Winter Books
1/15/21 - We’re reading fiction, nonfiction, essays and anxiety-producing novels.
Transcript below.
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CREDITS
Executive Producer: Gina Delvac
Hosts: Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman
Theme song: Call Your Girlfriend by Robyn
Composer: Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs.
Producer: Jordan Bailey
Visual Creative Director: Kenesha Sneed
Merch Director: Caroline Knowles
Editorial Assistant: Laura Bertocci
Design Assistant: Brijae Morris
Ad sales: Midroll
LINKS
We’re reading…
The Eagles of Heart Mountain: a True Story of Football, Incarceration, and Resistance in World War II America by Bradford Pearson
Red Pill by Hari Kunzru
The Resisters by Gish Jen
Black Futures by Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham
TRANSCRIPT: WINTER BOOKS
[Ads]
(0:30)
Aminatou: Welcome to Call Your Girlfriend.
Ann: A podcast for long-distance besties everywhere.
Aminatou: I'm Aminatou Sow.
Ann: And I'm Ann Friedman.
Aminatou: Hi Ann Friedman!
Ann: Hi, how's it going?
Aminatou: You know, hanging in there. Hanging in there.
Ann: [Laughs] I am really excited to talk about books in part because I feel like my reading is at a particularly low ebb. I know a lot of people earlier in the pandemic were saying that they were having trouble reading and that was not my experience then but it is very much my experience now. So I am ready to talk about books and get re-motivated.
[Theme Song]
(1:38)
Aminatou: You know, I'm honestly in a very good groove of reading and it's very funny because I was having that thing of like oh yeah, reading is hard and then I started reading straight men books again and I was like okay, I'm back. [Laughs] That's the truth of my reading patterns is that there's a big hole in the man cannon in my reading and I was like what have these dudes been up to? And it turns out, Ann, men are writing really good books.
Ann: I mean men are writing good books, bad books, and middling books much like everyone is. I feel like . . .
Aminatou: I just didn't know because I wasn't reading them. Now that I'm reading them I'm like I get what all the hullabaloo's about. They're writing great books.
Ann: Oh man, yeah. I respect that. I think I read a couple books by men last year. I'm failing to think of actual titles but I'm sure I did. I'm sure I read at least one or two. [Laughs]
Aminatou: I'm telling you everyone should shake up their reading diet. It's very exciting, so it's been very exciting for me.
Ann: What are you most excited about that you've read lately?
Aminatou: Okay, two books that I have read lately that I really, really enjoyed. The first one is this non-fiction, you know how I love non-fiction Ann. Just so well researched, really moving, a story I had never heard before. It's the Aminatou Venn diagram, like the Venn diagram, like every . . . the Venn diagram of the non-fiction I like. It's called The Eagles of Heart Mountain: A True Story of Football, Incarceration, and Resistance in World War II America and it's by Bradford Pierson. And it's great. It's like the story of this World War II incarceration camp in Wyoming that had a high school football team. So here we are incarcerating Japanese people, like Japanese internment, that happened, and here's the story about this football team at this incarceration camp.
So it is a story about football. It's basically a story about resiliency that is masquerading about a story about sports which is also why I like it a lot. But also the research, Ann, is 10 out of 10. So even if you do not like sports, you do not like football, you don't care about this stuff, it was such a good lens to understand that specific kind of resistance in World War II America. And I like this kind of book, especially in this kind of moment, because it distracts me from the coup and also takes me back. It also puts me in this place where I'm like oh, here are historical precedents for how people are resisting and also there are so many never before told stories of resiliency and this one was so great.
(4:30)
The other book that I read that I really enjoyed is Red Pill by Hari Kunzru and it's a very anxious book, I will not lie to you. If you're one of those people that you're anxious and you don't need more anxiety in your life don't do it. But I'm an anxious person who needs anxiety narratives to keep going.
Ann: [Laughs] If you need fuel in the tank for your anxiety this is the book for you.
Aminatou: I'm warning you now it's so paranoid and dreamy and it's great. But this is a novel and it's basically the story of this man who is going through a deep midlife crisis and moves from Brooklyn to Germany. And in Germany he starts being obsessed with this cop show called Blue Lives that is just very compelling and it's just very bleak and that Darwinian view of life, the whole thing. And it really unravels a lot for him. And because he's a writer he's like does my writing have any value at all?
It is such a novel for right now because every question that book is asking are kind of the same things we're dealing with in this moment of watching, you know, the rise of the fascist insurrection. And I don't know, it's just such an intellectual book which I have to admit as we know from this podcast I am not a good reader of novels but this novel really got me. I don't know, I keep thinking about it. It has not left me and I think it's really well-written. It has these really incredible ways that it ties philosophy back to this moment and to a lot of other things. So all I'm saying is men write amazing books. Read a man book, this is amazing. Ann, my copy is dogeared of Red Pill everywhere and I wrote at three different times "Are we living in a simulation?" That's my experience of reading it and it's so good.
Ann: [Laughs]
Aminatou: And I know I sound like a complete idiot, like one of those -- you know, people who read novels know this but like I said I'm an idiot. And every time I'm like oh, wow, this is how you can stimulate the imagination and also Hari is a wonderful writer. I've read so many other things that he's written including his previous book White Tears. The writing is just impeccable, you know? So even just on a craft level I am just so in awe because I just do not have the imagination to write a novel so I love people who can do it and this one is dreamy and paranoid and anxious like I said earlier.
Ann: Wow, a ringing endorsement for work by men. Truly. [Laughs]
Aminatou: Listen, let it not be said I am not fair in my media diet.
Ann: It's true, you are fair. I am dipping back into books or rather easing back into books with a really excellent short story collection called Sarahland by Sam Cohen. This book is not out until early March so if you're listening to this it's in the preorder category but it is -- the through line is that the protagonist of almost all, I think almost every single short story in this collection is named Sarah. It is a really . . . I don't know, if you've ever thought about do you have anything in common with people who share your name or who share some singular, superficial detail it is . . . I don't know, it is a super interesting light tether through the stories of all of these different women. And it is, you know, all these different takes on queerness, on gender and violence and also like, you know, some kind of weird, fantastical possibilities where . . . it's one of those books where you're like is this happening in the character's mind or did we go sci-fi in this one story in the collection? You know what I mean? It is really bringing me back to books in a good way.
(8:40)
It's like I think there's something about the short story format. I also feel this way about essay collections where when I've had a gap between books for a while it helps bring me back to remembering that I love books and want to read them all the time. So that's where I'm at. I recommend it even if you're not in a reading gap phase yourself. Yeah, Sarahland.
Aminatou: What a good idea. This is what I'm saying when I say I don't have imagination, you know? I'm like what? You're going to write a short story collection about just people named Sarah? That's amazing to me.
Ann: I know, I know. So many different Sarahs in this world many of whom I know and love. [Laughs] Shout-out to all my Sarahs, all my personal Sarahs.
Aminatou: Well welcome to the winter books episode. [Laughter] Where we talk about the books we love.
Ann: The books we're reading. And we also have some incredible authors we're talking with today.
Aminatou: Man, I'm excited about today's episode. I talked to Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham who are the authors of Black Futures. Kimberly is a writer, curator, and activist. Jenna is a staff writer at the New York Times Magazine. She is also a sound healer, a reiki practitioner, an herbalist, and a community care worker. Black Futures, their book, is an anthology that answers the question of what it means to be black and alive. The book is basically a collection of images, photos, essays, memes, dialogues, recipes, tweets, poetry, so much. You literally go from conversations with activists and academics to memes to Instagram posts to these beautiful essays and paintings. There's infographics. It is truly a very good gift to yourself and a gift to someone you love. Like a hefty book. This is where we're at and I loved our conversation about the work that they're doing together.
Ann: I can't wait to listen.
[Interview Starts]
Aminatou: Hi y'all!
Ann: Hello!
Kimberly: Hi! [Laughter]
Aminatou: I'm just laughing because the most inappropriate question I feel to ask anyone these days is how are you doing? I'm like that is just inviting chaos.
Kimberly: How dare you?
Aminatou: So my question is are you hanging in there?
Jenna: My god, I'm the kitty in the poster by a branch.
Aminatou: Hanging there kitty, aww.
Kimberly: I'm actually really good today and Jenna and I are coming off another work call. I'm just feeling very good. I spent my weekend between the Toni Morrison documentary and the new Fran Lebowitz series and I just feel really like, I don't know, I want to say empowered but that's a lie. But I feel like supercharged.
Aminatou: Finding out that Fran Lebowitz does not own a telephone, like a cell phone, was not surprising. It's like every smart person of a certain era does not own communication devices. [Laughs]
(11:50)
Kimberly: Love it. If you can make your career without a cell phone there's no reason to get one.
Aminatou: I know! That made me really . . . it's what I'm stuck on from that documentary. That and how much Martin Scorsese is in love with her.
Kimberly: I know! They were very cute. They were very cute. I'm going to get rid of my phone in 2021. That's my new goal. I'm like I can do this.
Jenna: Is that the goal?
Kimberly: Yes, sorry babe. You'll always have a direct line to me, I promise, when I'm trying to remove the device from my body.
Jenna: I'm going to make you like Joaquin Phoenix in Her. Just . . . [Laughter]
Kimberly: My god.
Aminatou: You know Mike Tyson really is into pigeons. I feel like we could talk about . . . like carrier pigeons.
Kimberly: I love you and your solution-oriented ass. I love that.
Aminatou: Listen, I am also trying to free myself from the shackles of the devices so you know? Whoever has it figured out has it figured out. But all of that said thank you both for coming on Call Your Girlfriend. You are two friends of the show forever and ever and ever and I really want to discuss your book Black Futures because it's so important. It was an important book when it came out at the end of last year, it is an important book this year, and it will remain an important piece of both the writing and testimony really to the way black lives are led. So I just want to say that. But in the foreword of the book you talk about how the entire project came together because of a DM essentially and so you had conceived of it as a zine and I love that kind of collaborative process where something sparks something for both of you. I love that you really documented that and I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about how the collaboration came to be.
(13:50)
Jenna: Yes! I mean listen, Yo Gotti had it right, it all goes down in the DMs. That's where all the good things happen these days. Yeah, I had been a long-time admirer of Kimberly's and I really do think the perk of being a writer, there are a few, but one is you always have a reason to reach out to people you admire. You always can be like "Hey, do you want to get coffee and just talk?" And not in a pick your brain kind of way but just is there an opportunity to collaborate? Are we like-minded? At least that's how things felt in 2015 which was a softer time for the Internet I think.
I had been mostly working on, for the Times, covering technology stories looking at how social media works, how people are using social media. I just felt like I wanted to do something beyond that that wasn't entirely possible at my day job at that time and I've been really just delighted by how black people use the Internet. I just really felt like in all the stories -- unless . . . either the stories about how we were using technology were really kind of, you know, I don't know, they were skinny and kind of gross and getting it wrong or there were none at all. And I also didn't want to write one of those stories either way but I did want to try to think about a project that got its arms around black creativity in the time of social media.
And so I just reached out to Kimberly. It's just like, I don't know, I'm just going to toss this penny into the wishing well and see what happens and Kimberly was like "Let's meet!" So that was really the beginning. And I've been saying this but I think it's really true, like I really have a lot of gratitude for Kimberly's just openness because she really didn't know me from the next person who was sliding into her DMs asking for things. It feels really special just being given the time of day and just being met with such a spirit of generosity so that's something I think a lot about. One of the reasons we're sitting here today is Kimberly was just so porous, just available, and I really appreciate that.
Aminatou: Ugh, I love hearing that. Kimberly what was the feeling for you when you saw this DM and then you kind of saw the potential? Why are we here today?
(16:05)
Kimberly: It's interesting because there's the me of that moment which is just like oh my god, Jenna Wortham is DMing me which I think anyone would feel. Of course Jenna has this incredible career as a critical thinker in the public realm that manifests in many different spaces but I think at first I was kind of like honored and taken aback. I think what happens sometimes, especially when dealing with black culture, it's just such a crapshoot sometimes in the ways in which you're recognized and the ways in which you're seen and the ways in which your contributions are really counted. And so it was really amazing to have an opportunity to connect with a peer who saw some of the work I was doing, so I was really game just from that off the bat.
And then of course with a little bit of distance I think for me on a more human cellular level it was just meeting vulnerability with more vulnerability. Jenna came in with this idea that was not fully formed which is of course such a sometimes dangerous thing to do and really trusted me with it and trusted me with my input on it because as you both know I'm very opinionated. [Laughter] We came together in that first meeting and it went from being a zine to being a book almost immediately. And we didn't know each other from Tom before we met up and we left and we're just like we're going to be in this endeavor together. I mean no one would advise anyone to do that but it worked out because we both came in with a certain level and degree of tenderness which has remained I think more than anything else in our dynamic and our relationship.
(17:45)
Aminatou: Ugh, I'm so inspired by that. You know Ann and I wrote in our book about how part of our collaboration was really because we were just nerdy bitches who wanted to find a structured way to spend time with each other. Like ah, we don't like to go to bars or just sit down alone; we need to do something together, like activities. I wonder how much of your calculation was that too, when you two were meeting each other. Were you like oh, I actually want to get to know this person and I want to understand their brain and working with them is the best way to do that?
Jenna: Hmm. Well this morning on our . . . we always have a block of time that we work on Mondays together and it's just a very gentle while we're having breakfast, or I'm having breakfast, just kind of responding to our emails and doing our various things. And I was just like I love working with you Kimberly. It's just nice. It's nice to start the week together. It's nice to be really gentle together. I mean I do think we've had to be really careful about the work/life balance in our friendship and I wonder if that's come up for you and Ann too, like how do you manage that? I would love to hear you talk about that. Because I think in our hyper productivity culture it's easy to spend all of your time together working and there's always more work to do. And I think that's something that, you know, both of our happiness meters go down if we're really just spending all of our time together working. But it has been amazing to have an excuse to be like "We can go look at this art together. We can go to this theatre as friends or also as like-minded creators and collaborators." That part has been ridiculously fun just to be like "Put it on the business calendar that we working!" [Laughter]
(19:30)
Aminatou: I mean, you know, you have to protect time for your friendship. The intimacy of your friendship can be very intertwined with the intimacy of your creative collaboration but if you are not -- like for us at least, for me and Ann, we definitely have to delineate that time because otherwise we could work 24/7, seven days a week. It's wonderful to find someone that you want to work with all the time because I have had less than stellar coworkers, like people that I am happy to never work with you again. So when you find someone that you can work with it works but at the same time it's like friendship is a different kind of work that needs to be attended to.
Kimberly: Yeah. I mean I think at the end of the day you want to find people you can be human next to and it's such an ongoing pursuit because it can be so exhausting and tiring to show up as your fullest self and I think that there's some ways that especially the overachievers among us can hide ourselves in our work capacity. And then the personal side is maybe where all those feelings are hidden. But being able to bring this really 360 version of yourself to meetings and to connections is so valuable and so important. Like there were so many heartbreaks and so many familial shifts and so many ways in which the world changed from the moment that we met. Like we met and connected in 2015 and of course the entire Trump era happened.
And so there's these incredible moments where it's just like today isn't a work day, like it couldn't possibly be a work day, and you have to have people in your network, in your community, in your life who help you to remember that. I was literally trying to schedule an interview with another friend Koa Beck who I love and I want to shout out her book White Feminism because it is an exceptional text. But I'm like let's do next weekend and she's like that's definitely the inauguration. [Laughter] So just having people you want to rub up against but can also just keep you grounded in fact and reality is I think a necessary companion when you're trying to just be and do things that are maybe bigger than what you could've imagined you could do in your lifetime. And I feel very much like that when I look at Black Futures. Like there were so many moments where I was like "I don't think we could do this." And it was really the partnership with Jenna that . . . it was like we are doing it. We are in the process of doing it. There's no reason to speak negatively about it. We have to have this really awakening moment and maybe we need to tend more to spirit or tend more to this but it's happening. It's going to happen.
(22:00)
Aminatou: Whew. I'm wondering if you could each speak to kind of the editorial vision of the book because one thing I was so struck by and enjoyed so much and I found also really surprising because Jenna you and I have had this conversation so many times about how we are not linear thinkers. I felt that every single piece in the book reminded me of a previous thread in the book, like in a way that was just very jarring to experience. It was like oh wow, these are really building on top of each other or this reminds me of something a couple pages ago. I just wonder how you did that because it's easy I think with a book like this to be like "Okay, I'm going to read a couple things or I'm going to flip a couple pages then I'll be back tomorrow," and you keep doing it, and I've enjoyed that. But there were also days where I was like I am going to sit here and we are getting through half of it. You know, just that endorphin rush of like oh wow, this is a body of work that just builds on itself. It was so pleasurable and I think also left me . . . it left me thinking so much about the connective tissue between so many things in our culture.
Kimberly: I appreciate that read. I think in some ways that the connective tissues are really due in large part to the nature of the invitation to each contributor. Everyone kind of worked in relative silos with the exception probably of instances where you see work paired with an artwork because we tried to make sure to get consent in those cases. But we really went to every single person and either asked for something that was preexisting for them or asked them to dream up something in relationship to the same prompt of what does it mean to be black and alive right now? We really went to everyone with the same kind of energy and excitement and interest in creating a book project that could begin to do some of the work of cataloguing what we were observing in terms of cultural shifts towards this amazing flourishing of black culture.
(24:15)
And so I think that is maybe it. We gave everyone runway in a way I think especially as a writer, and I think Jenna would agree, there's just not that many opportunities where we get the invitation to do what we want in the ways that we want. And that I think is one of the book's greatest shining successes is that for the most part everyone is represented in this really, I don't know, there's a flexibility in the reception that I hope people feel as readers and as contributors.
Jenna: I love that Kimberly. I would also add that we . . . I think the book is also a reflection of our preoccupations, you know? And the things that were engaging to us as we spent time collecting things and figuring out what we were going to memorialize. And so there's so much of the book that feels like a time capsule, so you go rom things like black simmers which was like this wild thing that felt like maybe not expected, like not something people would expect to be in the book as something worth archiving but something Kimberly and I both are deeply invested in, you know? Sort of how we show up in spaces online beyond the spaces that are most visible. What are the priorities?
(25:40)
And I think they . . . I don't know, it's really interesting. I think a lot about how the book started to shift as our purview shifted and something I always think about is when Kimberly came back from TED and was really revved up about ocean justice. Then we got this incredible essay by Ayana Johnson about climate change in coastal communities and how that affects black people. You know, it's one of the best pieces in the book in my opinion. It's so important and so interesting and just eye-opening and I think that's true with, you know, even thinking about the Colleen Smith tapestry which I wish I had the book in front of me so I could give the page number. I'm looking at the book but it's not physically in my hand. You know, and Colleen had just done this incredible installation in the lobby of the Whitney of these really beautiful ornate banners that when I walked into the Whitney and saw and was really taken aback. I was like damn. And of a desire for the book to be as multifaceted and multimedia as possible it's like maybe this should go in the book. It really in my mind does reflect the ways we were kind of tabbing through the world and tabbing through our lives and moving in these increasingly more interesting and bigger concentric circles around each other and our communities. And I do feel like, I don't know, it feels like both of our brains on the page and that's something I really love about everything that's in there right now.
Aminatou: It feels like both of our brains on the page. I love that. Man, you know, this book is -- it's very black. It is very queer. It is very kinky which I, again, like a thrill. You never know what you are going to get. I wonder if you could talk about the thought that went behind commissioning the pieces that you did in whole and what kind of -- what story you were trying to tell and what balance you were trying to strike. Because I imagine commissioning is one thing and when everything comes in it's like okay, now we have to make it into something.
(27:50)
Kimberly: Ooh, I love . . . when I think about commissions in the book there are several different iterations but I think almost immediately of the conversation series that we did for the book then the really brilliantly crafted social media essays that we have in the book because a lot of this text and what makes it I guess time-appropriate is this interest in social media and in the ways in which social media has afforded us the opportunity to connect with each other on a global scale in completely unprecedented ways.
And so I think being able to pair someone like Sam Irby and Sam Bailey in conversation or Sadie Barnett and Simone Brown in conversation or Rembert Brown and Ezra Edelman in conversation is just kind of like, I don't know, I'm always doing fantasy football with brilliant people where kind of like I want to know what you think but I also know this person might not exactly agree with you, or this work really informs this work and so how can we pull each other together? And then in relationship to the social media essays there's just so much that's garnished when a hashtag really pops off. It's not even a super articulate idea. It's just the hashtag can be such a wealth of information, whether that's as an organizing principle for organizing and really grassroots organizing and connectivity in relationship to a hashtag like #BlackLivesMatter or a hashtag like #ThanksgivingWithBlackFamilies where we commissioned the incredible Ziwe to write an essay responding to that hashtag and that flourishing that happened where it was just this kind of like invitation into what it means to be black at this time of the year in this really difficult holiday but also this room for talking about black family structures and talking about black humor. And so I think for us it was really, yeah, it was this opportunity to build record on our own terms and with the generosity of our contributors and the brilliance of our contributors.
(29:50)
Aminatou: I also want to talk a little bit about the fact that the publishing industry in general is extremely lazy when it comes to the way that they think about black authors and what they consider black books, you know? We heard so many stories in 2020 about people buying anti-racist books and then never . . . [Laughter]
Jenna: True, best story of the year.
Aminatou: It's so nuts. You're like wow, so many anti-racist books but so many racists. What's happening here?
Kimberly: So many anti-racist books that got returned.
Jenna: Never picked up.
Kimberly: Oh and never picked up. There's that incredible piece on Lit Hub that was about all these books that got backordered because people canceled their books because the window of delivery was too long.
Aminatou: Right. It's like you learned about racism in July and then you ordered a million books so we have to make the books for you and now you're mad at the delivery window. [Laughs] But also I just think about how many explicitly anti-racist textbook kind of books were on bestseller lists and were the books that people were touting which is I'm like there is a marketplace for those books and I think there's a place for them to exist. But the project that you are engaged in is so explicitly different from that and it is also . . . it's the difference for me between being like hi, here's how you be anti-racist which the answer is always be not racist. Whatever, let's write 300 pages about that. And then there's the work of hi, actually here is what -- like black people do not have to just write about racism and they do not have to just write about their experiences within white supremacy and talking to white folks. And I wonder how much of that was kind of in the background for you both as you were putting this book together but more importantly as the book came out into the world. Because I find that white publishing has a really hard time contextualizing books by black people well.
(32:10)
Jenna: Yeah. I mean and a question we were getting really early on was what will non-black people get out of this? We were like we don't know. [Laughter] We can start a Google response form and collect data. I don't know, we're black and we made this book very intentionally from our perspective for other black people. And not to say -- I mean please everyone read this book, there's something in it for everyone. But my day job is service journalism, you know? More or less, like pretty much, it's explaining and digesting and processing what's happening at any given moment in the world to an audience. That is not what this book project was. That's not how I want to spend my 40 percent of my creative time that was not going to my day job. It was not about, you know, being legible. What does it feel like to just immerse yourself in black ideas, right? And black privacy and black secrecy and black joy and black grief without it needing to be having like a sidebar.
I think those asides that the New York Times always has, it's like the optimistic challenge and then a really inadequate four-word explication of a thing that is so annoying right? And it just felt really good to be like this is not that. This book is so many things but it is 100 percent not that. And it was interesting, when . . . I can't remember what stage of the process this was in but at some point we got back a proof or some feedback on the chapter titles within the book and some of them have black in front of the word and some of them don't. It's like black is still beautiful. But then any time we had . . . it was like black legacy. You know, they just added black in front of every single word.
Kimberly: And I don't want to harp on this too long but it is something that keeps me up at night. I want to be smart and paraphrase Toni Morrison but I don't have the chops today. It makes me think a lot about -- speaking of the Times -- there was a T. Grates (?) issue that included Kerry James Marshall and he had this really brilliant quote about his work not necessarily being a critique to the larger art world but really it being about wanting to be juried amongst your peers. And I feel that so deeply about this book where it's like it's not Black Futures in Opposition to a White World. There is a white world on the periphery of course but it is not central and it doesn't have to be central, you know?
(34:45)
We I think as a people, as marginalized people, whatever margin you find yourself within, we grow so accustomed because we are so deeply socialized into submission and understanding that things are not made for us. And I think that that's okay. I think that that's okay. And we have in the same turn the agency to be able to center ourselves and that's what this book is. And so I don't give a fuck. I understand. I want everyone to have it because I think everyone can benefit from it. I still read the book that we fucking made and benefit from it. But am I going to tell you what a white audience should get from it? I don't know. I will never be white and I don't care to be, and I think that's okay. And the same way that I'm reading all this other shit on my shelves, I'm not like oh my god, if only . . . you know, no, I'm going to read this because it's a good book. What we made is a good book and if that's not enough for you to buy it I don't know what to tell you.
Aminatou: I mean this is mind-boggling to me because all three of us have managed to read books written by white people and somehow we have gotten . . . you know, I'm like we've gotten the imagination and the messaging and whatever we were supposed to take out of it. So I always find it baffling that that is always assumed that if you are not white you can consume white art. And you're like okay, I know what falling in love is. I understand what personal growth is, whatever the thing was you were supposed to take out of it. But whenever the creator is not white the question always is "What will white people take out of it?" And you're like this is such a baffling question.
Jenna: Did we all not watch Bridgerton and get something from it? I mean come on. [Laughter]
Kimberly: This is such a . . . ugh.
Aminatou: I'm not going to lie to you, but also please do not revoke my black card, but I have not watched Bridgerton. I have watched every TikTok about Bridgerton and I know . . .
Kimberly: Let me tell you Bridgerton is not a black story at all so don't let anyone lie to you.
Jenna: Don't let anyone lie to you.
Kimberly: There is no card to be revoked because there is no access to the card. The card is completely invisible in relationship to that storytelling. Don't let anyone tell you different.
Aminatou: The part is if Chandra makes it we have to watch it, you know what I mean? But I'm like you just made a period TV show that's race blind but somehow race is a part of it? I don't understand. Also yeah.
Kimberly: It's not race blind.
Aminatou: I'll get to it in 2023 but it's not for me right now. [Laughs]
Kimberly: I don't watch Scandal. That's my admission and I feel good about that.
Aminatou: I only saw seven episodes of Scandal and I had to come off the train. But I enjoy everyone's enjoyment of Scandal. That's my Scandal.
Kimberly: The thing is we can be happy for others and participate, you know? It's great. A novel idea.
(37:25)
Jenna: I really think Bridgerton does kind of illustrate this thing we're talking about though which is this thing that media often does is they'll say "Look, there are black characters. There are black story lines," without acknowledging the way those characters are not centralized at all. They're still marginalized. Even though they're trying to make this commentary or they're trying to be part of some, I don't know. Whatever point that show was trying to make about rice they did not get right and maybe in the next eight seasons that have been greenlit they'll figure it out. But I also feel like I just get so tired of media telling me this is for me or this is something that involves my perspective or has something to do with me when it fucking doesn't mean to. You can just make this show and have your ahistorical -- first of all ahistorical is never ahistorical, point blank. But you can make this show and you can make your little swirl sister period costume drama without -- go ahead if that's what you want to do. But it doesn't have to be a selling point for me that there are black characters in it. It's still a white TV show. I don't know, it's a little tangential but I just feel like I just was tired of that also as being an excuse for media. It's like there can be so many different types of projects in the world. We can have this but we can have other stuff too.
Kimberly: We need actual criticism. It's like is it good? I want to know is it good? There are so many years, especially in relationship to visual arts and especially black artists, where there are critics who are like "There was art on the walls and the artist is black." I'm like can we just like -- come on, come off it. Like it's an exceptional -- is it an exceptional product? Is it something that we should turn to? They talk about This is Us as like the second coming.
Jenna: Hey. [Laughs]
(39:08)
Kimberly: There's no good or not. You know? I don't know, that's the thing and I think there's been some opportunities in relation to this book where we've seen writers or reviewers or people who we've had conversations with who really get that, that we worked really hard to make something exceptional and if it's not tell me why not. But I don't . . . I found myself getting really angry and I still feel really angry because we worked on this book for nearly five years without a question of what it would do for white people. Like literally five solid years of hours and hours and hours, nights and motherfucking weekends on this project. And at the end of the day all I want to talk about is was it good or not? Did it hit home for some of you? Can it be made into another format so more people can tend to these ideas and really think about and reckon with what it means to build our own archives? Those are the conversations I want to have. I don't want to be talking about these other things but I also understand market is market, whatever. But it breaks my heart every time it comes up. And I know that's not what you were asking clearly.
Jenna: I know you have a lot to say about it. [Laughter]
Kimberly: Honey! It makes me so sad, it really does. It really makes me sad. It's not a blind spot, it's just like I don't center whiteness in my day-to-day life and I've refused it for so many years in my career and I just won't start now.
(40:30)
Jenna: We also didn't even get a totality of blackness before we . . . that's the part that drives me crazy too, this is the last thing I'll say about it for sure, but there are so many elements of blackness and the black experience. The totality. The totality of blackness is not in this book and yet we're going to talk about what are white people going to get from this? No, I want to talk about what other black people are going to get from this or not get from this. There's still a whole . . . but even that is such a great critique and commentary on just how we view the labor of black people in service too, right? And that I'm grateful for because it just . . . you know? I don't know, it just lays it out beautifully.
Aminatou: I agree with that. I think the -- you know, it's like the three of us know right? The process of writing a book brings out a lot. It emotionally brings out a lot for you and I think writing a book with someone else also is such a specifically different process right? Where it is a joint vision, not necessarily a personal vision. But at the end of the day it very much is did you set out to do the thing that you wanted to do? And did you do it in a way that both satisfies your creativity and your curiosity and do you think that it's good? And that internal barometer, I find for non-white authors it really rubs up against whatever the marketplace says or wants. So this is basically my rant at the publishing industry, you know? And so many things -- so many conversations we have in private that sometimes are not productive in public. But I don't know, I am excited that both of you made this book. I'm excited that you are excited about it and I think that at the end of the day it's such a prophetic title, you know? Black Futures. It's like the future will tell what is in store for this book, not the publishing industry of 2020 and 2021. So that's just my rant. Thank you both for coming. [Laughter] No one's going to let me write a book ever again. They're going to be like this book is too militant, no thank you.
Kimberly: You keep writing them, we'll keep reading them like you said.
Jenna: Line them up, we'll knock them down. I'm telling you.
[Interview Ends]
Ann: Ugh, everyone needs this book.
Aminatou: Right? Let's take a break.
[Ads]
(45:45)
Ann: So I spoke with Gish Jen who is the author of several books of both fiction and non-fiction. Her latest is The Resisters which is a novel set in a future America, it's unclear just how future, honestly could be tomorrow. In some ways a really classic techno-dystopian future where the society is super clearly divided between the producers who are the haves, they're called the netted, and the full-time consumers who are the have-nots called the surplus. And basically it is like a climate changed future where half the country's underwater. Guess who gets the literal high ground? It's the rich people. And it's a story about an underground baseball league among the surplus and a young woman with an incredible pitching arm who kind of through her skills makes her way into the world of the netted and has to make a lot of decisions about how she wants to live and her identity and her continued resistance.
Aminatou: I cannot wait to listen to this.
[Interview Starts]
Ann: Gish thank you so much for being on the podcast.
Gish: Oh it's my pleasure.
Ann: I would love to start off with you talking a little about the world of The Resisters. Not just sort of the mechanics of what is AutoAmerica but what does this world kind of feel like to your characters?
Gish: Well of course first of all it's a world where a lot of people don't find jobs. That's by the way not just my imagination that we might not have jobs. I was just looking at a McKenzie report that sort of suggested by 2030 we might be out 800 million jobs. So, you know, we do have a big change coming to society. And in the world that I write about a lot of people don't have jobs. They are the surplus. Some people do have jobs, the netted, but jobs are a very valuable thing. Everyone's very focused on either having a job or not having a job.
(48:00)
Of course there's been climate change and so there's been a lot of flooding. That means a lot of places have become kind of marooned places. These are office parks, schools. They're up on a hill now but they're up on a hill so you can kind of get to them. They've become like little islands. But the surplus who don't have jobs, in a funny kind of way they have a lot of leisure. So they are able to fence and garden and knit and in the case of my characters play baseball but it's not really as happy as it could be in part because there's an Aunt Netty. It's kind of an AI-empowered Internet of Things that kind of I don't want to say runs everything but everything is mediated through Aunt Netty.
Aunt Netty is not really interested in supporting these surplus people forever so there's a sense of menace. On the one hand they theoretically have kind of a universal basic income but in actuality they're being what they call winnowed meaning that there's maybe something suspect about their food. They're definitely not allowed to procreate freely. And also there's some sense that the playing fields, if you're a baseball player, they're official playing fields but a kind of gas is coming from them and those gases could be poisonous. So like I say it's just a world where there's weirdly a lot of leisure but also a lot of menace.
(49:30)
Ann: Right. And at the center of your story is this small family, parents and a daughter, and I found it really interesting -- maybe this is my own lens on things -- but I feel like so many stories center around rebellious children and parents who are maybe more beholden to a system. This story especially in the beginning is about a family that has resistance in common or that seems fairly united. I'm wondering what made you want to write about a family that had resistance in common.
Gish: Well there's a lot to resist in this world. [Laughs] Maybe -- I myself am a parent. I myself, you know, looking at the younger generation I see that they are also greatly interested in resistance. So I guess it's interesting that you should say that. You're the first person to comment on that but now that you've said it I do wonder if some of our narratives are a little bit different now because of the nature of the world that we're living in.
Ann: You know to me Gwen, the daughter, feels like in many ways the protagonist of this book, or maybe I'm just personally relating to her more, yet you chose to make her father the narrator. I'm curious about that choice and why you made it.
Gish: I think that as I was writing around and I realized I actually had two larger-than-life characters in this book, you know, Eleanor who's kind of an Atticus Finch sort of character and big resistant lawyer and a daughter who is just a preternaturally gifted pitcher. And it occurred to me as a fiction writer of course that that's kind of a problem. How are you going to make people believe that you have this girl who can pitch 80 miles an hour plus, right? How are you going to get people to believe that?
(51:15)
And the answer is you have to have kind of an ordinary mortal in there somewhere, you know what I mean? You have to have somebody looking at her and witnessing what she can do. I mean nothing would be more off-putting than some girl getting there and saying "I can really pitch. I might be the next Satchel Paige. [Laughter] You know, I am really gifted." That's just not going to wash right?
So you have to have somebody looking at her. The same way if you were a photographer and you were taking a picture or you were trying to photograph Abraham Lincoln, you want to make him look larger than life. The answer is you've got to take it from below him right? Looking up. And so I needed an ordinary mortal to be looking up at these titanic figures to really give them their full due.
Ann: There's some observations in the book about baseball being something that is harmed by artificial intelligence or by the perfection of machines rather than improved by it, at least in the kind of dominant thinking of this AI algorithmically-driven world of AutoAmerica. And it really got me thinking about other things that could be similar sites of resistance, other things that feel more valuable because they are untouched by computer perfection. And so I'm kind of wondering why baseball of all those things and then whether you yourself have any hobbies or things that you do that are this kind of active, imperfect, I don't know, active resistance just by doing it or by passing time that way?
(52:48)
Gish: Huh. Well let me see, because my book was so much about democracy in America, I've always been very, very interested in the American project and of course when I was sitting down to this book the Trump administration had been in power for ten months and it was clear to me we had a major challenge to democracy. And of course if you're thinking that way baseball is the perfect metaphor right? It is the great American sport. So many of our ideas about the ideal America are tied up with baseball, with a level playing field, everybody getting a chance at bat, and a place where really whatever is in you can be realized right?
So it was a very kind of natural thing for me. It was a natural metaphor for me to reach for. I myself can't throw a ball. [Laughs] I can't throw a ball worth beans. In fact after much writing about pitching, you know, I live in a lake and we have a problem with geese and I remember thinking, you know, I've been writing about . . .
Ann: You know there are problematic geese in the book as well. [Laughs]
Gish: Yes, yeah, the geese are a big thing and I thought clearly I can throw this rock down the hill at them to scare them. And, you know, it's downhill. [Laughs] Despite having written and written and written about it I still could only throw a rock like 15 feet. So baseball was not my hobby. But I will say in a general sort of way I think writing itself is a kind of resistance. I mean in my book also there are many forms of resistance. This family is resisting dehumanizing forces on every front and they are knitting and they are fencing and doing many things which are useless. And of course all useless things are kind of resistant in a capitalist society.
(54:40)
Ann: It's interesting that you say that. For me so much of this book was -- I mean maybe everything these days for me is about how we make personal decisions in the face of huge injustices, like huge systemic problems, and how we each have to find our own balance between resistance and acquiescence. Which is to say no one can be full resistance mode 24/7 all the time. I'm curious about how you made choices for your characters in balancing or walking the line between how to be forever resisting versus the limits of human existence, the limits of exhaustion, and how you found that balance for yourself of whether it's possible to be resisting 24/7 or sometimes you just have to pause even though it might look like a temporary giving in?
Gish: Well for my characters of course, because they live in such an oppressive society, everything they do is resistance but it isn't necessarily exhausting. In other words knitting is not exhausting. Gardening is not exhausting. And then there's nothing to acquiesce to in the sense of the system that they're in is simply oppressive and there's no way out. I mean the only thing really, the system is trying to winnow them. It's trying to kill them but it can't kill them outright.
(56:00)
So in a funny kind of way there's nothing for them to acquiesce to. You know, in my own life of course there's a balance, especially when you have children. You know, you cannot simply live your life as you'd like. [Laughs] And of course you make compromises. But I have to say that in my life I've been pretty lucky in that I have not had to make terrible compromises and I have been largely able to do what it is I feel I was put on earth to do. So for me it hasn't been so bad. That said I can't claim that I've never been in a meeting and said maybe I should say nothing when I would like to say something, you know? I can't say those moments have never occurred to me. But I will say that I'm very lucky that the older I get the less I have to do that. So I don't want to make everybody deeply envious but I'm very, very lucky that way.
Ann: Do you think some of that is about the world changing, or is it about your position of power within publishing? Or within the spaces that you occupy? Where do you think that comes from?
Gish: You know, I guess it's just a fit between what I've decided to do with myself and what's expected of somebody like me, you know what I mean? Maybe there are times when my younger self would've been afraid. You know, what's going to happen? Will I not be able to publish my next book if I fill in the blank, you know? What could happen to me? Now I don't really care. [Laughs] You know? I'm just older. First of all I'm not so fearful. I don't think that's going to happen to me, you know? Some magazine or some I don't know what, some critic is going to look at me cross-eyed. I feel like look at me cross-eyed, I don't care. [Laughs] So there's been an internal shift as well.
(57:54)
Ann: You know, everything in this book feels -- and I suspect is so firmly rooted in things that are happening in present day. I find myself wondering about your process for figuring out which of the many horrible things happening in our world now, or which of the many potential futures that we all see unspooling you wanted to kind of cherry-pick to build this world for the novel and if you had a process for saying like hmm, I just read this article about AI and that seems like the kind of thing my brain wants to take to its furthest possible conclusion. How did you keep track?
Gish: You know, you make the process sound so intentional. [Laughter]
Ann: I know, I'm asking you a journalist question.
Gish: I don't really decide. It's funny because right before this was non-fiction and so I'm asked a lot of questions about what's the difference between writing non-fiction and fiction? And I sort of said, you know, you can write non-fiction when you're completely awake. With fiction you need to be a little asleep. And the fact of the matter is this is my nightmare. It's what comes up, you know what I mean, when I'm in kind of this twilight zone so I don't pick. It's just what I'm worried about.
And there's a way in which if you allow yourself to kind of worry that way, you know, a lot of things will pop up that will turn out to be quite prescient. No sooner did I finish my book than COVID came and the attitude toward the elderly and a lot of the people who were dying was basically they were expendable right? And I didn't write my book thinking oh, well maybe there will be a pandemic and you'll see what I mean that some people in society are seen as expendable. But clearly I thought that then when it happened it was just like oh, but that's always been true that actually we have this attitude toward the week and unproductive that they're expendable.
(59:48)
In the automation riots in my book that are referred to people storm the Capitol. You just have these nightmares, you don't know why, but I guess at some level subconsciously you do register that these things are possible in society. And in this very apartheid-like world that is described in my book very sadly I do think that that is a possibility still for us.
And of course the book is the nightmare and you write the nightmare in order to have the opposite come true. You don't write the nightmare thinking oh, I'm hoping this will come true; you write it because you're trying to prevent it from becoming true. And of course as you know the book on one hand is a dystopia but it's also a kind of utopia. So it both points to a world that could come to be which is just beyond terrible but it also points to people who actually can find another way and who can help remake the world.
Ann: Ugh, it's so interesting to hear you say that because when I have my own late-night spinning out moments I do think that the speculative fiction that I have read does play a part in helping me slot the news of the day into this longer-term negative frankly vision for what could become of society. It's interesting to hear you say that about utopia and the waking part of your brain because I am just now struggling to think about a work of speculative fiction that feels truly utopian. [Laughs] You know what I mean? I'm actually like huh, what if I laid awake at night thinking about all the possibilities if we all marshaled the power that we have on this level of the 25th amendment and showing up to protest for black lives? All of these things that feel very conscious waking brain we want to do. Yeah, I don't know. Sorry that's not a question. I'm really just thinking about the utopian speculative fiction and where is it and whether that's something I need to seek out for myself.
(1:01:55)
Gish: Well, you know, I don't think today as you were sort of saying, if somebody were to write a utopia, I think you'd be bored, you know? Because it's not how we feel, you know what I mean?
Ann: [Laughs] Yeah.
Gish: It wouldn't resonate. You'd just feel like this person, what are they own?
Ann: Right. I guess that's true.
Gish: But in mine I will say that I think there is a kind of utopia within my dystopia and I think it's kind of a grounded utopia in the sense that that utopia is born of a conscious mind thinking what could we do? And it's also born of the fact that I'm looking at the younger generation and I see a lot of hope. I mean I don't mean to be a Pollyanna because this is a terrible, terrible moment in American history but it is also true I see a younger generation coming up. They are so savvy, they're so equipped, they're so clued in and I don't actually believe that the world that we're in now will go on indefinitely. I actually believe it's going to take some time but I actually think this country's going to turn around.
Ann: I'm tempted to just end it there because that's a sentiment I want to leave ringing in people's ears. [Laughter] Gish thank you so much for being on the podcast. It's been such a pleasure.
Gish: Oh thank you for having me.
[Interview Ends]
(1:03:18)
Aminatou: Okay, I'm convinced. I will read this book. Thank you.
Ann: [Laughs] I love the interviews that just function as a drum beat for get this book now, get this book now. You have to read this book. I have to say that what you were saying earlier about Red Pill in terms of being frequently unsettled by reading it or having it be anxiety fuel, I definitely had more than my fair share of moments with this book in that sense. But I also think it's really helpful to be able to see the specific contours of the path that we are on now as a society and realize that right, we still get to make choices. We still get to act.
Aminatou: Also I love that we didn't plan this, and I know this is going to drive you up the wall because you like to be the planner. [Laughs] Editorially we had not discussed that we were going to talk about books that -- there was so much sports and sci-if and dystopia and . . .
Ann: And future, yeah.
Aminatou: And futurism in our book choices which we had not previous discussed and that makes me really happy.
Ann: Ugh, I know. It's almost like there is a mood right now of feeling connected by dystopia resistance and futurism. I don't know. Maybe it's we're just reading the news and in this world. Maybe that's what's going on.
Aminatou: Right, like the news feels fake but the books are very much real. [Laughs] So that's where I'm at.
Ann: God, isn't that true when . . . like I know there is that adage of the truth is stranger than fiction but I really feel like at this point it's a co-equal sort of thing, like everything is strange. The lines between . . . it's funny how you always talk about how you're bad at reading fiction and you're better at reading non-fiction and part of me is like the lines are blurring every day. It's not such a clear distinction.
Aminatou: It just activates these different parts of my brain where when I read non-fiction I'm just like yes, research. I get so excited about that part of it. And when I read fiction it's like that emoji where the brain explodes. You know the one I'm talking about?
Ann: Yes, like the mushroom cloud head.
Aminatou: Yes, I have mushroom cloud head at every page. I'm like this came out of someone's imagination? [Laughs] I cannot relate and I'm thrilled. This is amazing.
Ann: I know, I know.
Aminatou: As my notes in the margins of Red Pill say are we in a simulation? Unclear. Tune in next week for the next Call Your Girlfriend episode.
Ann: If we're here talking about inauguration next week you'll know we are not in a simulation and life continues. Or is that the simulation wanting us to talk about the inauguration of a new president? I don't even know. I don't know. Do we have agency?
Aminatou: Tune in. Tune in. I will see you in the simulation my love.
Ann: [Laughs] Oh, I mean most literal interpretation of see you on the Internet. Yes, I will see you.
Aminatou: You can find us many places on the Internet: callyourgirlfriend.com, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, we're on all your favorite platforms. Subscribe, rate, review, you know the drill. You can call us back. You can leave a voicemail at 714-681-2943. That's 714-681-CYGF. You can email us at callyrgf@gmail.com. Our theme song is by Robyn, original music composed by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs. We're on Instagram and Twitter at @callyrgf. Our producer is Jordan Bailey and this podcast is produced by Gina Delvac.