May 17, 2022 • 37 mins
Glory speaks with author Tayari Jones about her award-winning novel An American Marriage. In this episode, the women talk about the healing power of Tayari’s work, her long writing process, and the value of sisterhood in her life. Glory also talks about a heartfelt memento she received from the author that she keeps close by on her own writing desk.
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Speaker 1 (00:16):
Pushkin. Before we get started, let's talk about Pushkin Plus.
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(00:38):
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up for Pushkin Plus on the show page in Apple
Podcasts or at pushkin dot com. Well life is funny.
(01:07):
I feel like if your story isn't a little bit funny,
it isn't true to life. Born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia,
author Tiari Jones knows how to find and bring out
the humor in her stories, even from the most harrowing
of situations, and her critically acclaimed novel And American Marriage,
Tiari tells the story of a young, married couple whose
(01:30):
relationship it's ripped apart when the husband is wrongfully sent
to prison. Incarceration is part of the story, but it's
not the whole story. It's about people going after their
greatest desires. We witness the messiness of their complicated courtships.
Tiari uses her words to teach people how to see
(01:52):
each other. One thing I want is to write a
novel where I'm not telling people how they should act,
but instead exploring the different ways that people behave the
different implications, and make us challenge our own beliefs. Welcome
(02:13):
to a well read black Girl, the literary kickback you
didn't even know you needed. I'm your host, glor Adam,
and this week I'm speaking of Tari Jones about the
healing power of her work, her long writing process, and
the value of sisterhood in her life. Hear, Hey, lady,
(02:41):
it's so good to see you. It's so good to
see you as well. Thank you for doing this. Thank
you for just always being there for me. You know,
the honor and the pleasure is mine. I would love
for listeners to hear, just like your experience, who you
were before you even said I'm going to be a writer,
Just like how reading showed up in your childhood, and
(03:02):
how books made a difference as a young person. Well,
when I was a little girl, I loved to read.
There's this thing called the Georgia book List. It was
a summer list, and children got prizes and things for
having read books on the list, and so it combined
two of my things as a child. I love to read,
and I also wanted to be the best, and I
(03:23):
read all those books, and I had a lot of
encouragement for my teachers. But I do think that one
of the pleasures of being a girl is that you
are allowed to get lost in a book, because that's
considered a girly task and people didn't really process it
as an intellectual task. But it was just like you
were a nice girl. I often say, when you're a teenager,
(03:44):
people have two kinds of girls, girls who are nice
and girls who are not nice, and reading was a
sign of niceness. And it wasn't until I got to
Spellman where the question for my life as a teenager
was not are you nice or are you fast? Someone
said to me was a writer. She was my teacher,
or Pearl Clegg. Pearl said to me, what are you
(04:04):
thinking about? And I got ready to tell her and
she says, no, don't tell me, write it down. And
with that I've gained my first mentor and also my
first audience. And I've always wanted to do for someone
else what Pearl did for me. She took me seriously.
So I then took myself seriously and I changed me.
(04:24):
And Pearl and I are still very close. I saw
her last week. We get together once a month and
we talk and she often says she's not my mentor anymore,
that we're friends. But I say, don't be kicking me
out the nest. I demand to stay in the nest.
And she says, you are nobody's baby bird. But it
just means a lot to me that I had that.
I saw a black woman who was a writer, and
(04:46):
she extended her hand to me and thought I could
be a writer too. It's so amazing to see how
you and Miss Pearl our sister writers, and to be
a former student of hers and now to evolve to
a collaborator, an intense friendship that's grown over the years.
How does that feel to witness that friendship and mentorship evolve. Well,
(05:09):
it's been a long time. When I met her, I
was sixteen years old and she was an adjunct professor.
She wasn't this famous playwright and novelist that she is now.
She was an adjunct professor and she did all this
avant garde stuff. She had this thing called Live at
Club Zebra. It was like speak easy, you know, people
were playing saxophones, people were doing things like interpretive dances,
(05:30):
naked like all kinds of things were happening. And she
read from a piece called mad at Miles, which was
her asking, as black people who love black people, liberation minded,
how do we address violent misogyny in our own community?
Just think? This was what nineteen eighty nine ish, So
look how far was before Cosby, before r Kelly. She
(05:53):
was asking these questions. And she got up there and
she read and it was quiet. It was I have
to say, it was not met with a standing ovation.
It was contentious, but she had made an artistic environment
where you didn't have to play to the crowd. You
just had to engage the crowd and see where that
conversation would take you. I was so ampressed. You should
(06:13):
have seen me, little one me. You should have seen
me and drink at my Shirley Temple. But over the
years she always engaged me, asked me what do I
think about this or that? So in our relationship, even
though like she was the big sister and I'm the
baby sister, she engaged me and took me seriously, so
that as we became friends more than a mentor protege.
(06:37):
I was accustomed to being heard by her. She taught
me that what you want is to tell the truth,
and when you tell the truth, you won't always be
rewarded right away, but the truth itself is its own reward.
It's so incredible And even when you talk about that piece,
Mad at Miles is one of my favorite books by her, because,
as you said, she is addressing Miles Davis directly. He
(06:59):
was like the most popular man in music, and she
was like, but wait, in your memoir, you said you
beat Cecily Tyson, Like, we're gonna talk about that and
address it head on. I love that you brought that
out because that was one of my favorite books by her.
And she's giving you the tools to say, like, you
can tell your own truth and I'm going to listen
to you, and it's going to be reciprocal. It means
so much, And I've seen you do that publicly and
(07:20):
privately for other young people that are trying to figure
out the industry and make their own way. What advice
do you give to young writers about longevity and building
the foundation of their career. I feel like if you
tell the story you feel most needs to be written,
you will never feel like you've wasted your time. Sometimes
people say to me, oh, how do you feel that
(07:41):
it was your fourth novel that made you a bestseller?
It was your fourth, how do you feel about those
other three? And I'd say, I still love those first
three novels as much as I love them when I
wrote them, because I felt they were the truth that
needed to be told. And therefore I never felt frustrated
by my career because I never felt frustrated by my work.
(08:02):
And I also urge young writers to remember who you're
healing with this work. If that book you wrote healed somebody,
you're good. This is my favorite story, my book, Silver Sparrow,
which is about a man who has a secret family.
I went to Milwaukee and a woman bought eight copies
of the book, eight or nine copies, which is what
(08:22):
people do in book club. Sometimes they send a representative
to get the book signed for everybody. I didn't think
much about it, and then I came back on my
book tour and the woman was there and she gave
me a gift, and she said to me, don't open
this until you get back to your hotel. And I said, okay.
I thanked her for it, and when I opened it,
it was a photograph of about seven or eight people.
They were in their fifties I suppose, and they were
(08:44):
all holding the book smiling. I thought they were a
book club. But when I read the note that came
with it, she explained that when her father died, they
found out that he had another family and all these
other kids, and so she had this idea that they
could read the book together so they could talk about
their experience without having to talk about their experience, that
the book was a way in for them, and it
healed this family. And I felt like, oh, that was
(09:08):
why I was called to write this book. I wrote
this book for y'all, and I felt completely satisfied with
the work I've done and the way it was received.
So Silver Sparrow was a book that didn't even get
reviewed by the New York Times. It wasn't in the
running for major awards or whatever. But that woman and
her siblings, that was my prize. And I think that's
(09:29):
what Pearl taught me most is remember why you do
what you do, Remember how you felt when a book
touched you. You never get touched by a book and
flip it over on the back to say, did this
book went a prize? It never occurred to you. What
occurred to you was what you felt, and that's the gift.
(09:50):
You are such a skillful writer, and I know people
want to hear about how you start, Like do you
map out your writing? Are you an outline person? What
does your research look like? What are the dews and
dones of your writing process? Okay, I don't outline anything
because for me, if I know where the story is going,
(10:10):
and you can feel me aiming for it, because I'll
be trying to set it up. But when I don't
know where it's going, I'm writing to explore and I'm
more interested. If I knew the end of a book,
it would spoil it for me the way it spoils
it for you as a reader, if someone were to
tell you the end. Yeah. And also, I write in
search of the answer to a question. Now, this is
not the most efficient way to write a book, from
(10:31):
what I understand. Those outliners they can knock that book
out in nine months, ten months, But for me, it's
a growth process, and growth takes time, and I just
have to live with the time. It takes I read
everything aloud to hear how it sounds. If I cannot
read a paragraph out loud, I know that it's clunky.
(10:52):
If I'm chewing up the words, then I know I've
written too many words. Or if I get bored, you
get bored reading your own work out loud, that means
you got too much description. So some one of these
characters need to get in here and do something right.
But all that comes later. I just think that I
just try to learn the most I can as I go,
and then I have to go back because when I
start the book, the characters are very wooden, because it's
(11:12):
just like they're people I just met. I don't know
these people. I'm getting to know them. But then once
I've written a hundred pages and I know them better,
I can come back to what I wrote and embroider
it and make it more texture and more debts simply
because I know more right right, and you've been able
to sit with it in a different way. But it
takes a long time. I mean, this is the I
take the long way, but it works for me. So
(11:34):
I wanted to know from writing your first book, Leaving
Atlanta to your latest release in American marriage in that
time frame. What is like the one thing that stands
out about how your writing has changed, how you have
changed as a person, Because I know the essence of
you is always there, but has there been something that
really feels like, okay, like this is my mark, this
(11:56):
is what I always include in every novel, or this
is just like my signature? What is the tr signature? Well,
other people notice things that I never noticed, Like someone
wrote me and said, do you like to eat salmon croquettes?
And I like salmon crow, It's just fine. But apparently
somebody in every book is eating salmon croquettes. I don't
(12:16):
know who knew what's going on in my subconscious I
do not know. Well, obviously, all the novels are set
in Atlanta, and that's a signature for me, and it's
an easily identifiable signature. But I think an emotional signature
is that I have two sisters who are older than me,
and we weren't raised together because we have different mothers,
(12:37):
and I've longed for them all my life. And so
someone in every book has that situation, whether it be
a major character or a side character. I notice I
keep bringing that bell and it used to bother me,
and I would try not to do it because you know,
you think I don't want to be predictable. I don't
want people to be able to predict but I let
it go. As a matter of fact. I'm working on
something now and it's happening again, and that's just how
(12:59):
it is. We write toward our obsessions and the key though,
I think in writing, even though you have an obsession,
all your books should be different. Even if when you
point out that note or that bell you keep ringing,
it should be a surprise to a reader, or reader
should say, oh my goodness, you're right, because you're not
writing the same book. It's almost like if you have
a favorite color. It's not like you're wearing the same
(13:21):
dress over again, but you like yellow, so you might
have a yellow shoe, a yellow belt, yellow nail polish,
but you still look different every time. Yes, yes, And
I would say that sisterhood is such a prominent theme
in all your books, but they're explored in so many
different ways. When I think of, you know, leaving in
land sets or silver sparrow, just like there is this theme.
(13:42):
When I think of the word sister, I do think
of it as the sibling relationship, but just much deeper,
like what it means to be in connection and in
love with another woman and feel held by them, like
really feels like embraced and held by them. And you
articulate that and illustrate that in so many of your books.
So how would you defy sisterhood? And what does that mean?
(14:04):
How is sisterhood showed up in your life again and again?
You give the perfect example of Pearl, but other other
examples sisterhood that you feel really tied to. Women have
taken such good care of me all my life, you know.
It's probably was most intense when I went to Spellman College,
and I didn't even want to go to Spellman. I
think about college, and I think, how I can't even
(14:27):
imagine you anywhere else but Spellman me either, But you
think about colleges, that's a decision made by teenagers. Teenagers.
Teenagers have things based on all kinds of random factors.
I went to Spellman because one of my mom's friends
taught at Spellman and she had rasped me into applying it.
I just applied so she would get off my back.
(14:48):
And I now know it. This real complicated situation between
her and my mother getting me to go there without
forcing me to go there, because if I was forced,
I wouldn't go. But at Spellman, I do feel very
grateful that my sisterhood, like I have these women literally
all over the world who have my back. When you
take care of each other and you prioritize that other person,
(15:09):
like when you show up and you do what needs
to be done to help that other person kind of
make it over a bridge. But also sisterhood is also
also when you're not in crisis, when you just want
to want to laugh at what you think is funny.
It's an incredible bond to think the same thing is funny.
It makes you feel like you share a mind. I
do think we think about relationships and how people come
(15:31):
through when you're in trouble, and don't get me wrong,
that's huge. But also sharing in your joy I think
that's important too. After the break, tr and I dig
deeper into her experience writing an American marriage and talk
about her love of letters. Hi, I'm tr Jalines, and
(15:51):
you are listening to well read black girl. I'm Gloria
Adam and you're listening to a well read black girl.
I'm joining the Day by New York Times bestselling author
(16:13):
Siri Jones. Tr was the very first keynote speaker at
the inaugural Well Read Black Girl Festival in Brooklyn, New
York in twenty fifteen, and we're talking to her about
her twenty eighteen novel, An American Marriage. We's talk about
American Marriage. Okay, for people who haven't read it, let
me let me just recap. An American Marriage is the
(16:34):
story of a young couple separated by wrongful conviction. The
wife as an artist, her career is on the up.
Her husband is a kind of young executive. His career
was just starting. You know. They're about eight or nine
years out of college. And right after they get married,
he's arrested, like a year after they get married, he's
arrested for a crime he didn't commit in another state.
No less, So it's about their relationship across the miles,
(16:59):
across the experience, and just over time. And I didn't
know where the story was going. I knew where the
story was not going when I wrote it. I did
not want to update. If Bill Street could talk, I
did not want to make one woman's brave fight to
free her man or like let's celebrate back women by
the extent to which they can suffer and sacrifice. That
(17:21):
to me is one already told too, not terribly interesting,
and three not reflective of the way the real people
live their lives. And one thing I want is to
write a novel where I'm not telling people how they
should act, but instead exploring the different ways that people
behave the different implications, and make us challenge our own beliefs.
So she hangs in there for a pretty good amount
(17:43):
of time, but it's just a lot. It's a lot,
and she has her own dreams, and the question of
do black women have the right to dreams? Like can
you only have dreams if your husband's not in trouble?
And in that case, black women kind of would never
be able to dream because in our community somebody's always
in trouble. But I didn't know the answer to it.
And the thing that surprised me probably the most was
(18:06):
how conflicted I was about it, because I went in
fully believing black women to have dreams. After all, I
have a dream, I enjoyed my dream. Why would I
deprive my fictional character of dreams? But it was as
hard for me to write her as it was for
her to live her life and make her decisions. So
some of the same conflicts and same societal pressure that
(18:28):
the character was experiencing based on her decisions, I was
experiencing the same pressure about writing her decisions. Isn't that weird?
Like I remember I was at a party in this
guy he asked me, you know what are you working on?
And I told him writing about this woman her husband's
wrongfully in prison. And he said, oh, you're going to
write about holding him down. I was like, oh, I'm
(18:50):
really writing about really complex things that dada, And he said,
does she hold him down? I said, well, she does
find love somewhere else. This man took his little tiny
reception plate and his little reception glasses wine and walked
away from me like he didn't even like the idea
that I was thinking about it, Like I do not
(19:12):
have a husband in prison, so I did not find
new love while my husband is in prison. These are
imaginary people just engaging. It caused him to walk away
from me, and that surprised me. How passionate and angry
some people were at this book, And that was my
first time experiencing that with readers. They get mad at me,
(19:33):
But then other people were really supportive, so it all
worked out. But it was a lot well that brings
me to the other side of it, like, how was
it crafting the male characters in American marriage? Was it
a deliberate choice to make that voice feel authentic? And
how you know the presence of the fathers involved? Because
there's two sides of it, you can see the story
(19:55):
as a story of masculinity as well. I will say
my first time I wrote it through, I wrote it
all through from the woman's point of view. Only I
liked it. I dug it, and nobody else dug it.
Everyone kept saying, well, what about her husband? And I
got defensive because I said, I know a lot of
male writers, and nobody ever tells them they need to
rewrite their story from the point of view of the wife. Ever.
(20:15):
But here's an important thing to know about writing. You
can take advice. Like let's say you're a painter. If
someone doesn't like your painter and you revise your painting,
you can never have your original back because you've changed
the painting forever. Writing is not like that. If you
change the writing and you don't like what you've done,
you can always go back to earlier draft. So the
(20:37):
only thing you risk when you make changes is your
ego to say that maybe someone else was right. So
I rewrote the story. I wrote the whole thing from
Roy's perspective, and it didn't take long at all. And
I was wondering why I was able to do it
so quickly. And I was able to do it so
quickly because I think that man's story is a story.
We know that man is in prison. What does he
(20:57):
want to get out of prison? What else does he
want his wife back? So his motives and needs were
much more straightforward than hers, because his situation was so dire.
But I did have fun getting his voice an idiom together.
I like to think that I am now fluent and
dud I speak dud I left that. Even though American
(21:21):
marriage is also just the challenging subject, I feel like
you inject a lot of humor into it as well.
And even listening to you, you're funny. You're a very
funny person, and how were you able to balance that? Well?
Life is funny. I feel like if your story isn't
a little bit funny, it isn't true to life. And
I also think it's very important that Black people laugh
(21:42):
because they think it's funny. I disagree that black people
laugh to keep from crying, because that implies that we're
always almost crying. Sometimes things are just some things are
just funny, and I don't hold that back. I had
to learn, though, I had to learn to be okay
with humor, and also to focus so closely on relationships,
particularly as a woman writer. There is a sense that
(22:03):
women writers write about feelings and that our work isn't
as serious that and some people in their feedback on
an American Marria, they wanted less relationships, more racism. But
I feel that that's not my job as a writer.
My job as a writer is to tell people's stories,
not to shine a light on racism, only because think
(22:24):
about your real life. In your real life, you focus
on your relationships. When you think about what you're going
to do today and how you're feeling today, it's about
the other people in your life. You do not sit
around all day shining a light on racism. Right because
racism is so ubiquitous, you don't have to look for it.
It's gonna show up. You don't have to go find
it for your story. But when the draft is done,
(22:45):
take some of the humor out. It can get too
funny because when you write, you lean on the thing
you do well. Whenever the draft has a lot of
whatever your superpower is, it's because you're having trouble with
that section and you're using your superpower to get you through.
And that's actually a warning sign to you to visit
that section more closely and figure out why. It's just
(23:07):
like a real life you know how funny people when
things get really see and they don't know how to
what to say or what to do, Instead of having
an authentic interaction with you, they'll make a joke. You
do that on the page too, But the good news
is about the page, you can revise it and you
don't have to go out in the world with that
joke where there didn't need to be a joke. Yeah,
it's like your coping mechanism. Yeah, and everyone has them
(23:29):
in writing. I tell my students everyone has to like
the people who are really good at dialogue, they'll over
dialogue at a hard partner story because that's what they do.
I would also love to talk about the format, just
like the structure of the letters, how you decided upon that,
because I feel like that is just one of the
most effective ways just to convey the motion of the characters.
It's so beautifully done. Well, I love letters, but you
(23:49):
know the thing is, people don't write letters anymore. As
a person that writes a lot of letters, and I
probably get back one letter for every five I write.
I got a couple of regular penpals who write me,
but like people don't write back, and I don't like
people to feel there in letter debt. I tell people
that all the time you are not in debt, you
don't have to write me back. You can call me,
(24:09):
you can email me. Just because I'm into letters doesn't
mean you have to be into letters. What keeps you
writing when you know the response is unlikely? I just
enjoy doing it, Okay, Like back to the book, A
novel about prison is the only place where you could
realistically have exchange of letters. Because people in prison, letters
mean a lot to them for three reasons. Right, they
(24:31):
want the information you're sharing in the letter. They want
to know that you thought about them to send the letters,
so they appreciate it as a gesture. And thirdly, the
letter itself is a souvenir. They can carry it around
with them is a tangible reminder of the relationship. Well
for me as a writer of the letter, it works
those three ways for me. But I enjoy sharing whatever
(24:52):
information I'm sharing. I want the person to know I'm
thinking of them. And I appreciate the physicality of the
letter that I'm sending, like I. You know, I like
to have a good looking envelope. I'm serious about my stamps.
I'm down with stickers now. Like I like to send
the letter as a gift, a physical gift to a friend.
(25:13):
I have this letter that I keep on my vision
board in my office. That's from you. I'm going to
read it to you. Do you mind, Okay, Dear Glory,
Saturday was magical. Thank you for all of your love
work that made this possible. So many sisters in the
(25:33):
room had never experienced such a critical mass of black women.
I once heard an interview with an astronaut. He was explaining,
or trying to explain the experience of zero gravity. He
finally gave up because we bear the weight of gravity
from birth. People who have never been to space can't
even imagine weightlessness. Until Saturday, so many black women had
(25:57):
never been in a space where they did not struggle
with racism and sexism. You offered us eight hours of weightlessness.
Such a gift, glory. It was a beautiful thing to behold,
Love Tiari, and I promise you, like I keep this
in my office, I keep it next to me all
the time. And I think of you so much because
you're belief in me, and just like your encouragement, like
(26:21):
it's so simple sometimes just but just so sweet and real,
like talking to you, being your friend has made such
a difference in my life, and I'm really grateful for you.
I'm really just like your joy, your humor, just like
everything you do for black women, whether you're in person
holding their hand or you're writing a book for them,
it changes people. And I know it's changed my life
in such a powerful way. So thank you. Thank you
(26:43):
for just doing that for us every day. Well, I
just want to say to you, I want to thank
you because the women who are like my age, we
did what we could do and we're still doing our thing.
But it is so inspiring to see well Read Black Girl,
like a young black woman taking the lead, taking the
(27:04):
torch and making it bigger. When we had that first
Well Read Black Girl conference and all those black women
and from just kind of different walks of life. Everyone
left being so moved, so inspired, and so loving. There
was not a discouraging word to be heard anywhere. It
was truly weightlessness. And I went to Spellman. So I
(27:28):
have experienced that black female environment before, but even I
had not experienced it in so long, and I had
not experienced it with an eye towards the future. So
thank you, Glory for the future. I'm gonna write you
a letter. I'll be waiting on it. It's time for
(27:52):
a rapid fire. Okay, okay, what is your go to
snack when writing? Grapes? Green and purple green. I like
green grapes too. Name a book on your nightstand. It's
called the Right to Sex? What's that about? Okay? Let
me stop. Let's a feminist man of Festo. It's really interesting.
It's very challenging. I recommend it so far. Okay. I
(28:15):
have a waffle house. They're different. I mean, I hop
has better food, but the waffle house is across the street.
Waffle house, I mean it's across the street. Okay, Okay,
I'm gonna say I hop even though I'm from Georgia.
I'm gonna get bold and say I hop for sure.
I hop. Oh, this is the easy question. So typewriters
or computers, and why typewriters all day? Typewriters all day?
(28:39):
I like typewriters. I like making all that racket For
one thing, you feel like you're getting something done. Secondly,
when I use the computer, I type too fast and
I don't know what I've written. It's like when you
eat so fast the plate is empty, so clearly you
ate it, but you don't remember eating it. You don't
remember the flavors. Also, with the computer, I can get
upset with myself and press a couple of keys and
delete a day's work. With the typewriter, I can dramatically
(29:02):
pull the paper out, ball it up, throw it away,
and then come back and smooth it out and still
have it. I love that. It's more of the experience
of it. I love that. Okay, so I need to
I'm gonna go into your playlist. What is your life's
theme song? Ain't no stopping Us Now? Yes, when I
(29:23):
was writing my first book, I would play it all
the time, be like, yeah, we're on the move. That's
really really got the group. Yes, thank you so much, Tri,
Thank you for just giving us so much and being
my friend and mentor. I love you, I love you
(29:44):
more and thank you for having me, and I can't
wait to see what you do next. Tr Jones is
a joy to speak with. I couldn't ask for a
better confidant. Before I knew her personally, her words offered
me mentorship. They taught me how to be a better
friend and a companion. Her books explore what it means
(30:05):
to be a daughter of Atlanta, the painful, joyous path
to adulthood as a young Black woman. An American Marriage
reminds me that my gender influences the way I moved
through this world. Black women are often held to an
unfair standard of femininity. Tri offers us a fuller version
of ourselves. An American Marriage by tr Jones is out now.
(30:30):
After the break, we have a preview from another favorite
podcast of mine, WB Easy's nerd At podcast. We're ending
this episode with a special excerpt from our friends at
(30:52):
wb eaz's nerd At podcast. It's a show that helps
you unwind for the weekend with fun and interesting conversations
and recommendations. Nerdett also has a monthly book club. Last year,
one of their featured books was the short story collection
The Office of Historical Corrections by Daniel Evans, an awesome book.
(31:13):
Here's nerd At host Gretta Johnson talking to Evans. I
am one of those people who usually doesn't really connect
with short stories. I think often because if I don't
really enjoy it, I'm sort of like, why did I
bother reading this? And if I did really like it,
I'm like, why isn't this just a goddamn novel? But
(31:34):
there was something about like the bite sized bits that
you managed to put together in this book that it
was just like I was just so happy to be
on the ride the entire time. And I don't know
how you did it. I don't know if you can
tell me how you did it, but I just want
to say it's amazing. Well, I'm glad to be converting
people to the short story form. I really do. I
(31:57):
really do love short stories. I mean a probably I
love a collection because I think often when you're writing,
you're writing about something that you don't have a clear
answer on. A collection allow you to ask the same
question over and over again and to answer it different
ways and kind of look at it from different angles,
and so I think you can see a writer it's
kind of thinking about something and not necessarily figuring it out.
(32:20):
But I like that thinking. I like that conversational space,
and I like that range emotion. But an individual short
story I also think works. It just has this density.
You know, my favorite, not favorite altogether maybe, but the
people who I sort of admire in the form and
think of his models in the form, or Alice Monroe
and Edward P. Jones, who are just magicians with time,
(32:40):
Like sometimes you don't even know how they did it,
but there's sometimes just the right amount of the future
or just the right amount of the past that the
story feels like like being a live fields, right. It
feels like in any given moment, something intense is happening
that's capturing your intention, your attention, But there's also all
of this history to it that the characters are carrying
(33:04):
into the moment and these slight flashes of what it's
all going to mean. And I think when it comes
together really well, I like you're in all time at once,
and that is when a story feels most effective to me,
because it kind of captures that sensation of all the
things happening, but it's all in like one paragraph. Oh
(33:25):
my god, that's such a beautiful way of putting that.
I completely agree. And I don't know. I mean, so
much of life is these like flitting moments where you're
going through and having all of these different experiences in
any given day, and so to experience that with a
collection can be such a delight too. Yeah. Absolutely. I
think that my first book was largely coming of age stories,
(33:47):
and so a lot of them follow a pretty classic
narrative arc, right, where the emotional event of the story
and the sort of actual event or narrative enter plot
event are the same thing. Right. Something is somebody's making
a decision or something's happening, and that's what people are
reacting to. And I think these stories are a little
bit different, not all of them, but a lot of them,
in that sometimes it's sort of the active plot really
(34:09):
is about the day to day choices being made to
evade or avoid the thing that actually matters, and so
the moment in the story that's actually where the emotional
plot comes to the surface is when someone sort of
can't run from the thing that matters anymore. It's a
kind of different narrative shape, but I had fun with it,
and I think maybe amplifies that sort of sense of
(34:31):
there is a surface plot that sometimes just does feel
like somebody kind of going through their day to day
and there's something underneath it, and it sort of comes
closer and closer to the surface as you get closer
and closer to the end of the story. That was
Daniel Evans tagging sa Gretta Johnson on wb easy's nerd
At podcast. You can find that conversation and many many
(34:52):
more wherever you find podcasts. In our final episode of
this season, I'll be joined by the one and only
Viola Davis discuss her incredible career and of course her
new memoir Finding Me. The episode is out right now,
so keep listening well read. Black Girl is a production
(35:23):
of Pushkin Industries. It is written and hosted by me
Glory Dam and produced by cher Vincent and Brittany Brown.
Our associate editor is Keishall Williams. Our engineer is Amanda
ka Wang, and our showrunner is Sasha Matthias. Our executive
producers are Mia Lobell and Leet Hall Molad at Pushkin
(35:48):
Thanks to Heather Fane, Carly Migliori, Jason Gambrau, Julia Barton,
Jen Gowera, John Schnars, and Jacob Wiseberg. You can find
me on Twitter and Instagram at Well read black Girl.
You can find Pushkin and all social media platforms at
pushkin Pods, and you can sign up for our newsletter
(36:08):
at pushkin dot Fm. If you have a question, a recommendation,
or you just want to say hi, email us at
WRBG at pushkin dot fm. If you love this show
and others from Pushkin industry, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus.
Pushgn Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content
(36:29):
and uninterrupted listening for four ninety nine a month. Look
for Pushkin Plus on Apple podcast subscriptions, and if you're
already a subscriber, make sure to check out my exclusive
Bookmark series. You'll hear extended interviews with book club members,
bookstore owners, and more. And do you get to hear
What's on my mind, What's on my radar, and of
(36:51):
course what's on my reading list each week. To find
more Pushkin podcasts, listen on iHeartRadio, app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you like to listen.
Pushkin. Before we get started, let's talk about Pushkin Plus.
Pushkin Plus is a subscription podcast program available on Apple Podcasts.
Members will get access to exclusive bonus content like my
(00:38):
weekly bookmarks, where I talk about how I got a
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You'll get uninterrupted listening to many of your favorite podcasts
like Revisionist History, Pushtionary Tales, and The Happiness Lab. Sign
up for Pushkin Plus on the show page in Apple
Podcasts or at pushkin dot com. Well life is funny.
(01:07):
I feel like if your story isn't a little bit funny,
it isn't true to life. Born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia,
author Tiari Jones knows how to find and bring out
the humor in her stories, even from the most harrowing
of situations, and her critically acclaimed novel And American Marriage,
Tiari tells the story of a young, married couple whose
(01:30):
relationship it's ripped apart when the husband is wrongfully sent
to prison. Incarceration is part of the story, but it's
not the whole story. It's about people going after their
greatest desires. We witness the messiness of their complicated courtships.
Tiari uses her words to teach people how to see
(01:52):
each other. One thing I want is to write a
novel where I'm not telling people how they should act,
but instead exploring the different ways that people behave the
different implications, and make us challenge our own beliefs. Welcome
(02:13):
to a well read black Girl, the literary kickback you
didn't even know you needed. I'm your host, glor Adam,
and this week I'm speaking of Tari Jones about the
healing power of her work, her long writing process, and
the value of sisterhood in her life. Hear, Hey, lady,
(02:41):
it's so good to see you. It's so good to
see you as well. Thank you for doing this. Thank
you for just always being there for me. You know,
the honor and the pleasure is mine. I would love
for listeners to hear, just like your experience, who you
were before you even said I'm going to be a writer,
Just like how reading showed up in your childhood, and
(03:02):
how books made a difference as a young person. Well,
when I was a little girl, I loved to read.
There's this thing called the Georgia book List. It was
a summer list, and children got prizes and things for
having read books on the list, and so it combined
two of my things as a child. I love to read,
and I also wanted to be the best, and I
(03:23):
read all those books, and I had a lot of
encouragement for my teachers. But I do think that one
of the pleasures of being a girl is that you
are allowed to get lost in a book, because that's
considered a girly task and people didn't really process it
as an intellectual task. But it was just like you
were a nice girl. I often say, when you're a teenager,
(03:44):
people have two kinds of girls, girls who are nice
and girls who are not nice, and reading was a
sign of niceness. And it wasn't until I got to
Spellman where the question for my life as a teenager
was not are you nice or are you fast? Someone
said to me was a writer. She was my teacher,
or Pearl Clegg. Pearl said to me, what are you
(04:04):
thinking about? And I got ready to tell her and
she says, no, don't tell me, write it down. And
with that I've gained my first mentor and also my
first audience. And I've always wanted to do for someone
else what Pearl did for me. She took me seriously.
So I then took myself seriously and I changed me.
(04:24):
And Pearl and I are still very close. I saw
her last week. We get together once a month and
we talk and she often says she's not my mentor anymore,
that we're friends. But I say, don't be kicking me
out the nest. I demand to stay in the nest.
And she says, you are nobody's baby bird. But it
just means a lot to me that I had that.
I saw a black woman who was a writer, and
(04:46):
she extended her hand to me and thought I could
be a writer too. It's so amazing to see how
you and Miss Pearl our sister writers, and to be
a former student of hers and now to evolve to
a collaborator, an intense friendship that's grown over the years.
How does that feel to witness that friendship and mentorship evolve. Well,
(05:09):
it's been a long time. When I met her, I
was sixteen years old and she was an adjunct professor.
She wasn't this famous playwright and novelist that she is now.
She was an adjunct professor and she did all this
avant garde stuff. She had this thing called Live at
Club Zebra. It was like speak easy, you know, people
were playing saxophones, people were doing things like interpretive dances,
(05:30):
naked like all kinds of things were happening. And she
read from a piece called mad at Miles, which was
her asking, as black people who love black people, liberation minded,
how do we address violent misogyny in our own community?
Just think? This was what nineteen eighty nine ish, So
look how far was before Cosby, before r Kelly. She
(05:53):
was asking these questions. And she got up there and
she read and it was quiet. It was I have
to say, it was not met with a standing ovation.
It was contentious, but she had made an artistic environment
where you didn't have to play to the crowd. You
just had to engage the crowd and see where that
conversation would take you. I was so ampressed. You should
(06:13):
have seen me, little one me. You should have seen
me and drink at my Shirley Temple. But over the
years she always engaged me, asked me what do I
think about this or that? So in our relationship, even
though like she was the big sister and I'm the
baby sister, she engaged me and took me seriously, so
that as we became friends more than a mentor protege.
(06:37):
I was accustomed to being heard by her. She taught
me that what you want is to tell the truth,
and when you tell the truth, you won't always be
rewarded right away, but the truth itself is its own reward.
It's so incredible And even when you talk about that piece,
Mad at Miles is one of my favorite books by her, because,
as you said, she is addressing Miles Davis directly. He
(06:59):
was like the most popular man in music, and she
was like, but wait, in your memoir, you said you
beat Cecily Tyson, Like, we're gonna talk about that and
address it head on. I love that you brought that
out because that was one of my favorite books by her.
And she's giving you the tools to say, like, you
can tell your own truth and I'm going to listen
to you, and it's going to be reciprocal. It means
so much, And I've seen you do that publicly and
(07:20):
privately for other young people that are trying to figure
out the industry and make their own way. What advice
do you give to young writers about longevity and building
the foundation of their career. I feel like if you
tell the story you feel most needs to be written,
you will never feel like you've wasted your time. Sometimes
people say to me, oh, how do you feel that
(07:41):
it was your fourth novel that made you a bestseller?
It was your fourth, how do you feel about those
other three? And I'd say, I still love those first
three novels as much as I love them when I
wrote them, because I felt they were the truth that
needed to be told. And therefore I never felt frustrated
by my career because I never felt frustrated by my work.
(08:02):
And I also urge young writers to remember who you're
healing with this work. If that book you wrote healed somebody,
you're good. This is my favorite story, my book, Silver Sparrow,
which is about a man who has a secret family.
I went to Milwaukee and a woman bought eight copies
of the book, eight or nine copies, which is what
(08:22):
people do in book club. Sometimes they send a representative
to get the book signed for everybody. I didn't think
much about it, and then I came back on my
book tour and the woman was there and she gave
me a gift, and she said to me, don't open
this until you get back to your hotel. And I said, okay.
I thanked her for it, and when I opened it,
it was a photograph of about seven or eight people.
They were in their fifties I suppose, and they were
(08:44):
all holding the book smiling. I thought they were a
book club. But when I read the note that came
with it, she explained that when her father died, they
found out that he had another family and all these
other kids, and so she had this idea that they
could read the book together so they could talk about
their experience without having to talk about their experience, that
the book was a way in for them, and it
healed this family. And I felt like, oh, that was
(09:08):
why I was called to write this book. I wrote
this book for y'all, and I felt completely satisfied with
the work I've done and the way it was received.
So Silver Sparrow was a book that didn't even get
reviewed by the New York Times. It wasn't in the
running for major awards or whatever. But that woman and
her siblings, that was my prize. And I think that's
(09:29):
what Pearl taught me most is remember why you do
what you do, Remember how you felt when a book
touched you. You never get touched by a book and
flip it over on the back to say, did this
book went a prize? It never occurred to you. What
occurred to you was what you felt, and that's the gift.
(09:50):
You are such a skillful writer, and I know people
want to hear about how you start, Like do you
map out your writing? Are you an outline person? What
does your research look like? What are the dews and
dones of your writing process? Okay, I don't outline anything
because for me, if I know where the story is going,
(10:10):
and you can feel me aiming for it, because I'll
be trying to set it up. But when I don't
know where it's going, I'm writing to explore and I'm
more interested. If I knew the end of a book,
it would spoil it for me the way it spoils
it for you as a reader, if someone were to
tell you the end. Yeah. And also, I write in
search of the answer to a question. Now, this is
not the most efficient way to write a book, from
(10:31):
what I understand. Those outliners they can knock that book
out in nine months, ten months, But for me, it's
a growth process, and growth takes time, and I just
have to live with the time. It takes I read
everything aloud to hear how it sounds. If I cannot
read a paragraph out loud, I know that it's clunky.
(10:52):
If I'm chewing up the words, then I know I've
written too many words. Or if I get bored, you
get bored reading your own work out loud, that means
you got too much description. So some one of these
characters need to get in here and do something right.
But all that comes later. I just think that I
just try to learn the most I can as I go,
and then I have to go back because when I
start the book, the characters are very wooden, because it's
(11:12):
just like they're people I just met. I don't know
these people. I'm getting to know them. But then once
I've written a hundred pages and I know them better,
I can come back to what I wrote and embroider
it and make it more texture and more debts simply
because I know more right right, and you've been able
to sit with it in a different way. But it
takes a long time. I mean, this is the I
take the long way, but it works for me. So
(11:34):
I wanted to know from writing your first book, Leaving
Atlanta to your latest release in American marriage in that
time frame. What is like the one thing that stands
out about how your writing has changed, how you have
changed as a person, Because I know the essence of
you is always there, but has there been something that
really feels like, okay, like this is my mark, this
(11:56):
is what I always include in every novel, or this
is just like my signature? What is the tr signature? Well,
other people notice things that I never noticed, Like someone
wrote me and said, do you like to eat salmon croquettes?
And I like salmon crow, It's just fine. But apparently
somebody in every book is eating salmon croquettes. I don't
(12:16):
know who knew what's going on in my subconscious I
do not know. Well, obviously, all the novels are set
in Atlanta, and that's a signature for me, and it's
an easily identifiable signature. But I think an emotional signature
is that I have two sisters who are older than me,
and we weren't raised together because we have different mothers,
(12:37):
and I've longed for them all my life. And so
someone in every book has that situation, whether it be
a major character or a side character. I notice I
keep bringing that bell and it used to bother me,
and I would try not to do it because you know,
you think I don't want to be predictable. I don't
want people to be able to predict but I let
it go. As a matter of fact. I'm working on
something now and it's happening again, and that's just how
(12:59):
it is. We write toward our obsessions and the key though,
I think in writing, even though you have an obsession,
all your books should be different. Even if when you
point out that note or that bell you keep ringing,
it should be a surprise to a reader, or reader
should say, oh my goodness, you're right, because you're not
writing the same book. It's almost like if you have
a favorite color. It's not like you're wearing the same
(13:21):
dress over again, but you like yellow, so you might
have a yellow shoe, a yellow belt, yellow nail polish,
but you still look different every time. Yes, yes, And
I would say that sisterhood is such a prominent theme
in all your books, but they're explored in so many
different ways. When I think of, you know, leaving in
land sets or silver sparrow, just like there is this theme.
(13:42):
When I think of the word sister, I do think
of it as the sibling relationship, but just much deeper,
like what it means to be in connection and in
love with another woman and feel held by them, like
really feels like embraced and held by them. And you
articulate that and illustrate that in so many of your books.
So how would you defy sisterhood? And what does that mean?
(14:04):
How is sisterhood showed up in your life again and again?
You give the perfect example of Pearl, but other other
examples sisterhood that you feel really tied to. Women have
taken such good care of me all my life, you know.
It's probably was most intense when I went to Spellman College,
and I didn't even want to go to Spellman. I
think about college, and I think, how I can't even
(14:27):
imagine you anywhere else but Spellman me either, But you
think about colleges, that's a decision made by teenagers. Teenagers.
Teenagers have things based on all kinds of random factors.
I went to Spellman because one of my mom's friends
taught at Spellman and she had rasped me into applying it.
I just applied so she would get off my back.
(14:48):
And I now know it. This real complicated situation between
her and my mother getting me to go there without
forcing me to go there, because if I was forced,
I wouldn't go. But at Spellman, I do feel very
grateful that my sisterhood, like I have these women literally
all over the world who have my back. When you
take care of each other and you prioritize that other person,
(15:09):
like when you show up and you do what needs
to be done to help that other person kind of
make it over a bridge. But also sisterhood is also
also when you're not in crisis, when you just want
to want to laugh at what you think is funny.
It's an incredible bond to think the same thing is funny.
It makes you feel like you share a mind. I
do think we think about relationships and how people come
(15:31):
through when you're in trouble, and don't get me wrong,
that's huge. But also sharing in your joy I think
that's important too. After the break, tr and I dig
deeper into her experience writing an American marriage and talk
about her love of letters. Hi, I'm tr Jalines, and
(15:51):
you are listening to well read black girl. I'm Gloria
Adam and you're listening to a well read black girl.
I'm joining the Day by New York Times bestselling author
(16:13):
Siri Jones. Tr was the very first keynote speaker at
the inaugural Well Read Black Girl Festival in Brooklyn, New
York in twenty fifteen, and we're talking to her about
her twenty eighteen novel, An American Marriage. We's talk about
American Marriage. Okay, for people who haven't read it, let
me let me just recap. An American Marriage is the
(16:34):
story of a young couple separated by wrongful conviction. The
wife as an artist, her career is on the up.
Her husband is a kind of young executive. His career
was just starting. You know. They're about eight or nine
years out of college. And right after they get married,
he's arrested, like a year after they get married, he's
arrested for a crime he didn't commit in another state.
No less, So it's about their relationship across the miles,
(16:59):
across the experience, and just over time. And I didn't
know where the story was going. I knew where the
story was not going when I wrote it. I did
not want to update. If Bill Street could talk, I
did not want to make one woman's brave fight to
free her man or like let's celebrate back women by
the extent to which they can suffer and sacrifice. That
(17:21):
to me is one already told too, not terribly interesting,
and three not reflective of the way the real people
live their lives. And one thing I want is to
write a novel where I'm not telling people how they
should act, but instead exploring the different ways that people
behave the different implications, and make us challenge our own beliefs.
So she hangs in there for a pretty good amount
(17:43):
of time, but it's just a lot. It's a lot,
and she has her own dreams, and the question of
do black women have the right to dreams? Like can
you only have dreams if your husband's not in trouble?
And in that case, black women kind of would never
be able to dream because in our community somebody's always
in trouble. But I didn't know the answer to it.
And the thing that surprised me probably the most was
(18:06):
how conflicted I was about it, because I went in
fully believing black women to have dreams. After all, I
have a dream, I enjoyed my dream. Why would I
deprive my fictional character of dreams? But it was as
hard for me to write her as it was for
her to live her life and make her decisions. So
some of the same conflicts and same societal pressure that
(18:28):
the character was experiencing based on her decisions, I was
experiencing the same pressure about writing her decisions. Isn't that weird?
Like I remember I was at a party in this
guy he asked me, you know what are you working on?
And I told him writing about this woman her husband's
wrongfully in prison. And he said, oh, you're going to
write about holding him down. I was like, oh, I'm
(18:50):
really writing about really complex things that dada, And he said,
does she hold him down? I said, well, she does
find love somewhere else. This man took his little tiny
reception plate and his little reception glasses wine and walked
away from me like he didn't even like the idea
that I was thinking about it, Like I do not
(19:12):
have a husband in prison, so I did not find
new love while my husband is in prison. These are
imaginary people just engaging. It caused him to walk away
from me, and that surprised me. How passionate and angry
some people were at this book, And that was my
first time experiencing that with readers. They get mad at me,
(19:33):
But then other people were really supportive, so it all
worked out. But it was a lot well that brings
me to the other side of it, like, how was
it crafting the male characters in American marriage? Was it
a deliberate choice to make that voice feel authentic? And
how you know the presence of the fathers involved? Because
there's two sides of it, you can see the story
(19:55):
as a story of masculinity as well. I will say
my first time I wrote it through, I wrote it
all through from the woman's point of view. Only I
liked it. I dug it, and nobody else dug it.
Everyone kept saying, well, what about her husband? And I
got defensive because I said, I know a lot of
male writers, and nobody ever tells them they need to
rewrite their story from the point of view of the wife. Ever.
(20:15):
But here's an important thing to know about writing. You
can take advice. Like let's say you're a painter. If
someone doesn't like your painter and you revise your painting,
you can never have your original back because you've changed
the painting forever. Writing is not like that. If you
change the writing and you don't like what you've done,
you can always go back to earlier draft. So the
(20:37):
only thing you risk when you make changes is your
ego to say that maybe someone else was right. So
I rewrote the story. I wrote the whole thing from
Roy's perspective, and it didn't take long at all. And
I was wondering why I was able to do it
so quickly. And I was able to do it so
quickly because I think that man's story is a story.
We know that man is in prison. What does he
(20:57):
want to get out of prison? What else does he
want his wife back? So his motives and needs were
much more straightforward than hers, because his situation was so dire.
But I did have fun getting his voice an idiom together.
I like to think that I am now fluent and
dud I speak dud I left that. Even though American
(21:21):
marriage is also just the challenging subject, I feel like
you inject a lot of humor into it as well.
And even listening to you, you're funny. You're a very
funny person, and how were you able to balance that? Well?
Life is funny. I feel like if your story isn't
a little bit funny, it isn't true to life. And
I also think it's very important that Black people laugh
(21:42):
because they think it's funny. I disagree that black people
laugh to keep from crying, because that implies that we're
always almost crying. Sometimes things are just some things are
just funny, and I don't hold that back. I had
to learn, though, I had to learn to be okay
with humor, and also to focus so closely on relationships,
particularly as a woman writer. There is a sense that
(22:03):
women writers write about feelings and that our work isn't
as serious that and some people in their feedback on
an American Marria, they wanted less relationships, more racism. But
I feel that that's not my job as a writer.
My job as a writer is to tell people's stories,
not to shine a light on racism, only because think
(22:24):
about your real life. In your real life, you focus
on your relationships. When you think about what you're going
to do today and how you're feeling today, it's about
the other people in your life. You do not sit
around all day shining a light on racism. Right because
racism is so ubiquitous, you don't have to look for it.
It's gonna show up. You don't have to go find
it for your story. But when the draft is done,
(22:45):
take some of the humor out. It can get too
funny because when you write, you lean on the thing
you do well. Whenever the draft has a lot of
whatever your superpower is, it's because you're having trouble with
that section and you're using your superpower to get you through.
And that's actually a warning sign to you to visit
that section more closely and figure out why. It's just
(23:07):
like a real life you know how funny people when
things get really see and they don't know how to
what to say or what to do, Instead of having
an authentic interaction with you, they'll make a joke. You
do that on the page too, But the good news
is about the page, you can revise it and you
don't have to go out in the world with that
joke where there didn't need to be a joke. Yeah,
it's like your coping mechanism. Yeah, and everyone has them
(23:29):
in writing. I tell my students everyone has to like
the people who are really good at dialogue, they'll over
dialogue at a hard partner story because that's what they do.
I would also love to talk about the format, just
like the structure of the letters, how you decided upon that,
because I feel like that is just one of the
most effective ways just to convey the motion of the characters.
It's so beautifully done. Well, I love letters, but you
(23:49):
know the thing is, people don't write letters anymore. As
a person that writes a lot of letters, and I
probably get back one letter for every five I write.
I got a couple of regular penpals who write me,
but like people don't write back, and I don't like
people to feel there in letter debt. I tell people
that all the time you are not in debt, you
don't have to write me back. You can call me,
(24:09):
you can email me. Just because I'm into letters doesn't
mean you have to be into letters. What keeps you
writing when you know the response is unlikely? I just
enjoy doing it, Okay, Like back to the book, A
novel about prison is the only place where you could
realistically have exchange of letters. Because people in prison, letters
mean a lot to them for three reasons. Right, they
(24:31):
want the information you're sharing in the letter. They want
to know that you thought about them to send the letters,
so they appreciate it as a gesture. And thirdly, the
letter itself is a souvenir. They can carry it around
with them is a tangible reminder of the relationship. Well
for me as a writer of the letter, it works
those three ways for me. But I enjoy sharing whatever
(24:52):
information I'm sharing. I want the person to know I'm
thinking of them. And I appreciate the physicality of the
letter that I'm sending, like I. You know, I like
to have a good looking envelope. I'm serious about my stamps.
I'm down with stickers now. Like I like to send
the letter as a gift, a physical gift to a friend.
(25:13):
I have this letter that I keep on my vision
board in my office. That's from you. I'm going to
read it to you. Do you mind, Okay, Dear Glory,
Saturday was magical. Thank you for all of your love
work that made this possible. So many sisters in the
(25:33):
room had never experienced such a critical mass of black women.
I once heard an interview with an astronaut. He was explaining,
or trying to explain the experience of zero gravity. He
finally gave up because we bear the weight of gravity
from birth. People who have never been to space can't
even imagine weightlessness. Until Saturday, so many black women had
(25:57):
never been in a space where they did not struggle
with racism and sexism. You offered us eight hours of weightlessness.
Such a gift, glory. It was a beautiful thing to behold,
Love Tiari, and I promise you, like I keep this
in my office, I keep it next to me all
the time. And I think of you so much because
you're belief in me, and just like your encouragement, like
(26:21):
it's so simple sometimes just but just so sweet and real,
like talking to you, being your friend has made such
a difference in my life, and I'm really grateful for you.
I'm really just like your joy, your humor, just like
everything you do for black women, whether you're in person
holding their hand or you're writing a book for them,
it changes people. And I know it's changed my life
in such a powerful way. So thank you. Thank you
(26:43):
for just doing that for us every day. Well, I
just want to say to you, I want to thank
you because the women who are like my age, we
did what we could do and we're still doing our thing.
But it is so inspiring to see well Read Black Girl,
like a young black woman taking the lead, taking the
(27:04):
torch and making it bigger. When we had that first
Well Read Black Girl conference and all those black women
and from just kind of different walks of life. Everyone
left being so moved, so inspired, and so loving. There
was not a discouraging word to be heard anywhere. It
was truly weightlessness. And I went to Spellman. So I
(27:28):
have experienced that black female environment before, but even I
had not experienced it in so long, and I had
not experienced it with an eye towards the future. So
thank you, Glory for the future. I'm gonna write you
a letter. I'll be waiting on it. It's time for
(27:52):
a rapid fire. Okay, okay, what is your go to
snack when writing? Grapes? Green and purple green. I like
green grapes too. Name a book on your nightstand. It's
called the Right to Sex? What's that about? Okay? Let
me stop. Let's a feminist man of Festo. It's really interesting.
It's very challenging. I recommend it so far. Okay. I
(28:15):
have a waffle house. They're different. I mean, I hop
has better food, but the waffle house is across the street.
Waffle house, I mean it's across the street. Okay, Okay,
I'm gonna say I hop even though I'm from Georgia.
I'm gonna get bold and say I hop for sure.
I hop. Oh, this is the easy question. So typewriters
or computers, and why typewriters all day? Typewriters all day?
(28:39):
I like typewriters. I like making all that racket For
one thing, you feel like you're getting something done. Secondly,
when I use the computer, I type too fast and
I don't know what I've written. It's like when you
eat so fast the plate is empty, so clearly you
ate it, but you don't remember eating it. You don't
remember the flavors. Also, with the computer, I can get
upset with myself and press a couple of keys and
delete a day's work. With the typewriter, I can dramatically
(29:02):
pull the paper out, ball it up, throw it away,
and then come back and smooth it out and still
have it. I love that. It's more of the experience
of it. I love that. Okay, so I need to
I'm gonna go into your playlist. What is your life's
theme song? Ain't no stopping Us Now? Yes, when I
(29:23):
was writing my first book, I would play it all
the time, be like, yeah, we're on the move. That's
really really got the group. Yes, thank you so much, Tri,
Thank you for just giving us so much and being
my friend and mentor. I love you, I love you
(29:44):
more and thank you for having me, and I can't
wait to see what you do next. Tr Jones is
a joy to speak with. I couldn't ask for a
better confidant. Before I knew her personally, her words offered
me mentorship. They taught me how to be a better
friend and a companion. Her books explore what it means
(30:05):
to be a daughter of Atlanta, the painful, joyous path
to adulthood as a young Black woman. An American Marriage
reminds me that my gender influences the way I moved
through this world. Black women are often held to an
unfair standard of femininity. Tri offers us a fuller version
of ourselves. An American Marriage by tr Jones is out now.
(30:30):
After the break, we have a preview from another favorite
podcast of mine, WB Easy's nerd At podcast. We're ending
this episode with a special excerpt from our friends at
(30:52):
wb eaz's nerd At podcast. It's a show that helps
you unwind for the weekend with fun and interesting conversations
and recommendations. Nerdett also has a monthly book club. Last year,
one of their featured books was the short story collection
The Office of Historical Corrections by Daniel Evans, an awesome book.
(31:13):
Here's nerd At host Gretta Johnson talking to Evans. I
am one of those people who usually doesn't really connect
with short stories. I think often because if I don't
really enjoy it, I'm sort of like, why did I
bother reading this? And if I did really like it,
I'm like, why isn't this just a goddamn novel? But
(31:34):
there was something about like the bite sized bits that
you managed to put together in this book that it
was just like I was just so happy to be
on the ride the entire time. And I don't know
how you did it. I don't know if you can
tell me how you did it, but I just want
to say it's amazing. Well, I'm glad to be converting
people to the short story form. I really do. I
(31:57):
really do love short stories. I mean a probably I
love a collection because I think often when you're writing,
you're writing about something that you don't have a clear
answer on. A collection allow you to ask the same
question over and over again and to answer it different
ways and kind of look at it from different angles,
and so I think you can see a writer it's
kind of thinking about something and not necessarily figuring it out.
(32:20):
But I like that thinking. I like that conversational space,
and I like that range emotion. But an individual short
story I also think works. It just has this density.
You know, my favorite, not favorite altogether maybe, but the
people who I sort of admire in the form and
think of his models in the form, or Alice Monroe
and Edward P. Jones, who are just magicians with time,
(32:40):
Like sometimes you don't even know how they did it,
but there's sometimes just the right amount of the future
or just the right amount of the past that the
story feels like like being a live fields, right. It
feels like in any given moment, something intense is happening
that's capturing your intention, your attention, But there's also all
of this history to it that the characters are carrying
(33:04):
into the moment and these slight flashes of what it's
all going to mean. And I think when it comes
together really well, I like you're in all time at once,
and that is when a story feels most effective to me,
because it kind of captures that sensation of all the
things happening, but it's all in like one paragraph. Oh
(33:25):
my god, that's such a beautiful way of putting that.
I completely agree. And I don't know. I mean, so
much of life is these like flitting moments where you're
going through and having all of these different experiences in
any given day, and so to experience that with a
collection can be such a delight too. Yeah. Absolutely. I
think that my first book was largely coming of age stories,
(33:47):
and so a lot of them follow a pretty classic
narrative arc, right, where the emotional event of the story
and the sort of actual event or narrative enter plot
event are the same thing. Right. Something is somebody's making
a decision or something's happening, and that's what people are
reacting to. And I think these stories are a little
bit different, not all of them, but a lot of them,
in that sometimes it's sort of the active plot really
(34:09):
is about the day to day choices being made to
evade or avoid the thing that actually matters, and so
the moment in the story that's actually where the emotional
plot comes to the surface is when someone sort of
can't run from the thing that matters anymore. It's a
kind of different narrative shape, but I had fun with it,
and I think maybe amplifies that sort of sense of
(34:31):
there is a surface plot that sometimes just does feel
like somebody kind of going through their day to day
and there's something underneath it, and it sort of comes
closer and closer to the surface as you get closer
and closer to the end of the story. That was
Daniel Evans tagging sa Gretta Johnson on wb easy's nerd
At podcast. You can find that conversation and many many
(34:52):
more wherever you find podcasts. In our final episode of
this season, I'll be joined by the one and only
Viola Davis discuss her incredible career and of course her
new memoir Finding Me. The episode is out right now,
so keep listening well read. Black Girl is a production
(35:23):
of Pushkin Industries. It is written and hosted by me
Glory Dam and produced by cher Vincent and Brittany Brown.
Our associate editor is Keishall Williams. Our engineer is Amanda
ka Wang, and our showrunner is Sasha Matthias. Our executive
producers are Mia Lobell and Leet Hall Molad at Pushkin
(35:48):
Thanks to Heather Fane, Carly Migliori, Jason Gambrau, Julia Barton,
Jen Gowera, John Schnars, and Jacob Wiseberg. You can find
me on Twitter and Instagram at Well read black Girl.
You can find Pushkin and all social media platforms at
pushkin Pods, and you can sign up for our newsletter
(36:08):
at pushkin dot Fm. If you have a question, a recommendation,
or you just want to say hi, email us at
WRBG at pushkin dot fm. If you love this show
and others from Pushkin industry, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus.
Pushgn Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content
(36:29):
and uninterrupted listening for four ninety nine a month. Look
for Pushkin Plus on Apple podcast subscriptions, and if you're
already a subscriber, make sure to check out my exclusive
Bookmark series. You'll hear extended interviews with book club members,
bookstore owners, and more. And do you get to hear
What's on my mind, What's on my radar, and of
(36:51):
course what's on my reading list each week. To find
more Pushkin podcasts, listen on iHeartRadio, app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you like to listen.
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