BRIDGETT M. DAVIS author of LOVE RITA

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Rita and I grew up in a household of numbers.
Numbers out in the world took on special meaning as
any combination of them could become gifts from the universe,
translated into a bedplayed and a win. The story of
sisters is the great untold love story.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Welcome to the Public Library Podcast. Sorry, here's your host
and podcast librarian, award winning poet, future bestselling author, and
host of one of the most listened to radio shows
in America, Helen Little. Hello, book lovers, and welcome to
another episode of the Public Library Podcast. I am honored
to have a return guest, Bridget M. Davis is back

(00:46):
with her newest book, Love Rita. And I know that's
not the full title. Tell us the full title.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
An American Story of sisterhood, joy, laws, and Legacy.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
Welcome back to the show. It is so good to
see you.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
Thank you, it's so great to be back.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
And thank you for this book as well. Before we
get started, tell everybody what your book is about.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
So, this book, Love Rita, is about a couple things. First,
It's about my sister Rita and our relationship as sisters.
She was older than I and so we had moments
when we were really struggling to get along and filled
with sibling rivalry. And then we became adults and our
relationship deepened, and I wanted to really explore what sisterhood

(01:33):
is truly, like I felt it wasn't really represented a lot,
you know, in the culture, So that was a goal.
But also I wanted to tell Rita's story because she's
someone who lived this extraordinary life even though it was
cut short due to lupus, And that was something else
I thought a lot of people don't know much about,

(01:55):
and so it was important to me to do both
of those things.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
I am one of four sisters, so a book about
sisters is always an appealing thing to me. And when
I went into this book, I thought about what is
it like to write about your sister and for you?
Why was this now the right time for this book?

Speaker 1 (02:18):
Yeah, you know, I didn't think I was going to
write another memoir because I've written one before. I know,
I wrote a book about my mother, The World according
to Fanny Davis, all about her life in the underground
lottery business that we called the Numbers, and I thought, well,
I'm good, I've told this family story. In fact, my

(02:39):
sister Rita appears in that book quite a bit because
she was instrumental in helping my mom run the business.
They were very close. I thought I had written about
my family, but then I was literally writing to my
sister Rita on what would have been her sixty fifth birthday,

(03:00):
which felt like a good thing to do, to just
honor that moment, that occasion. I had lost her over
twenty five years ago, and yet I sat down to
write this letter, and the strangest thing happened. I found
myself saying, I don't know why you're not here. I
still don't know why you're not here. And it made

(03:24):
me realize I had not really processed losing her. I
really hadn't fully grieved. And I'm a writer, so the
way I process these things is through writing. And that
was the moment I realized, Oh, wow, you do have
another book to write, and it's about Rita.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
During the process of writing this book, what was it
like for you emotionally? I mean, you just mentioned, you know,
she wasn't here long enough. How did you manage your
emotions during the writing prom this book.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
I love that question because it was far more surprising,
even to me as someone working on my fourth book.
I thought I knew what I was doing, and I
thought I was equipped to write about a family member.
But this book is the most personal book that I
have ever written. Because a sibling is your contemporary, right

(04:24):
they're in the world with you, right alongside you. That's
a very particular kind of relationship and therefore a very
particular kind of loss. And so what I wasn't prepared
for was talking to all the people that are still
around that were in her life, because they're not that old,
and so that was so emotional for me. Talking to

(04:48):
her college roommate, and her best friend from grad school,
and her former lovers, and you know, her colleagues at work.
It brought so much batter to me because their voices
literally and my having known them throughout my life really
made it very present for me. I was reliving my

(05:11):
life with her, which can be a good thing, but
also losing her. I was reliving that. So it was
all over the place emotionally. You asked me what it
was like. There were good days, and there were days
when I could not get back to the work for
a week. I'd have to just take a break. So
it was all the things I tell people that writing

(05:34):
about someone you love is an incredible experience because it
puts you in a relationship with them again. And I
missed her, yeah, and so writing about Rita and our
growing up together and all these fun memories, it brought
her back to me. But then I had to write
about when she passed, and that brought that back to me.

Speaker 2 (05:55):
Of course. Yeah, you know, we grew up during that
time when folks didn't talk about things, you know, and
did you ever come across any difficulty once you started
talking about them and bringing them back up?

Speaker 1 (06:07):
Were people willing to share with you? People were very willing, okay,
because what they wanted to do was, as you've just
pointed out, process of grief that they'd had no space
to do before because we don't talk about it. As
her best friend from graduate school said to me, I

(06:28):
never dealt with the fact that she's gone. And this
has been therapeutic for me. Bridgette, thank you because you're
letting me express some feelings. I didn't have anyone to
share with before. So I came around asking questions and
people got to emoteah and unload and share. I mean

(06:48):
a lot of it was like smiles and laughter. They
wanted to talk about those special times with her. So
I realized, Wow, this was a communal experience. I'm really
helping others too, to talk about something that they've been
silent about for a couple decades. So that was really rewarding.
Now let me tell you the other part though, in

(07:08):
going back and looking closely at and basically researching her life,
I learned things I didn't know, and I would say
be prepared for that possibility when you start writing about someone,
And some of what I learned was really hard to accept.
So now something that happened to my sister, say in

(07:29):
the seventies when she was in college, I'm now in
twenty twenty three, twenty twenty four processing it.

Speaker 2 (07:37):
Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I sense that when you talked
about some of the old boyfriends and just some of
the things she experienced. And what was fascinating is you're
writing a story about your family, which you know, but
you still have to do research. For me, I learned
a lot about lupus, for example, but you clearly researched

(08:00):
healthcare and the health system and other things during this book.
Tell us about why that was part of the book
as well.

Speaker 1 (08:09):
Yeah, I am big on research. And maybe some of
it has to do with my background as a journalist,
but I really believe it's because I have this basic belief.
I just think that you cannot explore anyone's life without
understanding the context within which they live that life. And

(08:30):
how do you get a sense of the context. You
have to do the research what was happening in the
culture that informs and influences what happens to this person?

Speaker 2 (08:39):
You know?

Speaker 1 (08:40):
And I don't believe it happens nearly enough when it
comes to black life. Do we ever really fully understand
the influences and the impact of societal pressures and injustices
and how that literally can shape your personal life.

Speaker 2 (08:57):
And I loved how you kept bringing that back, bringing
in every aspect of everything that you discussed in this book.
You like, and here's why this could have been, this
is what could have been happened, this is what could
have been leading to I mean down to even talking
about how she came into the world exactly and how
that impacted her DNA for lack of a better word, exactly.

(09:19):
For me, that was one of the things I really
enjoyed about your book. What did you learn about yourself
writing this book? Yeah.

Speaker 1 (09:29):
Well, I learned that I could do it. I could
talk about these difficult losses in my life and still
be okay. Because I wasn't sure about that and I
had not been talking about it. People who knew me
did not know I had so many losses in it.
I didn't exactly and you're not the only one. Yeah,

(09:50):
most people didn't know. So I learned that I could
both reveal these things and still be okay.

Speaker 2 (09:56):
You know that to me in this conversation means more
than anything, because you do share a lot of hard things.
And I learned that the story was about more than
read it. But you know, you lived through it. It
was your life, her life, and it's not an easy
thing to read about. So how have readers reacted to

(10:19):
your book?

Speaker 1 (10:20):
Well, I wasn't sure how that response would go, But
in fact, what people have said to me is I'm
so glad someone's talking about some losses. That helped me
feel that I'm not the only one. And there was
something in me there was a gut feeling that maybe
that would be the response of the reaction. But also

(10:41):
you sometimes worry that people want something light. Life is hard, yeah,
you know, and maybe people don't want to read about
something that is that difficult, and so I've been surprised
pleasantly that people are feeling that they're being seen.

Speaker 2 (10:56):
Yes, And the thing about it is like you have
lots of life. There is lots of light the way
you discuss Rita's style, and I was like, oh, I
remember that, Oh I would you know? We should bring
that back? And like that was the thing that was
constant all the way throughout the book is you gave

(11:17):
homage to her style over and over, and that was
a very beautiful and uplifting thing because she had plenty
of it.

Speaker 1 (11:25):
She did she was stylish. Yeah, Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2 (11:29):
One of the things I thought was really cool too.
You mentioned Octavia Butler, and I'm reading The Parable of
the Sewer right now and I'm so taken aback about
how she predicted so much of twenty twenty five, which
is really weird because that book was written in the
early nineties. But you also offered a look at what
a future for Rita in the twenty first century would
have been, Like why did you choose to include that? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (11:52):
I decided I wanted to write this epilogue, and I
remember telling my editor I've got this interesting in for
the book. I didn't tell her what it would be,
and I just wrote it before I could stop myself.
And so I did it because, first of all, I
keep thinking about what I have missed with my sister Rita.

(12:15):
We were so close. There's so much that has happened
since the year two thousand, So much has happened in
the past twenty five years. Just think about it, and
much of it I would have been sharing with her.
So part of me wanted to just imagine, right, what
would those conversations be like. It was a way of

(12:37):
my indulging something that I had longed for for so long.
But also it was my way of helping you to
imagine Rita today, so that you could get a sense
of her and feel that, maybe in a strange way,
she's in your life.

Speaker 2 (12:57):
You know what was interesting, too, is you talk a
lot about how y'all communicated across distances and having to
pay for long distance calls. I've forgotten all about that.

Speaker 1 (13:06):
A lot of people don't realize how much it costs
to call someone long distance.

Speaker 2 (13:11):
And how now you know, we call all over the world,
and if you're at home, it's costing you nothing, and
how much she would have liked that. That was one
of the things that that that part of the book
kind of like left with me.

Speaker 1 (13:26):
Yeah, you know, she was so excited about the new century.
I remember talking to her on New Year's Day, year
two thousand, Happy new millennium. Yeah, she said to me
she was looking forward to what she understood was going
to be a better world in a lot of ways.

(13:48):
Certainly it would have been easier for her on practical
levels to be someone with the chronic disease moving through
the world with more aids and support the way something
like a cell phone can give you now.

Speaker 2 (14:02):
Yeah. Yeah, So one of the things that I thought
was really cool, Well, she was always so supportive of you.
You all supported each other, but you produced a play
together that was so neat, and not only that you
had Ruben Santiago Hudson. We did that is that's amazing.
What was the importance of this moment for the two

(14:22):
of you that you share in your book.

Speaker 1 (14:24):
It was so amazing. We were producing a local production
of Pearly Victorious, right, Ozzie Davis's play, and it was
in Detroit, and we were both young women at that
point twenty two and twenty six, I think, and here
we are finally able to do something together as young adults,

(14:45):
and we realized we had these complimentary skills and we
worked well together. It was important for us to see
that about ourselves. I think that did a lot to
really strengthen our adult relationship. And it was so much fun.
We lost money, by the way, but it was not
so fun. It was still fun. I mean, yeah, it's

(15:09):
the arts.

Speaker 2 (15:10):
But the bonding part you will never lose.

Speaker 1 (15:13):
I'll never lose the memory. Yeah, yeah, so it was.
It was invaluable.

Speaker 2 (15:19):
You mentioned this earlier. Parents naturally die before their children,
but the world is untrustworthy when a sibling dies. I
know this so too well myself after the loss of
my oldest brother. But for you, it was an even
deeper level of untrust What did writing about such profound
losses gift to you?

Speaker 1 (15:40):
Writing about the losses in an odd way took the
sting out of them. Oh yeah, there's something about describing it, just,
you know, putting it down in what we used to
call black and white. Yeah, and just confronting it and
suddenly it's not this thing that lives in my head,
this building momentum and really creating anxiety and sadness. It's

(16:05):
just the facts. And again, once I'd written it, I
had the chance for people to react, and that was
so nourishing because people were both supportive, oh bragette, I
had no idea and also encouraging. I'm really proud of
you and thank you because you helped me. So now

(16:26):
I'm not carrying this as a burden. Ye right, it's
got some value. At least it's benefiting someone, not just
me to really reveal it. So I can't describe enough
the value of actually being able to write this book.
It has lifted my spirits. I don't have the burden
I was carrying around anymore.

Speaker 2 (16:47):
That is amazing. I know, that is really amazing. I mean,
I don't know if you thought that would happen when
you sat down to write it.

Speaker 1 (16:54):
I had no idea. I just knew I had to
write it, so I didn't know what it was going
to take. And it was like going through the fire
to write it, because some of that was not fun.
Some of that was not fun.

Speaker 2 (17:06):
But worth it, Yes, absolutely worth it. You indicated that
you and your sister read it, figured out your own
personal numbers. The numbers that follow you around? Do those
numbers still follow you? I love that. First of all, Oh, yes,
my number is seven.

Speaker 1 (17:22):
It follows me around.

Speaker 2 (17:23):
Mineus five, yours is five.

Speaker 1 (17:25):
Ask my son's number two.

Speaker 2 (17:27):
My birthday is two three. I am the fifth child,
and it's like so many instances of five.

Speaker 1 (17:33):
And don't you have five letters in your first name?

Speaker 2 (17:35):
I do. I din't think about that.

Speaker 1 (17:38):
There you go.

Speaker 2 (17:39):
So I did know that. I'm like when I was like,
oh wow, because I thought that's a little kookie for
me to think like that. And so as I'm reading that, hmmm,
so you're not the only one. I'm not the only one. Again,
that idea of when you do pen to paper that
brings people together, that makes them feel like they're not
alone in a lot of different ways. What do you

(18:00):
hope people take from this book?

Speaker 1 (18:02):
I really hope that first and foremost people will feel
that they know read a little bit, or that they
wish they had known her. That's the goal I have.
Primarily I wanted people to know who this extraordinary woman
was and to share her with people. But also, yes,
I want people to feel less freakish. I'm going to

(18:25):
use that word.

Speaker 2 (18:26):
I like it.

Speaker 1 (18:27):
Yeah, about laws, having laws, loved ones, you can feel
that there's something strange and odd about you because you're
carrying around this grief or this terrible thing happened to
your family, Like, maybe why are you being singled out
when in fact we all experience laws. It's actually a
universal experience. We're just not allowed to think of it

(18:48):
that way in this culture because it's so grief phobic.

Speaker 2 (18:52):
Yeah. I was fifteen when my father passed, and I
was forty five when I finally aggrieved. Wow, I know,
isn't that crazy?

Speaker 1 (19:02):
That's crazy, That is crazy.

Speaker 2 (19:04):
It's not unusual, so I can completely identify. Yeah, so
I heard some good things maybe happening with your last book,
The World according to Fanny Davis, the one about your mother.
Anything you can share.

Speaker 1 (19:16):
With us, Yes, Well, the film rights are being optioned
with Plan B Entertainment. Plan B is the company that
was started by Brad Pitt.

Speaker 2 (19:28):
Not a bad not bad.

Speaker 1 (19:30):
They've done some cool things, you know, in particular, seem
to do well with stories about black life. So that's exciting,
and so I'm really looking forward to the day that it's,
you know, being turned into a film. There's a director
attached already. I have written the script, so fingers crossed.

Speaker 2 (19:49):
What was that process like, turning your book into a script?

Speaker 1 (19:53):
That was so odd?

Speaker 2 (19:55):
Really?

Speaker 1 (19:56):
Yes, because I'm developing. I'm adapting a story that I
wrote about my life and my mother's life and turning
it into a screenplay. So I had to figure out,
you know, how to create some some type of separation
so I could give the story what it needed. It

(20:16):
was so close to me that it was important for
me to go through that process of saying, Okay, you're
about to write a script and the character's name is Brigette, right,
I never thought of that.

Speaker 2 (20:29):
Yes, So were you just completely generous with her?

Speaker 1 (20:35):
That's the challenge you have to really make them all
real characters, right, yeah, and not think about who's going
to play me.

Speaker 2 (20:44):
You know when you wrote that book, did you envision that?
Was that part of what you wanted to see or
did it come about organically or was that like part
of your vision board?

Speaker 1 (20:54):
You know, that was not part of my vision board,
to be honest, and it was pretty organic. And me
maybe some of it is because I tend to write
in a pretty visual way. You do, I do because
I did have this experience back in the day as
an independent filmmaker, right, and so I had written and
directed and produced my own features. So those were my

(21:15):
formative years as a writer. And so even when I
got to writing fiction and then nonfiction, I brought those
screenwriting elements with me, and so I wasn't thinking about
it as a screenplay. I just was writing in the
way I knew how to write, which maybe is playing
a little movie in my head as I'm writing.

Speaker 2 (21:33):
Yeah, but I like that, I mean, as I'm thinking
about reading your book, I was. It was very visual.
I felt Detroit, I felt New York, I felt the
campus of Fisk University. I felt at all. I mean,
I knew what the size of the dorm room looked like.
Even though you don't necessarily give those minute details for
you put us in the environment, and so I can

(21:55):
see how that translates to film very easily. I know
you got a like going on. You're doing the script
and you're still promoting this book. But do you have
a next book in mind?

Speaker 1 (22:05):
Well, in a way, I do, I keep saying to folks,
I want to rest.

Speaker 2 (22:11):
Yeah, this was.

Speaker 1 (22:14):
Quite the book. But also yes, I've been really fortunate
that this film that I made, Naked acts got rediscovered recently. Really,
that is so cool, Yes, And so in twenty four
it was restored and re released, and so it went

(22:34):
on to have this whole life, you know, a week
long sort of run at BAM and all these theaters
throughout the country and actually throughout the world. And so
it's just brought all these young people into my life
asking me over and over what were the nineties, like
what was it like to be in a video store?

(22:56):
Because two of the main scenes in the film take
place in a real video store in Fort Green, Brooklyn.
And it's got me realizing that that wasn't a really
important cultural moment. And I am thinking a lot about
writing about making the film about living in what we
were calling a Many Harlem renaissance in Fort Green Brooklyn

(23:18):
back in the nineties, and what that whole experience meant
for all of us as these black creatives. So I
am I'm sort of living with these ideas around yet
another book about a cultural moment.

Speaker 2 (23:31):
I love that. That is really cool. And the interesting
thing is you don't, well, I don't think about like
eras that I lived in because it just seems like
it was yesterday as something that for someone who wasn't
there culturally important.

Speaker 1 (23:47):
Yeah, it takes someone young to do that. That's what
happened with me as well. It was just where I
was living at the time, coming of age as a
young woman. But when so many people who are now
the age I was back then saying to me that
they're fascinated by it and they want to know more.

Speaker 2 (24:04):
It was fine.

Speaker 1 (24:04):
It was pretty cool.

Speaker 2 (24:06):
So were you reading anything exciting right now? I know you.
I'm like, do you have time?

Speaker 1 (24:10):
Oh? You know, I just read a new memoir by
Denise Nicholas called Finding Home. Do you remember Denise?

Speaker 2 (24:18):
Of course I did Room two twenty two. She was
one of those people that I'm like, I would love
to be like her one day.

Speaker 1 (24:23):
Well, guess what, she's a beautiful writer. In fact, she
decided to center her writing over her acting at a
certain point in her life, and it shows. The book
is gorgeous. It comes out in November, okay, and I'm
so glad that I gave myself time to do that,
to actually read something wonderful.

Speaker 2 (24:40):
You're also still teaching, right.

Speaker 1 (24:42):
I am not still teaching. One of the things I
decided to write this book was to step aside from
teaching after over three decades. Wow, and allow myself the
space that I knew this book love Rita really needed.
So I made that choice, and I'm glad I did
because ultimately this was the hardest book. It took the

(25:03):
most breaks for me to write it and I and
it's also the quickest book I've ever written.

Speaker 2 (25:07):
Really.

Speaker 1 (25:08):
Yeah, two and a half years.

Speaker 2 (25:10):
Wow, that's interesting. I would have thought the exact opposite.

Speaker 1 (25:13):
Yeah, I know. I was going into it expecting it
to take years and something about freeing my time and
not having to balance it with teaching. Everything I've ever
done creatively, I've balanced with working full time. So this
was a gift to myself to do that that.

Speaker 2 (25:31):
It is nice to be able to do one thing.

Speaker 1 (25:33):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and it made a difference. So I'm
really grateful that I was able to do that.

Speaker 2 (25:37):
Yeah. So, if people want to find out more about
your creative endeavors, your past books, your future projects to
the world, how do they connect with you? Uh?

Speaker 1 (25:49):
Everything is on my website actually, Bridgetdavis dot com.

Speaker 2 (25:52):
And you spell your name different though, so B R I,
D G. E. T. T. Thank you so much for
for the book, Thank you for coming and sharing the
good moments and the hard moments and everything that you
put into this. I wish you so much success on
everything else, but I do. I love this book and
I hope everybody picks it up and reads it.

Speaker 1 (26:13):
Thank you so much. This was great.

Speaker 2 (26:15):
Thank you. Another show in the books. Join us for
the next episode of the Public Library Podcast, a place
to check out books,