel incredibly joyful and excited about the possibility
in this choice and equally friggin terrified about the possibility
of the wrong choice.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
I mean, isn't that why the world is crazy? I mean,
it's interesting to be a human being, the way you
can hold to simultaneously opposite emotions at the same time, right,
And you just have to live with it, right, Like,
my daughter is the best thing on earth, and I
put her on the school bus this morning and she's gone.
My heart is on the bus all day. And I
(17:31):
just have to trust that the world is going to
treat her well and that she will be smart enough
to like, you know, stick her elbows at when she
needs to and be kind and all of those things.
And you know, I have a wonderful husband who I
adore and so and you know who really is the
love of my life, and so I am lucky and joyful.
And also you know, we turn on the news, we
(17:53):
could turn on the news after this podcast and something
new and horrific can have happened, and part of the
tension in the like modern society is learning to try
to live with both of those things and still go
forward and still do good work and still care and
not turn away. But also you can't because if you
revel in it, you only get the one life, right,
(18:15):
and you cannot live if you've steeped in it all
the time, right, Like, there's no way there's no joy
for you to have. And I refuse to see my
joy to like someone else's view of me or the
entire world. And also part of joy is actually trying
to make the world a little bit better, you know.
(18:35):
I mean, you're talking about these two candidates. One is
trash honestly, and the other candidate is flawed, right, But
at least there's one candidate that we can push towards
more progressive policies and more and doing the right thing
right and so but that it means that we all
have to be engaged and push and try. It means
we have to believe in a flawed world, right, even
(18:58):
the times when it's really really bad. You know, maybe
stay in bed that day and then get up the
next day and try again.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
I don't know if you watched the Democratic National Convention,
but when Michelle Obama offered I mean so much, but
one of the lines that stuck with me the most
was this Goldilock sensibility, this idea that everything has to
be just right in order for us to get things done.
And I, you know, and I think about that. I
(19:27):
think about the ways in which fiction and fairy tales
have kind of in a lot of ways guided our
view of the world. And I want to ask you this, like,
what do you see as the role of fiction at
a time when the world is so dark?
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Yeah, that is a great question, you know. As the
fiction writer, I will say that when I first wrote
the first draft of this book, I wrote it from
a place of despair and anger. I was so and
I'm not in general angry or sparing person and fairly optimistic.
I'm always smiling or always joking, but you know, the
(20:06):
world had gotten to be a lot and so that
very first draft was there was no hope in it.
There was no like sort of air in it. But
the role of a fiction writer is to tell the
truth right, the truth as you see it, and that's it.
That's really just the job. And then hopefully people will
come to it with grace and empathy and be in
(20:27):
dialogue with the work, and hopefully it'll mean something to them.
It maybe will reveal a truth about themselves, or maybe
it'll give them a way to reveal a truth to
someone else. You know. For this book, the thing I
really wanted was for people that treat each other with grace,
because I think our national discourse lacks that. It lacks empathy,
(20:48):
it lacks grace, It lacks us believing each other when
we say things right. And the thing is, I have
made mistakes with friends, artst in my culture before and
outside of my religion. Right. I have like said the
wrong thing, done the wrong thing. And the thing that's
always saved me is that they know that I love
them and I just got it wrong, and we can
talk about it and they're like, Nikki, that's dumb, and
(21:09):
they'll say it, and then I'll be like, oh, you're right,
I'm sorry, and then we'll move on and similar the
same things have happened to me, right, and I've treated
them with grace and go, that is the dumbest thing
I've ever heard. Here is the truth, and then we'll
move on. But I don't think that we do that anymore, right, Like,
I don't think. I think if someone says this thing
happened to me and this hurt and you know, this
(21:31):
racist thing happened, to believe them and really listen and
hear what that means and try to empathize, and you know,
no more whispering about things like that. We have to
really just talk. And most people are good, most people, right,
they're obviously so terrible people in the world, but most
people will do the right thing if they know what
the right thing is. And we just have to talk
(21:51):
to each other. It's like, the only way things change
is that way, Like you and me in conversation, really
listening to each other is the way things change. Right.
Otherwise it's just we're just in our camps, not going anywhere.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Yeah. I think that fiction writing provides us with a
tool to be able to navigate real life and give
us kind of a touchstone to imagine something different than
where we are. That reality can be really dark, can
suck the air out of the room and make us
believe that what is will always be, And fiction allows
(22:24):
us the space to dream, even if that dream is
a is a nightmare or a thriller.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
It gets us.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
Out of out right, yeah, it gets us out of
our skin and out of our mind and someplace else.
And I think that that is often what is needed
for change and what is at the core of any revolution.
So I appreciate you so much for your work, for
this book, which folks, is out now, one of our kind,
(22:51):
and the link will be in this show notes. Nikola,
thank you so much for this conversation and for your work.
That is it for me today, dear friends on Woke
a f as always Power to the people and to
all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.
Good morning, peeps, and welcome to wok F Daily with
me your girl, Daniel Moody, recording from the home Bunker. Folks,
let's take a break from oh I don't know, the
serious amount of crazy that has been circulating around since
the quote unquote assassination attempt of Donald Trump for a
(00:33):
second time in two months, the influx of violence into Springfield,
Ohio because of Donald Trump and JD Vance's stochastic terrorism,
the just overwhelming amount of fuckery that is Trump and
Laura Lumer and whatever the hell is happening over there.
And friends, for those of you who have yet to
(00:54):
venture over to my YouTube channel, I am have done
a couple of videos on that, so do head over.
You can go into the YouTube search button and put
in Danielle Moody channel and woila, there I will be
Also it is Danielle Moody Underscore the same on TikTok,
(01:15):
so absolutely do head over there where I'm creating new,
fresh videos on a daily basis. But we need a break.
I mean I know that I need a break. So
I am very excited to bring you a fantastic interview
that I did with author Nikola Yun, who wrote the
(01:36):
book Our Kind of People. It is a novel. It
is a thriller. As is written on the inside of
the book, it is like get Out the movie get
Out meets Stepford Wives. It is set in a suburb
(01:56):
of Los Angeles. A black utopian neighborhood is created and
the lead character, Jasmine, and her husband and their young son,
move into this black utopia and things kind of go
left from the beginning. The book is fantastic. The conversation
(02:18):
on race, on racism, on what it means to create safety,
and the lengths that people will go to in order
to create safety. It was such a fantastic conversation the book.
I turned every single page faster than the next. For
the last eighty pages of the book, I could not
(02:40):
put it down until it was finished. I highly highly
recommend it. So check out my interview with Nikola Yune. Folks.
I am so excited to welcome to WOKF Daily New
York Times bestselling author Nikola Yun, whose new book, latest book,
(03:05):
One of Our Kind, is your first adult novel. And
when you open up, it says get Out meets the
Stepford Wives. Yeah, And I'm like, oh, you sold me
because two iconic movies about what the character thought something
(03:29):
was and what it actually turns into. And I think
that for me, why those two movies And I want
to ask you why those two movies are kind of
how you ground the description of the book. Why those
two stand out for you. Does it have something to
do with the fact that we often enter into situations
(03:51):
experiences in our lives where we think they're going to
be one thing and then you know, outside of it
being a thriller or a horror, it turns out to
be something else. And is that why you think that
people are so inclined to this kind of art, this
kind of genre.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Thanks for having me on, And that's a great question,
actually get out. I think it's one of the first
sort of social horrors, or certainly one of the first
ones that got the public mindset thinking about a way
you can do horror and something that's like, you know,
sort of consumer friendly and also talk about deep social issues, right.
(04:29):
And so for me that was a really big inspiration
because I really did want to talk about race and
racism in America, but I also wanted people to want
to read the book, right, Like I really wanted people
to stay up all night because they needed to know
what was going to happen and turn those pages, you know,
and then maybe fling the book across the room at
the end. And then after that, I really wanted people
(04:51):
to have, you know, sort of interrogate themselves and call
their friends and just sort of talk about the ending
and why the book ends the way it does. I
don't know why happens in the book in a deep
and meaningful way, right, and also a graceful way where
we actually listen to each other and pay attention to
what the other person is saying and believe people when
they say this hurts or this doesn't hurt, or what
(05:14):
have you. So for me, get Out was a really
big inspiration because it allowed people to do that. And
then the Stepford Wise, I actually hadn't read that book
until I started writing this one, or I read it
a few years ago, and I was listening to this
podcast called You're Wrong About and was talking about the
Steppard Wise and how most people misremember that book because
(05:37):
people think of Stepford Wise as being like a pejorative
that we beat women over the head with, right, like
she's such a Stepford wife, and we sort of make
fun but actually The book is really really feminist because
it's about the men who would do this thing to
their wives, right, who would make them into Stepford wives,
which I hadn't really known. I sort of had an
idea of it, but then I read the book and
(05:58):
I was like, oh, this is fiercely feminist. And so
that happened and I sort of put it into my brain.
And then a few years later, after George Floyd's murder,
like a lot of things merge in my mind, and
Stepford Wise was one of them. Because it's also a thriller,
also talks about important social things and importantly talks about
the ways in which you don't know the world. If
(06:20):
a world is putting you in danger, there's a way
in which that if you're walking into a world that
is often problematic, you never know what situation you're going
to walk into and what that does to a person.
So the main character in One of Our Kind, her
name is Jasmine. She's my most complicated character. I love Jasmine,
but she's also judgmental, and she's kind of a pain
(06:44):
in the butt right like she does. She sees terror
and fear and trouble everywhere, but she has a reason
to see terror and trouble and fear everywhere, and it's
mostly about the world that would make a person like
Jasmine behave the way she does.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
I think that there are a couple of things there
that I want to dig into, and I think that
in reality, I feel like black people, particularly Black women,
are always gasolt into believing that the issues that we
bring to the forefront don't actually exist. That whether it
is in your workplace, in dealing with microaggressions, whether it
(07:20):
is in relationships and seeing all of these red flags
but being told like, no, you're just angry, or no,
it's your trauma, not mine. I think that there is
this idea that any time that black women in particular
bring up an issue to the forefront, whether it's Michelle
Obama saying nearly two decades ago that she was proud
(07:43):
of her country for the first time, right, and being
dragged for articulating something that was very true. This country
is inherently racist, and look at you, your embrace of
my black husband and family, and I'm proud for the
first time, right, I'm not shameful, But being gasoled into
believing that that made her unpatriotic. So how is your
(08:07):
understanding of the perpetual gaslighting that happens in this country,
but particularly for black women. How does that feed into
what could be seen as hysterical or anxiety driven by
your character. But it's like, no, these things are really happening,
(08:30):
Like I'm not making it up.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
I mean, I think that you're tapped into exactly the issue, right.
So I mean in a world where you can turn
on the news one day and see the murder of
a person and see his body left on the street
for just hours, it makes you vigilant, right, It makes
you hyper vigilant in a way that's not healthy actually
for anyone. But how could you not be, How could
(08:54):
you not be at any moment a terrifying and a
horrific thing can happen, Right. I think for Jasmine, she's
so hyper vigil and she has a young son, she
has a black husband, she has a baby on the way,
and she is a public defender. She's steeped in the news,
she's steeped in all the trauma, just all the time, right,
And I think there's a way in which that can
(09:14):
make you just sort of go, oh my god, everything's
a threat. And I think that's where Jasmine is right.
I mean, and sometimes things are a threat and sometimes
they're not, but it's hard to tell the difference when
there's so many horrors. And I think, you know, I
want to really talk about a world. I mean not
just for black women, I mean especially for black people
in this country, but in general. The world is on
(09:37):
fire a lot. Right. You can wake up and turn
on the news and you're like, there's climate change, and
there are several wars and genocides, and if you're a
reasonably good person, you want to fix it and you
don't want to just sort of retreat into your bubble.
But also you cannot possibly fix everything. And I mean
it can make you crazy, right, And you can make
(09:59):
you so see threats when there are no It can
make you mistake when there is a threat that you
should be looking at. I think you know, it turns
you upside down. And I think that's where Jasmine is.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
I want to talk a bit too about liberty, about
the place that you created in the book, this idea
of a black utopia. It's something that I think about often.
I don't know if you have visited Martha's Vineyard and
Oak Bluffs and this historical black town and place where
(10:34):
the affluent have gone to vacation throughout history and time,
and in a lot of places it had been one
of the only places where you get to see black
people on vacation. I know that when I travel there
are sometimes when I may see one or two other families,
but largely we're not seeing ourselves. Talk to us about
(10:57):
the creation of this place of liberty, of this black utopia,
and the why around it for.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
You, So you know, Jasmine moves along with her husband
and her young son to liberty. Right, So it is
a black utopia. It's in the suburbs of Los Angeles.
It's very, very wealthy, and she's hesitant to move because
she is, as I say, a public defender, and she
has a sense of community and wanting to help the
less fortunate and moving to a place where she gets
(11:26):
safety feels wrong to her because there's so many people
who don't have safety. But she does move for safety. Right.
She wants it to be that when her husband and
young son walk down the street and they get stopped
by a cop, that cop is going to be black
and presumably on their side and is not going to
be horrible. Right. She wants to revel in black excellence.
She wants mostly to feel safe, I meaning being a
(11:49):
black woman myself and a mother too. I know that
wanting to have psychic safety and also physical safety for
my kid, right, so like I want my child to
be he is innocent for as long as possible, but
I also wanted to be saved physically right from the
world that is dangerous. And so Jasmine moves to liberty
because everyone's black. What could possibly go wrong? Right when
(12:12):
you are in a community where presumably everyone wants and
cares about the same thing.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Yeah, And it's like I feel it because you brought
up George Floyd and can think about Mike Brown, We
can think about Trayvon Martin being killed inside of a
gated community. You can think about all of these different aspects,
and whenever those horrific events happen, my first thought is like,
I'd like to leave here. I'd like to leave here,
(12:39):
and I'd like to go someplace where I don't have
to worry. And there is this seeming feeling of guilt
that Jasmine has about Like you said here, I am
believing that like I should be here to make a difference,
not just book spa appointments, not just pretend that things
aren't happening. And I wonder when you see in our
(13:02):
society people who don't want to be as tapped in
as a way too maybe for themselves have that psychic
safety that if I am so tapped in on a
regular basis, I may not get out of bed, because
there are multiple genocides that are happening, because there are
kids that are going hungry, that are right down the street,
(13:23):
because there is a possibility that if my loved one
leaves and they get stopped by the police, they're not
going to return. Like, is there this place where we
can both understand and not be judgmental about people who
want to tap out because everything can be so overwhelming.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Yeah, And honestly, that's part of what the book is about.
I mean, it's important for me to say that the
book isn't prescriptive, But the question that you just ask
is the conversation I think that we all need to
be having right Because so Jasmine moves celebrity, and where
Jasmine is hyper vigilant, some of the people in Liberty
are not. Some of the people in Liberty bookspot appointments
(14:05):
all day and turn away from the world entirely. It's
not like they're taking a break or looking out for
their own mammas. They're just completely gone and they find
their own kind of safety in that, right, they find
their own kind of you know, turning away from the world,
a world that's too hard to look at, and is
there some happy medium? Is that a thing that's possible
(14:27):
in a world that's so violent and so dangerous for
black people, you know at certain times? So like, I
don't know, but I know that I want to ask
the question as a part of the book, and I
really want people to start to talk about it. Right.
There are villains in this book, But the villains in
the book are also victims, right, They're also victims of
(14:48):
like an overarching system that's racist, like a system that
puts people into boxes and forces them to make absurd
choices a lot of the times. Right. You Know, there
is a character the book where I think West She's
got to figure it out, and she has a good
way of looking at the world. She loves her blackness,
she loves the black culture. She sees the world for
(15:11):
what it is, and she chooses to hold on to
her joy when she can. But I think it's hard, right,
and I think it's worth talking about what kind of
world we've made.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
I want to ask you too again, We're living in
a really wild time, and we're living at a time where,
in this moment, as you and I are speaking, we're
sixty some odd days away from the most consequential election
of our lifetime. Yep, where for the first time ever
(15:45):
in America's history, a black and Indian woman is at
the top of the Democratic ticket. There are two very
clear pictures that are being painted about this country. One
that is steep in white Christian nationalism and exclusivity, and
(16:06):
one that is imperfect, Yes, incredibly imperfect, but steeped in
the desire to be more inclusive with each generation than
we have. Yeah, and the decision is so weighty for me,
it seems so friggin' obvious, right, like duh, you know,
like pick the one that isn't run by a criminal,
(16:29):
like just you know, duh.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
It's a really obvious decision.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Yes, it's just so obvious. And yet and yet here
we are. When you kind of look at the world,
you have a daughter, when you look at the world
and you think, like, what have we become? Do you
see the possibility. Do you see it as a horror?
(16:53):
Do you see you know, like, is there still like
I don't know. I find this mix of feeling where
I both feel incredibly joyful and excited about the possibility
in this choice and equally friggin terrified about the possibility
of the wrong choice.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
I mean, isn't that why the world is crazy? I mean,
it's interesting to be a human being, the way you
can hold to simultaneously opposite emotions at the same time, right,
And you just have to live with it, right, Like,
my daughter is the best thing on earth, and I
put her on the school bus this morning and she's gone.
My heart is on the bus all day. And I
(17:31):
just have to trust that the world is going to
treat her well and that she will be smart enough
to like, you know, stick her elbows at when she
needs to and be kind and all of those things.
And you know, I have a wonderful husband who I
adore and so and you know who really is the
love of my life, and so I am lucky and joyful.
And also you know, we turn on the news, we
(17:53):
could turn on the news after this podcast and something
new and horrific can have happened, and part of the
tension in the like modern society is learning to try
to live with both of those things and still go
forward and still do good work and still care and
not turn away. But also you can't because if you
revel in it, you only get the one life, right,
(18:15):
and you cannot live if you've steeped in it all
the time, right, Like, there's no way there's no joy
for you to have. And I refuse to see my
joy to like someone else's view of me or the
entire world. And also part of joy is actually trying
to make the world a little bit better, you know.
(18:35):
I mean, you're talking about these two candidates. One is
trash honestly, and the other candidate is flawed, right, But
at least there's one candidate that we can push towards
more progressive policies and more and doing the right thing
right and so but that it means that we all
have to be engaged and push and try. It means
we have to believe in a flawed world, right, even
(18:58):
the times when it's really really bad. You know, maybe
stay in bed that day and then get up the
next day and try again.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
I don't know if you watched the Democratic National Convention,
but when Michelle Obama offered I mean so much, but
one of the lines that stuck with me the most
was this Goldilock sensibility, this idea that everything has to
be just right in order for us to get things done.
And I, you know, and I think about that. I
(19:27):
think about the ways in which fiction and fairy tales
have kind of in a lot of ways guided our
view of the world. And I want to ask you this, like,
what do you see as the role of fiction at
a time when the world is so dark?
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Yeah, that is a great question, you know. As the
fiction writer, I will say that when I first wrote
the first draft of this book, I wrote it from
a place of despair and anger. I was so and
I'm not in general angry or sparing person and fairly optimistic.
I'm always smiling or always joking, but you know, the
(20:06):
world had gotten to be a lot and so that
very first draft was there was no hope in it.
There was no like sort of air in it. But
the role of a fiction writer is to tell the
truth right, the truth as you see it, and that's it.
That's really just the job. And then hopefully people will
come to it with grace and empathy and be in
(20:27):
dialogue with the work, and hopefully it'll mean something to them.
It maybe will reveal a truth about themselves, or maybe
it'll give them a way to reveal a truth to
someone else. You know. For this book, the thing I
really wanted was for people that treat each other with grace,
because I think our national discourse lacks that. It lacks empathy,
(20:48):
it lacks grace, It lacks us believing each other when
we say things right. And the thing is, I have
made mistakes with friends, artst in my culture before and
outside of my religion. Right. I have like said the
wrong thing, done the wrong thing. And the thing that's
always saved me is that they know that I love
them and I just got it wrong, and we can
talk about it and they're like, Nikki, that's dumb, and
(21:09):
they'll say it, and then I'll be like, oh, you're right,
I'm sorry, and then we'll move on and similar the
same things have happened to me, right, and I've treated
them with grace and go, that is the dumbest thing
I've ever heard. Here is the truth, and then we'll
move on. But I don't think that we do that anymore, right, Like,
I don't think. I think if someone says this thing
happened to me and this hurt and you know, this
(21:31):
racist thing happened, to believe them and really listen and
hear what that means and try to empathize, and you know,
no more whispering about things like that. We have to
really just talk. And most people are good, most people, right,
they're obviously so terrible people in the world, but most
people will do the right thing if they know what
the right thing is. And we just have to talk
(21:51):
to each other. It's like, the only way things change
is that way, Like you and me in conversation, really
listening to each other is the way things change. Right.
Otherwise it's just we're just in our camps, not going anywhere.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Yeah. I think that fiction writing provides us with a
tool to be able to navigate real life and give
us kind of a touchstone to imagine something different than
where we are. That reality can be really dark, can
suck the air out of the room and make us
believe that what is will always be, And fiction allows
(22:24):
us the space to dream, even if that dream is
a is a nightmare or a thriller.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
It gets us.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
Out of out right, yeah, it gets us out of
our skin and out of our mind and someplace else.
And I think that that is often what is needed
for change and what is at the core of any revolution.
So I appreciate you so much for your work, for
this book, which folks, is out now, one of our kind,
(22:51):
and the link will be in this show notes. Nikola,
thank you so much for this conversation and for your work.
That is it for me today, dear friends on Woke
a f as always Power to the people and to
all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.
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