Inspiration for Survival with Dolen Perkins-Valdez

[00:00:00] We're living in a historical moment. We are living it. And as a result, we can't step outside of it and have perspective on it. We have to just survive. Right. I think our number one priority right now has got to be to remain whole and intact. What's good? I'm Nikesha Elise Williams and this is Black & Published on the Mahogany Books Podcast Network. Bringing you the journeys of writers, poets, playwrights, and storytellers of all kinds.

[00:00:29] Today, we have a return guest to the show, Dolen Perkins-Valdez. She's back with her new novel, Happyland. The book is based on the true story of how a group of Black people found their own kingdom on more than 200 acres of mountain land that straddled between North and South Carolina. We have to remember that just because slavery was over, Black people were still endangered.

[00:00:54] And that to me makes it even more remarkable, right? That they had the ability to say, we have to leave. In writing Happyland, Dolen is correcting the historical record about the origins of the Happyland settlers that has stood as the final word for 75 years. How she learned about this intentional Black settlement and the research she says is still required.

[00:01:19] Plus, the reason Dolen believes land ownership represents the possibility of Black imagination. And how the kingdom of the Happyland may provide a blueprint for Black people today living in this time of crisis. We go into the hills next when Black & Published continues.

[00:01:50] So, Dolen, last time we talked was for Take My Hand and I had asked you what you were working on. And you were telling me you were down in South Carolina digging through the Klan records and reading the transcripts of the trials. I had no idea that this was about to be Happyland, but here we are. So, why this book and why now? These stories just choose me.

[00:02:18] And a lot of different stories come across my desk, but they don't make it to book form, right? Like, there are a lot of things I hear about that are intriguing and interesting, but they aren't interesting enough to sort of sustain my interest over the course of a book. So, I don't have an answer to why now. But I can say that just like Take My Hand, I felt like this was a story that needed to be told.

[00:02:48] It was a story that hadn't been told. And I had questions. Whenever I'm following my natural curiosity and it starts uncovering things, I know that I have a book. And with this story, I needed to know more than what we had previously believed about the Happyland. I knew there had to be more there than what the published newspaper accounts were telling us.

[00:03:18] And I figured that if I could just continue digging, I would find it. And I did. Your book is actually correcting the record on what had been the official account of who the people of the Kingdom of the Happyland were. How did you first find out that there was this settlement of black people in North Carolina? Well, I stumbled on it accidentally.

[00:03:45] My pandemic hobby was learning the banjo, was teaching myself the banjo. I was inspired by Rihanna and Giddens and the Carolina Chocolate Drops. And I knew from them and all of the phenomenal work that they had done that the banjo had a history rooted in black and African culture. And so that really intrigued me.

[00:04:07] I was digging around, looking not only at black banjo players in the Carolinas, but also looking at just black guitarists like Etta Baker, who is from the Piedmont area. And while digging around and sort of Western North Carolina music archives. And I stumbled on this article about this kingdom. And I thought, well, this is certainly made up. I thought the same thing that my character thinks that this is just some kind of local lore.

[00:04:36] And then I dug around a little bit and it appeared to be real. And I knew there had been, you know, black intentional communities after slavery ended. I had heard about those. And of course, all of us who were students of Zora Noel Hurston, we knew about like towns like Eatonville, Florida. So I knew that black people had been establishing all black communities for a long time.

[00:05:01] But never had I heard of one in which they named a king and a queen and modeled themselves after African royalty. So I was just really intrigued. I reached out to a man by the name of Ronnie Pepper, who had been cited in some of the articles as a local storyteller raconteur in Hendersonville, North Carolina. And he was also a librarian. So I said, let me reach out to Ronnie.

[00:05:31] And he was the nicest, kindest person and invited me down there. And right before I went, he said, I want you to meet my friend Suzanne Hale. And I said, OK. And he says, you can stay with her when you come if you want to. And I said, no, I have a hotel. That's OK. I appreciate it. And then, of course, later, once I saw Suzanne's house, I regretted it because she has a fabulous house. And then the next time I went, I did take him up on that and stay with her.

[00:05:58] But Suzanne was a member of the Hendersonville Black History and Culture Society with Ronnie. And she was very interested in this story as well. And Suzanne, Ronnie and I worked together to unearth some of these. And we forged, I think, a lifelong friendship and was really just for me something I'll never forget.

[00:06:22] What was it like to realize that the written record of the Kingdom of the Happy Land was not only incorrect, factually incorrect, but like just started wrong? Well, it was something because the pamphlet that had been published in the 1950s was by a local woman by the name of Sadie Smathers Patton. And that had been the standard account for decades.

[00:06:50] In fact, there was a recent New York Times book review of a wonderful new book that just came out about Black utopian communities. And the reviewer cited a link in the digital version of the New York Times to an article that he references the Kingdom of the Happy Land in the review. And he cites an article to a local North Carolina newspaper that cites the patent pamphlet.

[00:07:16] So we're still, you know, trying to get the word out that that pamphlet was inaccurate. The short story of it is that she embellished, right? She just embellished. She did interview descendants from the kingdom and some of the things that she found were accurate, but then she embellished. And that embellishment became part of the record.

[00:07:38] But I remember specifically going to Hendersonville and Suzanne and Ronnie and I read Suzanne's house and Suzanne invited us back into her home office. And she pulled up a map of Spartanburg County from the 1800s. And it was one of those maps where the land ownership was delineated. And then the name of the family that owned that plot of land was in the middle of it. So it was a it was sort of a land survey map.

[00:08:05] And she said to me and Ronnie, I think this is where they were from, not Mississippi. They were from Spartanburg County, South Carolina. And I said, wow, this is a big deal. But I had always suspected and Suzanne and I had talked about this at the beginning that they weren't from Mississippi.

[00:08:26] I just thought it wasn't unusual for black freed people to walk very long distances after enslavement ended when they were looking for family members. That wasn't unusual. But I thought there were a lot of places along the way they could have stopped to build a community. There were communities actually in Mississippi. There was community in Tennessee. There was community in Kentucky. They went so far just to establish this community.

[00:08:53] And I just thought something about that didn't sit right with my instincts. And so when we discovered that they were from right down the road in South Carolina, that just opened up a whole world. Because then the question was, why did they leave? Then the question was, what was going on in South Carolina? Then the question was, you know, what were they seeking? I think that one little discovery, and I actually give Suzanne all the credit for that.

[00:09:21] Because she was diligent in chasing the paper trail that we had, which were census records, which were federal slave schedules, which were property records, all of those things. She was so diligent. And once she discovered that, then I sort of ran with it and started looking up every South Carolina newspaper and looking up everything that was going on in those little towns. You talk about chasing the paper trail that you had.

[00:09:49] And I think one of the things that may stifle not only historical fiction writers or people who are curious about ancestry, but just that stifles knowledge and information in general, is that Black people don't show up on census records until 1870 as people because before then we were property.

[00:10:14] So finding those records and having to chase the slave records and all of that, what kind of paper trail were you able to build to make your case for this community coming from Spartanburg County, South Carolina, and moving in 1873? We started with the thing that we all knew was there, and that was the property deed when they bought the land. They bought over 200 acres on that mountain. Approximately half of it was in North Carolina and the other half was in South Carolina.

[00:10:45] And the deeds are split. One part of it is put in the name of one of the Montgomery brothers, and the other is in Luella Bobo's name, Luella Montgomery. So we had a woman property owner that owned over 100 acres of land. So we knew who they were. We knew some of the names of the kingdom dwellers. And so you have to work backwards when you're doing Black history, right? You always have to go chronologically backwards.

[00:11:14] So you start with them. And then we looked for, just on a hunch, in Spartanburg Library, any sorts of records from 1870. Because in 1870, they are still down there. They don't leave until after the KKK trials end in 1872. They go up in the summer of 1873. So they are in that 1870 census. Then you have to look at the newspaper articles.

[00:11:40] We found, for example, a listing of Black men who had been publicly whipped in the city center. And one of them was Martin Bobo, Luella's father. And then we said, okay, well, why was he whipped? Well, usually Black men would have been punished for either voting or being prosperous, right? Just jealousy of their prosperity.

[00:12:06] And we found that Martin Bobo, that year, had made over $800 from his farming. And that was a lot. That was more than a lot of poor whites. And they were jealous, I believe. I know in my heart. And also, we found that men in his church were voting. And then I looked to see what was South Carolina doing during the Reconstruction period

[00:12:32] that was angering white men so much and causing the Klan to be so violent. And I found that, you know, South Carolina had elected different Black legislators, including like a Black Secretary of State. And so there was a lot of racial animosity because of that. So then I went through the newspaper articles, and I began to find even more references to Martin Bobo and his church. And I discovered that the church had been accused of cannibalism,

[00:13:01] and that it was an article that had been originally published in a South Carolina newspaper, but that had then gone the sort of 19th century equivalent of viral and had been published in newspapers all over the country. The same account of this band of Black churchgoers who had kidnapped an elderly woman and planned to eat her. It's the most astounding little article that you'll ever read. But yet, many, many newspapers all the way to Canada were reprinting it.

[00:13:31] And I found out that Black preachers who had their own congregations at that time were considered a threat. They wanted Black people to be in white churches where you could control them with your own doctrine of the gospel. But when Black folks started their own churches, they couldn't control what Black preachers were saying. And they had a reason even to feel threatened, because as we know, the history of the Black church

[00:13:59] has always been more than just spiritual. It's also been a political space. And so they feared probably correctly that Martin Bobo was encouraging the men of the church to vote. So, you know, when you're doing this history, you have to really be thinking through, because not every single thing is going to be there in the archive. So I just kept pushing and kept digging

[00:14:28] so that I could really get a fuller picture. And then the last thing I'll say is they sold all of their tools, their pigs, everything for very, very cheap, very, very quickly, right before they left. Some of them even sold off like their houses. And that told me that they were fleeing. The fact that they sold things for cheaper than what they were worth very, very quickly, and then got on that road up that mountain. I think they were fleeing violence.

[00:14:57] Yeah, because you say on page 26, what you just said here, like, you know, the church was not only a place for the Holy Spirit, it was a place for politics and Luella's voice. And what I'm struck by hearing you tell the story about the cannibalism, it reminds me of that saying, the lie is halfway around the world before the truth has even woken up and put its shoes on. And how pervasive those negative narratives of Black people could be spread with the intent to do them harm

[00:15:26] or put them back in their place. And so to see that they are threatened and fleeing everything that they know to make this new community, how did that make you feel to realize they had that much fortitude and foresight to continue to prosper as best they could in unknown circumstances and conditions? That's the very thing that made me want to write the book. Because if you take Sadie Patton's interpretation

[00:15:55] as fact, you know, she makes it seem like they rose up and they were free and they did this thing that was very bold. And now that they, you know, now that slavery was over, they could then become property owners, etc. And I do think it was bold and I do think they were absolutely remarkable for doing what they were doing. But we have to remember that just because slavery was over, Black people were still endangered.

[00:16:23] And that to me makes it even more remarkable, right? That they had the ability to say, we have to leave. They had to leave everything behind. They had been there their entire lives and they had to leave it all behind. And that, for me, makes it even more remarkable. And they go up there and they make this negotiation with this widow,

[00:16:53] Serapta Davis, who actually made this deal with them, that they would move onto the land that was formerly her slave quarters before the war and that they would farm that land in a deal with her and that it was this mutually beneficial relationship. And then eventually, they purchased from her son over 200 acres and they owned that land all the way up until 1919. You know, it is just absolutely remarkable. And some of the kingdom descendants,

[00:17:23] even after, you know, the kingdom began to peter out and the young people started to move off, they bought land. So some of the kingdom descendants are the descendants of people who didn't stay all the way until 1919. They left at some point to go purchase land elsewhere. So they gave, I believe that the model of the kingdom gave them the sort of tools by which they could then stand on their own two feet, which there's something about that that's really special to me. I know you say in the author's note

[00:17:52] that you take creative liberties with the story, but listening to you tell me the history, I'm like, it's pretty... It's pretty close, right? I mean, I am trying to teach the history of the kingdom, right? Like, of course, the contemporary storyline in the book is all made up, but I really am trying to speak directly to Patton's pamphlet and to offer an alternative account. And I'm also opening the door for actual historians

[00:18:22] of North Carolina history to go in and to finish what we started, right? Because there's more work to be done in that archive. And so what I'm trying to say is come back and take another look at this. And I would love for those who are writing about Black intentional communities to include Kingdom of the Happy Land because it was an important community. Okay, so then let's talk about the contemporary storyline that you created

[00:18:49] to parallel with the historical one. You have this character, Sydney. It's... I interviewed Miss Bernice McFadden, so now it's in my head. She's a firstborn girl, but firstborn girl... Who has a firstborn girl? Yes! Oh, I can't wait to read that book. I love Bernice. So Sydney is a firstborn girl. She works in real estate. She has a daughter who's 19 and seemingly aimless. There's a big rift in the family between all of the mothers and daughters.

[00:19:19] And she's called by her grandmother to come down to what she will learn to be is the Kingdom of the Happy Land and help. But her grandmother is very obstinate as well as her mother. There's been this big rift where they haven't spoken to each other in like, what, eight to 12 years, something like that? And... But she goes because she's curious. Why stake this unknown history in this family that really doesn't even know itself outside of the grandmother?

[00:19:49] One of the things I wanted to ask because then, you know, once you start to sort of speak to the historical record and sort of correct that, then you have to ask yourself as a writer, at least I do, as a writer of historical fiction, what do I have to say about it? What perspective? I always say that like, my work isn't necessarily political, but it has a point of view. In fact, I think all work has a point of view, whether or not the writer wants to acknowledge it or not. But I acknowledge that I bring a point of view to these stories.

[00:20:18] And it isn't to sort of be didactic. It is to just offer a perspective, right? Something maybe that people haven't thought about. And my question was, what did it mean to own land other than generational wealth? Of course, we cannot ignore that land ownership to this day provides an avenue to generational wealth for American families. But I knew that it meant more than that. It meant also

[00:20:47] it was a narrative of who we were. It also meant community. It also meant family bonds. It also meant, and I particularly wanted to touch on this with Nikki, a belief about what we could do, a belief in our possibilities. It represented the imagination. Like, the ability to even imagine what we could do was tied into land ownership. Right? And there's this line late in the book, but this isn't a plot spoiler,

[00:21:16] where Brian urges Nikki, just imagine for a moment what you would do if you own this land. And in that moment, she expands as a woman, as an individual, and as a Black woman. She expands because you can't do it if you can't imagine it. And so, what I was trying to capture with the contemporary storyline was how over the years, the family relationships

[00:21:46] have broken down, and that has not been inextricable from the loss of the land, that it has been connected. And that when we lose these gathering places and when we lose the history of our families, we lose each other. The story, both contemporary and historical, is as much about what community can build and what it looks like

[00:22:15] when community breaks down as it is about what it means to be free. Since you said you always have a point of view in the story, and we are in this very chaotic moment in history that we are living through, do you think places like Kingdom of the Happy Land and Mound Bayou and Coe Ridge, which you mentioned as other settlements, intentional Black settlements in the novel, could be

[00:22:44] spaces that can be recreated again as a sense of safety? What a question. I'll tell you this, Ronnie Pepper, the North Carolinian who I worked with in researching this book, when some of these things started to happen, I talked to Ronnie, and Ronnie is a distinguished senior gentleman. He said to me, Dolan, don't you worry too much. We've been here before. We've been here before, and we got through it, and we'll get through it again.

[00:23:16] And I think a lot about that wisdom that Ronnie shared with me, and I know that these kinds of communities were one way we got through it. But we didn't just get through it by separating ourselves completely in a town or in a settlement. We also got through it with our community organizations, right? Whatever that might look like, whether it be church, whether it be women's clubs, whether it be masons or whatever,

[00:23:45] we got through it by just being together in community. And I said to myself at the beginning of this year, I said, 2025 is going to be the year where I hold my friends and my family and my community close. And I think that's the contemporary equivalent of a kingdom of a happy land, right? That we got to just hold each other close. I said to myself, I'm going to start going to see people in person who I haven't seen in a long time instead of just texting them every year, right? I'm going to start

[00:24:15] hugging people. You know, I'm not a huge hugger, but like making contact. They don't want to hug. We just hold hands. You know, like I said, this is the year for me to love on the people I love. And that is how the kingdom dwellers did it. That's how they got through it. They loved on each other. They took care of each other. They had a communal profit system where everybody made money and put it in the community treasury and then they all lived out of that. There was something to that. What's the contemporary

[00:24:44] equivalent of that? Supporting black and woman-owned businesses or, you know, businesses owned by women of color, businesses owned by allies, right? Businesses owned by our queer allies, owned by, you know, people who are part of our community. And that is how we can get through this. That's the equivalent of the king. We do it a little differently, but we can still be in community with one another. Hey, I like that. No,

[00:25:14] I mean, reading the book, that was my question. I was like, can we do this again? Can we, like, pull away and go find a mountain somewhere? Because everywhere seems like it's dangerous and then, like, the planes are falling out the sky, so, like, I don't even know if it's feasible to, like, fly away somewhere else and, like, be an expat. Like, what is safety anymore? And that question has been lingering as I read the book and it seemed for a time the kingdom of the happy land found safety.

[00:25:44] And I'm just wondering contemporarily, what does that look like in 2025 when it seems every aspect of life could come under authoritarian rule and be unsafe? Yes. I mean, we're living in history right now, right? You know, and not unlike how they were in the kingdom, right? The nadir of African-American experience, as they call it, in the 1890s when, you know, black men

[00:26:13] were being lynched and when, and all of that was about fear of black economic progress. Like, if we're being honest about history, that's what it was about. And I think there's some of that going on right now, a fear of black economic progress that was largely aggravated by Obama's ascendancy to the presidency and then, of course, Kamala Harris's candidacy. And so, there's backlash happening right now, not unlike the 1890s. And we're living

[00:26:42] in a historical moment. We are living it. And as a result, we can't step outside of it and have perspective on it. We have to just survive. Right. I think our number one priority right now has got to be to remain whole and intact. intact. That's what our predecessors did. They remained intact. That's what the kingdom dwellers did. They survived. That's what we have to focus on. We can't solve it all in one day. We can't even, I mean, I think what's

[00:27:12] happening now will take years. This bell will take years to unring. So, the best thing that we can do is to take a page out of their book. And of course, we can fight. And I know that that's one way of surviving too, but everybody doesn't have that ability. So, I'm just asking everybody to survive, to remain whole and intact and do whatever that looks like for you. And as you say that I can't help but hear the Toni Morrison quote, that sometimes you don't

[00:27:42] survive whole, sometimes you survive in pieces, but it's still the survival that is what matters. You want to be as whole as possible, but we can't not acknowledge that this will impact. Yes. She was of that generation where that was the best they could do was to survive in pieces. And I think, you know, I had hoped different for us. Our parents and grandparents had hoped different for us, but as they say, some things change, some things remain the same.

[00:28:12] In taking inspiration from the Kingdom of the Happy Land, can you read something from the novel and then we can dive deeper into the story because there's a whole love triangle that we have to talk about. Happy Land by Dolan Perkins Valdez is a dual timeline historical novel about an intentional black settlement founded in the mountains of the Carolinas and modeled after an African kingdom. The story opens with a 40-year-old divorcee visiting her grandmother on this historical land for the

[00:28:42] very first time with a request to do the impossible. Here's Dolan. I'm still learning where to read from the novel so I think I'm just going to read from the beginning. The only thing I know about my grandmother's home is that it's in an isolated area of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Zirconia, North Carolina. And the only thing I know about Zirconia is that it's right outside Hendersonville. And what I know about Hendersonville is that it has a lot of apple orchards. A shame, I know.

[00:29:11] The old 25 highway is two lanes without a line in the middle. I pass a wood frame house that must be at least 100 years old. A neat and tidy brick rambler with rockers lining the front porch. Stuffed fairies hang from tree limbs and a motionless cat stares at me from a front yard. I wind the rental car around a series of camp entrances. Camp Greystone, Camp Arrowhead, houses on tall wooden piles perched around a sign labeled Lake Summit.

[00:29:41] Just a few miles past the lake, I pass the granite cliff Mother Rita mentioned over the phone. And just after that, I reach the entrance to her property. Lovejoy Lane. I'm almost 40 years old and this is my first time ever visiting my grandmother. Maybe she's asleep. The elderly do tend to keep their own hours. Finally, the door opens and a tall lady with a shock of gray hair peers through the screen at me. Yes?

[00:30:10] Mother Rita? I've always called her that following Mama's lead. Veronica, I was expecting you later this evening. I'm sorry. They offered me a travel voucher so I took a morning flight instead. I should have called. Yes, you should have. She pats her hair down. Inside, the house is well kept, brighter and airier than I expected considering the condition of the exterior. Actually, I'm not sure what I expected. Perhaps a dusty house filled with relics that haven't been moved in

[00:30:40] years. Instead, the rooms are sunny, cheerful, I spy a settee too delicate for sitting in the living room, a tarnished silver tea set on a side board in the dining room, a Persian rug too big for the space. Everything is old, worn to the threads, but it's clean. You ate yet? Yes, ma'am, I respond politely, though the truth is that I'm starving. She glances down at the rolling suitcase I've just parked in the middle of her living room. It's as if she can see everything at

[00:31:10] once, my uncertainty, my curiosity, my fear. Bathroom is down the hall on the left. When you finished, I got some leftover navy beans from yesterday. I warmed those up with a little cornbread. She uses a questioning tone, but I know there's no need to answer. This is her extension of hospitality, and I'm grateful for it. Thank you. So when Veronica, who goes by Nikki, goes to her grandmother's house in that opening scene that you

[00:31:38] read, she is as lost as the reader may be as we're getting ready to really sift and sort through this history and learn not only why she's ultimately there, but the history of the kingdom of the happy land. And a lot of that we come to learn is because of the land, the ownership, and Veronica is a real estate agent. Why make that the

[00:32:07] battle line to which we have this story set upon in the contemporary times? I really struggled with what she was going to do for a living, what would be her occupation. I knew that she was not college educated. I knew that she had a history in D.C. of a mother who worked for the federal government. In D.C., and this is one of the reasons why these firings in the federal government are hitting so hard.

[00:32:36] A lot of black middle class in D.C. was built on those federal government jobs, and they were generational. The grandmother worked in the federal government, the mother, and then the daughter. You went to high school, you went to college, you got you a good government job. I thought about that path for her. Even though she didn't go to college, she could have gotten a job. But then I thought about how sometimes being a real estate agent, particularly in a city like D.C. where the property

[00:33:05] values are so high, that is a really good path for somebody who doesn't have a college degree. It's also the path sometimes of people who don't know what else they want to do with their life. I decided upon that. It also would allow her to have some insight into the process of deeds, property transfer, et cetera. There were certain parts of it that she doesn't know. She knows a lot about the transactional parts,

[00:33:34] but some of the other things that are happening in the South, she's not aware of. And I wanted her to learn over the course of the book not only what the land meant to her family, but also to learn a little bit about how land was being used against Black folks and how the law, how sort of these legal avenues were being used to cheat Black folks out of their land. Yes, there

[00:34:04] are two specific ways that you mentioned in the book, heirs' property and adverse possession. And in your book, as you're unraveling the story of the land that was the kingdom of the happy land and why Mother Rita, the grandmother, has called Veronica to her home, you drop this stat as we get close to the end of the book that about $90 billion in wealth has been lost

[00:34:33] in land from the hands of Black communities, sometimes legally, sometimes not. Is that the number that you found and how did it make you feel when you recognized how much wealth had been lost that continues to contribute to the racial wealth gap in the United States to this day? Well, I think it's a lot more than $90 billion. I can't remember what number I put in there, but it's hundreds of billions, really. But it is quite astounding

[00:35:02] when you think about why Black people still are disproportionately impoverished. And so much of it has to do with this loss of land. Because when Black people were freed in the late 1800s, they were clamoring to buy land. They knew that it was the surest path to citizenship. You know, they knew that it was the surest path to providing for their families because you could raise crops and feed your family.

[00:35:33] And then the system arrayed against them to put them in sort of tenant positions, such as sharecropping. And that was a way to deny Black families wealth and citizenship. But they still bought it. They still managed to save their money and they still managed to buy it. But then there were these ways in which the land was nefariously taken. Lots of different ways from, you know, intimidation to trickery

[00:36:02] to heirs property where they didn't have a will, a written will, partially because, not because at first when I learned that these Black families didn't have wills, I thought it was just an oversight. But what became more and more clear to me is some of them just didn't trust the courts. Why would you? And so they thought it would be safer to just keep it within the family what they wanted, what their wishes were for the land. But at the end of the day, that wasn't the case. There were a lot of different ways

[00:36:31] from raising property taxes and then the people didn't have the ability to pay it. We see that happening even today. Property taxes are a major impediment for some people to hold on to their property. And then there was eminent domain, right? When they built highways through these urban centers, people sometimes lost their homes to eminent domain and so forth. So it is just astounding to me that we don't talk more about the loss of

[00:37:01] land for Black families. Now in North Carolina there's an organization called the Land Loss Prevention Project, which helps families to hold on to their land and tells them of their rights. When I was researching this, I reached out to Derek Hamilton, who's a professor at the New School. And when we were talking about it, he's worked with Thomas Mitchell, the MacArthur Genius Grant winner, who does the most work on this. And I was talking to Dr. Hamilton, and one of the things, after he told me

[00:37:31] how some of the people lost their land, I said, how could that happen? How could that happen? I was so outraged, emotional about it, and he said, Dolan, you have to remember it was legal. It was legal. And so for the people who lost their land, there's no way to get it back. There's no restitution because it was legal. So the best that these organizations on the ground can do now is to prevent it for families that do still have land to make sure they know of their rights, to make sure they understand the system so that

[00:38:01] they don't get taken advantage of. in your novel, the kingdom goes from 205 acres to 50 to 4 as far as what's protected. And that is still in itself considered a win. Do you feel like what these organizations that you just mentioned are doing, and even the resolution to your own novel, and trying to keep what

[00:38:30] you have and prevent it from happening, is a win when so much has been lost? Yes, because in real life, she probably wouldn't have gotten anything back. It would have been just gone. And I feel for those families that lost it. There's nothing you can do once it's gone. And so usually, you know, in real life, like when these things have happened, the people lost it all. They weren't able to save anything. It's really devastating, you

[00:39:00] know, especially when you look at South Carolina. When you think about all of those beachfront communities, I mean, they say South Carolina is ground zero for heirs property. And we had a lot of that beachfront land, you know, and we were using those beaches that, you know, black families would gather on those beaches and swim and have picnics and family reunions. It wasn't like the land was abandoned, you know, and then they still pushed them out through these nefarious means, right?

[00:39:31] Because maybe the title was a little cloudy. The, you know, the lack of a written will, et cetera. And it's, yeah, that beachfront property, those developers were determined to take it. And I always think sometimes of like a young family who bought a house on one of those properties or a person staying at that Omni or that Ritz Carlton. They're sitting there and they have no idea that they're on stolen land. There's no acknowledgement.

[00:40:00] There's no marker. They're just erased. But even you mentioned in the book, in the historical timeline, I believe Luella is walking through the land with her baby girl on her back, Cordelia, whom she calls Sunny. And she's telling her the history of the land, but then also saying and we learn these ways from the people who were here first, acknowledging the indigenous communities that were wiped out first in

[00:40:29] land theft and treaties that were never kept by the colonial settlers of the United States. And so we see this history repeating to this day where land is always a currency that the United States favors more than anything. Yes. And it was important to me to acknowledge when I was researching the kingdom, I wanted to see what native tribes were there on that

[00:40:59] land and did they settle there. Like I really needed to know that because I needed to acknowledge it, but my understanding was that they came to that area for trade, but they didn't have a settlement in that particular area that they were a little bit further to the west, at least the band of Cherokees that I was looking at. But yeah, it was really important to me to acknowledge, but I think that land acknowledgement is very important. So we've

[00:41:29] talked a lot about the heaviness of the book and the acknowledgement of the land and the theft, but again, there is a love triangle at the center, at least for me it was the center, because I was like, child, they're scandalous. So you mentioned earlier, half of the land was put into one of the Montgomery brothers' names in the novel is Robert Montgomery, and the other half was put into Luella Bobo McNamary's name. They were married, but not, because

[00:41:58] was Luella really married to his brother? Luella was married to William, and then William either leaves or dies, I can't remember in real life, and then Robert becomes king, and Luella remains queen. That happened in real life, and I was intrigued by that, because I thought, well, if she remained, because they did have a palace, right, they did have a house, if she remained queen

[00:42:28] and he didn't like take a wife, maybe Luella and the younger brother had a relationship. That was my imagination. We don't have any proof of that. Okay, because I was like, hold on. Yeah, we don't have any I appreciate your imagination because I was like, this is all kinds of scandalous, but I am here for it. Well, and what I was trying to think about was like, what were Black women's desires at this time?

[00:42:58] I was really exploring Black women's desires, you know, and she has that meeting where the women come to her, and she asks them, you know, what do you want? And they, you know, one of the things they say, they want pretty fabric for dresses, you know, they say they want a seat on the ruling council, you know, and so I really thought, what did Black women desire at this time, particularly those women on that mountain? And then, more specifically, I wanted to think about Luella's desires, and

[00:43:27] that maybe part of the freedom of being in this place, away from, you know, sort of white men's gaze, because remember at the beginning of the book, she talks about white men's desire for her, because she's pretty, and she now has the freedom to explore her own desires, and Robert allows that, right? Like, she loves William, she respects William, but she desires Robert, and that was something that, you know, I think

[00:43:57] during slavery, like, that was a difficult thing to manage when you really love someone in that kind of way, because they could be ripped from you. But I see that trickling down, because while Luella's desire was more of a sexual nature, the desires of the other women around her, talking about, you know, wanting a seat on the council, or wanting fabric, or whatever it was that they were desiring, trickles down all the way, I would say, to the contemporary storyline,

[00:44:27] where when we find Nikki, she seems kind of aimless, but she's really trying to figure out what it is that she wants in life, what it is she wants to she desires, as well as her daughter, and being on her grandmother's property helps her reconnect to that part of herself beyond just the physical. Yes, I mean, even at the very beginning, we learned she's kind of tired of real estate. She's barely responding to her client, you know, she's almost down there kind of escaping,

[00:44:57] fleeing that client, right? But she doesn't know what she wants to do. You know, she's about to turn 40, she's divorced, her daughter's recently graduated high school, so she's in that transitional space, and she's just, she isn't sure what she wants. So I think you're absolutely right. It does trickle down into the contemporary storyline about how do we make sense of ourselves and who we are, and we can't really even figure out what we want until we kind of settle within ourselves.

[00:45:27] And once she's able to settle within herself, things become more clear to her, you know. So she's not completely out there, but she is at an inflection point. So my final question for you today, what lessons have you taken from writing this book, researching this history, and now getting ready to put it out into the world that you

[00:45:55] are now applying in your own life? We talked about it a little bit earlier, but this reminder of community and how important it is, and a reminder to hold each other close in troubling times and to support each other, I think those are the most important things that I've gotten out of writing this book. You know, your first question to me at the beginning was, why now? And even though I couldn't have foreseen that this book would

[00:46:25] come out at this particular time and what would be happening in 2025, there's a way in which I think this is the kind of book we should be reading right now as we figure out how we're going to get through this year and how we're going to get through these times. We can find joy in the darkest of times. Like, we can find that joy, but we can't do it alone. We need each other. And I think that more than ever, I think more than ever, we need each other.

[00:46:55] Big thank you to Dolan Perkins Valdez for being here today on Black & Published. You can follow Dolan on the socials at Dolan Perkins Valdez on Instagram. And make sure you check out Happyland, out now from Berkeley. You can get a copy of the book from Mahogany Books and get 10% off your first purchase using code BLACKPUB at checkout. That's B-L-K-P-U-B. That's our show for the week. If you liked this

[00:47:24] episode and want more Black & Published, head to our Instagram page. It's at Black & Published and that's B-L-K & Published. There, I've posted a bonus clip from my interview with Dolan about the story of the Reels Brothers of North Carolina and what they endured for their land. Make sure you check it out and let me know what you think in the comments. I'll holla at y'all next week when our guest will be Hana Baba, the storyteller

[00:47:53] on the new podcast Folk Tales from Sudan. There's a generation of Sudanese kids who will never go back to Sudan, not even for a visit because of this war. And so in my mind there are thousands and thousands of these kids that will not get to have the experience that I had going to my grandma's house and sitting on the floor and hearing from my uncle and smelling the Nile and eating our food

[00:48:23] because everything is demolished right now. And so this is another way for them to experience Sudan. That's next week on Black & Published. I'll talk to you then. Peace. What's going on, family? This is Derek Young and Ramonda Young, owners of both Mahogany Books and the Mahogany Books Podcast Network. We really want to thank each and every one of you

[00:48:52] for listening to this episode. And if you enjoyed what you just heard, drop us a review and rate us on whatever platform you download podcasts on. We truly appreciate each and every one of you for supporting us and making us your go-to for Black books. And we look forward to connecting with you all sometime in the future. Thank you again, fam. And always remember, Black Books Matter. Go to Black Books Matter. Thank you.