Introducing Reckon True Stories with Deesha Philyaw & Kiese Laymon

[00:00:00] I wrote I, the second sentence of that piece, P started with an I. And then I was just like, I just was fascinated with exploring I and really fascinated with why we could never use I in any other writing. What's good?

[00:00:13] I'm Nikesha Elise Williams and this is Black and Published, bringing you the journeys of writers, poets, playwrights, and storytellers of all kinds. And today, I want to introduce you to a new show that I already love.

[00:00:29] Reckon True Stories from acclaimed authors Deesha Philyaw and Kiese Laymon is a new podcast about essays and culture. And I'm glad you use the word, you know, you find a lot of essays boring.

[00:00:40] I find a lot of books boring and I am always, I feel embarrassed to say that because I'm like maybe it's me. I don't know. But yeah, there's a lot of shit that's boring.

[00:00:51] And so I think the, if we were to call it the new wave, the post-2020 wave of essays, at least the ones that are resonating with me long form, they're loud at the outset or they are subversive at the outset.

[00:01:07] In this first episode, Deesha and Kiese discussed the importance of putting the I back in the essay. Why it's essential that essays and nonfiction be a brave space for inventive and expansive storytelling. Plus their own personal journeys to essay writing and how they approach and transform

[00:01:27] the genre through their perspectives, experiences and expression. That and more is next when Black and Publish continues with Reckon True Stories. I don't know if I ever told you this part about it, but I showed up not with my copy of Heavy, but Michelle Obama's becoming.

[00:01:58] I got them confused. I forgot. Hello, Kiese Lehmann. Hello, Deesha Filia. What's going on? Hey, it's always a great day when I can talk to you. Welcome friends to Reckon True Stories, a celebration of new and classic nonfiction,

[00:02:28] the essays, journalism and memoirs that inspire us, that change the world and help us to connect with each other. I'm Deesha Filia, author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, and you may know

[00:02:39] me as the co-host of Ursa Short Fiction, where my dear friend Donnie Walton and I geek out on our favorite short stories. But today, I'm joined by my good friend, the brilliant Kiese Lehmann, and we're going to be chopping it up about nonfiction.

[00:02:54] I feel so lucky that I get to talk to you about nonfiction. Well, that feeling is mutual. And, you know, Kiese, you need no introduction, but we're going to do one anyway, just so that one person in the world who doesn't know the tea.

[00:03:09] Kiese Lehmann is a Black Southern writer from Jackson, Mississippi. He is the Libby Shurn Moody Professor of English and Creative Writing at Rice University, and he is the author of Long Division, which won the 2022 NAACP Image Award for Fiction and the essay collection How to Slowly Kill

[00:03:27] Yourself and Others in America, named a notable book of 2021 by the New York Times critics. Kiese's bestselling memoir Heavy and American Memoir won numerous awards and was named one of the 50 best memoirs of the past 50 years by the New York Times.

[00:03:45] The audiobook read by Kiese himself was named the Audible 2018 Audiobook of the Year. Kiese is at work on the book's Good God and City Summer, Country Summer and a number of film and TV projects. He is the founder of the Catherine Coleman Literary Arts and Justice

[00:04:04] Initiative, a program based out of the Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State University, aimed at helping young people in Jackson get more comfortable reading, writing, revising and sharing on their own terms in their own communities. And in 2022, Kiese was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.

[00:04:23] He is officially a genius and I am so blessed to be able to come together with you to do this program on top of all of the other amazing things that you're doing. Welcome, Kiese. Oh, thank you for that.

[00:04:39] And I feel like we kind of know we've been genius-ish long before MacArthur people, but true, you know? But, you know, and by the way, I'm sure everyone knows Disha, but let's give her an introduction worthy of her skills and her gumption.

[00:04:55] Disha Phil Yaw's debut short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, won the 2021 Penn Faulkner Award for fiction, the 2021 Story Prize and the 2020 LA Tom's Book Prize. The Art Cennembaum Award for first fiction and was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for fiction.

[00:05:13] The Secret Lives of Church Ladies focuses on the Black women, sex and the Black church and is being adapted for television by HBO Max with Tessa Thompson, executive producer. Disha is also a Cumbilio Fiction Fellow and was a 22-23 John Renee Grisham writer-in-residence at the University of Mississippi.

[00:05:32] And one of my saddest things is that I left when Disha came, but it's so great to be here with you right now, Disha. Thank you, Kiese and everybody. I begged him to stay. I was there. But now that you're gone, but not that you.

[00:05:49] But now that you're gone. I'm almost there. But it was, you know, and it was an honor to follow in your footsteps because you also were the Grisham writer-in-residence there some years prior. So I felt like I was, I am in good company whenever we can be

[00:06:10] in the same space virtually or physically. Speaking of other virtual spaces, if you follow me over on our other podcast, Ursa Short Fiction, you know, Donnie and I revel in the magic of short stories and the writers who write them. And we love sharing space with those writers.

[00:06:32] But we also knew that we wanted Ursa to explore many different genres of storytelling. And on top of that, it was our dream to one day collaborate with Kiese. And what I told Mark and Donnie was that years ago when I was still

[00:06:47] stuck in corporate America, you and I laid the groundwork to do our own podcast together. Yes, indeed. And it should have worked. But I was, you know, I was in Mississippi at the time, like moving, moving, stressed a bit.

[00:07:01] But what I do want to say is that I loved it. You allow the essay and storytelling occupy the same space. You know, I don't have to try to convince you that the essay is a former storytelling, which is what I have to do with most so-called

[00:07:14] essays. So that's another reason I'm hyped to get on here and talk. Oh, OK, we got to talk about that because that whole concept is foreign to me. So I'd love to hear, you know, why people kind of resist that.

[00:07:26] But, you know, I'm excited for everything we're going to do here. This is not our only collaboration. We collaborate with our brother, our cousin, our friend, friend of our heart, you know, brother from a different mother, Robert Jones, Jr. is sending out love to Robert today and always.

[00:07:48] We have been collaborating with Robert for over a year now on the Lit 16, a quarterly reading series that highlights the work of 16 debut authors. We just wrapped the inaugural session season class, however you want to call it. But we'll be back with the Lit 16.

[00:08:04] But today I'm excited to be here with you to talk about some of our favorite nonfiction writing to talk about how people see the essay. As you mentioned, KSA. All right, let's get into it now. As I mentioned earlier, nonfiction can cover a lot of different types of

[00:08:21] storytelling essays, journalism, memoir, KSA, you've written it all. Our first. Our first interaction was a virtual round table interview. I think you remember this because you don't forget anything. You have a great memory. I did this interview with you and other writers who contributed essays to the

[00:08:41] 2017 anthology, the Jesmond Ward edited titled The Fire This Time, a new generation speaks about race. And so I got to interview you and some other folks and then fast forward. I was in this pop up book club in Pittsburgh and we read heavy.

[00:08:58] And I don't know if I ever told you this part about it, but I showed up not with my copy of heavy, but Michelle Obama's becoming. I got him confused. I forgot which book I read them both.

[00:09:14] I thankfully I have read heavy, but I was like, why is everybody holding a copy of heavy, but OK. And so we read heavy and that group of, you know, cool folks that I miss in Pittsburgh, you know, they were stalking you a little bit

[00:09:30] and they're like, you know, he's coming. KSA is coming to speak. So I wonder if we can take him out to dinner when he when he's in town. So I kind of flex like, well, I have his email address. I can make that happen.

[00:09:43] And then I think we hit you up on Twitter as well. And that was, you know, the first time we ever met and we've been tied ever since. And so but one thing I don't know is when exactly you started writing essays.

[00:09:57] And I know from heavy, you know, your mom made you write essays. And obviously we all had to write school. But like, when did you decide like this is this is my thing? And was it at Gawker?

[00:10:09] Because I think I first read you at Gawker and I think it was how to slowly kill yourself and others in America. That's a that's a great question. I remember that Pittsburgh time, too. I was so happy to see you.

[00:10:23] And I remember always joke with Damian because I felt like that place looked a lot like a Boys and Girls Club, you know, like. Yeah, the Ace Hotel. They converted it in that space. And I kept saying that, but they kept thinking it was a disc

[00:10:34] because they didn't know me and my personality. But I was like, well, that's a compliment. Like y'all, y'all flip the Boys and Girls Club anyway. Yeah, you know, I started my mother again. You know, it's kind of like people who have read anything about my story.

[00:10:47] No, my mother made me write essays. You know what I'm saying? Probably that I can remember starting at like eight, nine, ten, like a lot of people in junior high, high school, I had to write.

[00:10:57] You know, I grew up in the late eighties and coming up through the 90s. So hip hop was like beginning to like get their feet under the ground. And I was like really taken by like what they call like the hyperbolic eye and hip hop, like the eye.

[00:11:12] And in school, we could just never use the eye. The school I went to, you couldn't use the eye. So I got on a newspaper and I started and I got a newspaper because my coach, my basketball coach was also the he ran a newspaper.

[00:11:24] And one day I was I was just like, you know, just I was on the newspaper just to kind of like honestly try to like not be in another class. You know what I'm saying? Not being in and and then we had this section

[00:11:35] on essay on what they call editorials, who were really like opinion pieces. And I just I was like, I wrote I the second sentence of that piece, P started with an eye. And then I was just like, I just was fascinated with like exploring

[00:11:49] like I and really fascinated with why we could never use eye and any other writing. So I started, you know, editing my school paper, went to Milsep's College, wrote essays, started being one of the editors of that paper.

[00:12:01] Got kicked out for essay writing, you know, went to Oberlin, wrote a ton of essays, edited the Black Journal there, edited the political journal there, edited Oberlin Reviews. So I was writing essays galore. And then I started writing fiction at Oberlin, got an MFA school for fiction.

[00:12:17] And I just kept on, you know, now setting fiction for like a decade. And then I went back to the essay when I can get my publisher to move on my book. So I was like, I'm just going to start making a blog going back to this essay

[00:12:28] writing, which was my heart. And I wrote this essay called How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America. And I had a former student named Emma Carmichael, who was at that point like a manager editor at Gawker. And she was like, can we put this on Gawker?

[00:12:39] And I was like, y'all want this on Gawker? Because at the time I was like, I don't know of Gawker in this fit. But I didn't talk to her that because Emma was such a good student, you know, an incredible writer.

[00:12:50] And so she took that off of my blog, put that shit on Gawker. And I mean, you know, I've changed forever. I mean, kind of. That's one of the reasons we that's what it is. That's what it is. We're talking right now.

[00:13:00] But when you ask that question, one of the reasons I love you asking that question, because I really see the essay as a place of exploration and experimentation. And I know people say that about your fiction.

[00:13:12] But I don't know if as many people say that about your essay writing. So I'm going to say it, right? Like I one of the reasons I love your essays is because they are so experimental to me, but they also feel familiarly soulful.

[00:13:25] So I'm interested in like when you start writing essays and do you make a distinction between essay, the essay writing you started to do and the fiction writing you started to do. So, you know, essay writing came for me as sort of like a consolation prize.

[00:13:39] It's a damn shame, right? But I think high school school in general ruined the essay for me. And I think it's it's particularly because it's especially because of what you said. And I love the way you phrase it, the fact that we couldn't use the eye,

[00:13:55] right? You know, that there was this detachment. So as soon as there's this detachment, I've lost interest now. And so I'm just going to, you know, I'm a good student, though. I'm a good girl scout.

[00:14:04] I'm going to do exactly what you tell me, that five paragraph essay structure. You know, I know how to, you know, the beginning, the middle and the end. I had not a thesis statement. And, you know, so it was all very rote for me.

[00:14:15] That's what essays were for me initially. And I took that into my adulthood. And so I started writing in general when my youngest, I'm sorry, my oldest child who will be 25 this year was a toddler. And it was my thing that I would do for myself.

[00:14:32] And I was writing fiction. I wanted to write the disfaction I was feeling in my own life and give it to these characters because I didn't think about, well, first of all, I thought writing the truth as nonfiction. I wasn't brave enough for that.

[00:14:48] Like I didn't even want to face the truth, right? So I gave it to some other, some other black man that I made up, you know? And so, you know, but those early characters were all based on me, either who I was or who I wanted to be.

[00:15:02] And so, but I wanted to get published because I thought, you know, that's what made you a real writer. You know, I was under that under that fallacy that operating under that fallacy

[00:15:11] as many of us are in the beginning, you know, that that's what makes you a writer publishing. And so I would try anything. Now, I was also aiming at the wrong places. Like I don't even know, like at some point, the Atlantic has published fiction.

[00:15:25] But early 2000s, they certainly weren't publishing like the kind of stuff I was writing. I was looking for prestige, right? But I was also hunting for publishing opportunities. So I subscribe to this e-drum newsletter by this, you know, Afrocentric. I can't remember.

[00:15:43] It's Kalamu was something about the drum. OK, that's all I remember. And he had like all kinds of writing opportunities. And I don't I got on this mailing list. And but somebody at literary mama, which was incredibly white and still is.

[00:15:57] And I'm on the you know, I'm on the board of governors, so full disclosure. But at the time, literary mama, you know, had columns and they had somebody had the foresight to advertise for, you know, a call for submissions for columns in this black focus newsletter for writers.

[00:16:19] And I was like, OK, what's this about? I'm a mother. And so literary mama is dedicated to motherhood writing. And for the columns at that time, you they just wanted you to pitch something they weren't already writing about.

[00:16:31] And so I had recently my then husband and I had adopted a child and our second daughter. And I thought, I'll write about being an adoptive mother. And I call the column The Girl is Mine. And so I started writing personal essays.

[00:16:46] And for four years, I had two editors every month, I think it was, or every other month at literary mama. And plus my fellow columnist, we would give each other feedback. So I always call literary mama my MFA.

[00:17:00] That's where I learned so much about writing from being edited and from editing other people on that regular frequency, you know. And it was unpaid, but it paid so much. And it also was one of the rare unpaid opportunities where

[00:17:18] people who then wanted to pay me to write essays saw my work there and invited me to write for The Washington Post for Wonder Time, which was a Disney magazine for parents. But it branded itself as like smarter than, say, you know, the family fun

[00:17:37] Disney magazine. So I wrote some great essays there back when you could get paid like good money before the economy collapsed in 2008. And, you know, so that was so essays was like, oh, OK, so I'm in this kind of parenting writing space.

[00:17:51] And then, as you know, my ex and I then went on to write a co-parenting book. That's also nonfiction. But, you know, so I did a lot of op ed writing as well around co-parenting outside of literary mama. And I was pining away for fiction. I really was.

[00:18:08] But then I, you know, what did Tony Morrison say? You know, if you surrender to the air, you can write it. And so I was like, I guess I write nonfiction now too. Right.

[00:18:17] I mean, and one of the things that I love about again, what I call your gumption is that you appear to me to be someone who is going to explore a genre or form but not bow to it.

[00:18:32] And I think that's super important for all genres, you know, fiction and poetry. But I think that's especially important for the essay because we've been hit over the head with essays from like, you know, middle school on. And I'm not trying to say my experience is your experience

[00:18:46] or anybody else's experience. But when you were talking about like that, that column, the girl is mine, even the creativity and name in that one of the things that I mean, it wasn't like I needed time or retrospection to hate this shit.

[00:18:57] Like I hate it in the moment, not just that I couldn't write an essay about me, but like if we were reading essays or if we were reading books that had to do with characters that were grandmothers, they were often white, they're always white.

[00:19:11] I couldn't even write about my grandmother because to write about my grandmother, I would have had to use an I in essay writing class. I could do it fictively, but if you weren't letting your students use I in essay class, there were no fiction writing classes at all.

[00:19:26] Oh, no, no, no, that was never encouraged. Would you ever were you ever encouraged to explore creatively in school and in middle school or high school? No, no, I tell people again, I was twenty eight twenty. Let's see, Taylor was when I was twenty seven.

[00:19:45] So I was like twenty eight twenty nine before I ever started thinking about creative writing, except this is my one exception. And I'm very proud of this in the sixth grade. We did have a poetry contest and you could either recite original poetry

[00:20:02] or you could recite another poem. And that's how I because we practiced in class and that's how I learned. What's that famous poem that's like Charged in the Light Brigade? I think, yeah, Charged in the Light Brigade, Annabelle Lee and something else.

[00:20:17] I chose to write an original poem. So in all of my years of school, I don't remember any other time. And I won the contest, by the way, and the title of the poem was The Lazy Crew. And it was about a sailing crew that was lazy.

[00:20:33] So original and nothing drawn from my own life at all. I have no idea where that came from, but I won. And and so, you know, that's a shame that I don't I don't remember that. I don't even remember in college.

[00:20:48] I think I was a good student in college. I was also an econ major, so I didn't do a lot of writing in college. And none of it was particularly inspired. And so it was all very forgettable. And so it really wasn't until I had done everything right.

[00:21:06] I went to college. I had, you know, got married before I had a child. I married heterosexually and then it's like, so wait, this does not feel like a prize. You know, right? And then I had and I think that's it. It's like you have something to say.

[00:21:23] So that could have been it, too. Not only was I not encouraged creatively, but I really didn't have anything to say until then or that I would allow myself to say in it. And as I said, initially, it was through fiction. I would allow myself to say it.

[00:21:37] But to what you were saying about not, you know, sort of kneeling to the form, I I should be that for me to not having gone through an MFA program that is the blessing for me and this is not to knock MFA programs

[00:21:52] because for a lot of people, they're exactly what they need. But what I never had to do was unlearn somebody each other than high school, you know, somebody telling me, this is how you do a thing or you can't do this or you can't do that.

[00:22:06] So at this point, I'm somebody's mother and I'm the boss, you know, and I'm already boxed in by things in my life that are like, you can't do this and you can't do that.

[00:22:17] And so my writing was the one place, the one time where I'm going to do what I want to do. Right. And I've never felt beholden to anybody else when it came to my fiction or to my nonfiction. And I started that way in part out of ignorance,

[00:22:37] like I didn't know what an MFA program was in the early 2000s. Right. Right. I was like, you know, this is I'm writing what I'm compelled to write. But beyond that and I know that your mother and your grandmother

[00:22:51] are probably the biggest influences on your work as well. For me, having both my mom and my grandmother die of cancer, my mother at 52, my grandmother at 82, not having lived lives according to their own terms. I knew that to honor them, I had to live my life.

[00:23:13] And that included my writing, maybe most especially my writing on my own terms. And so it's like writing is work, writing is blood, sweat and tears. It's also joyful. And I wanted to talk about that too. But why do something on somebody else's terms?

[00:23:30] Why put all of that poor everything you have into something and have it be a half truth? And you know something about that, too. You started a whole last book with I wanted to lie, you know? But that's my feeling is if we're going to do this,

[00:23:46] if we're going to take ourselves through this, if we're going to wring ourselves out, if we're going to lay ourselves bare, then we got to do it on our terms, especially because we were encouraged to shit on our terms

[00:23:59] in order to get good grades when we were most vulnerable. Yes, you know what I mean? Like, I mean that I mean that sincerely. And so so for me, oh man, what you're saying is just like it hits so hard

[00:24:12] because I start to think about what it actually means for, you know, I went to MFA school as a fiction writer and I went I went right out of undergrad because I got kicked out of school and I just felt like, you know,

[00:24:23] I was I was fooling myself, but I felt like I was behind because I got kicked out of college my first my second second year. So I went to Indiana and fiction writing, but what was weird is I went to Indiana

[00:24:34] because you said Kumiaka, the poet called me and, you know, said that he liked my fiction and that's all I needed. And I was like, oh shit, OK, I'm going to go where you are. But, you know, when I got there,

[00:24:47] I mean, I can say a lot about my MFA experience, but I don't want to bore people. But the thing about my MFA program is that I think it really prepared me to be a better essayist because so many essayists that we read.

[00:25:00] And again, we got to think about and talk about how we go in at people on here because on one hand I don't want to go at people. On the other hand, I do want to go at folk, you know what I mean?

[00:25:09] But yes. But one of the things that I think we do in both of our fiction and not fiction is that like, you know, it's very very dialogical, but there's also like, you know, like polyphonic, right? There's a lot of voices. Yes.

[00:25:22] And so I can, you know, in the in the mid late 90s, when I'm going in MFA school, you know, in my program, you had to go to, you know, you had to teach poetry class or to teach a fiction class. Nobody talked about the essay.

[00:25:36] Nobody talked about creative nonfiction. I didn't even know if you could go to school for that shit. But what I did learn is I learned how to create and make a scene, which is foundational, I think, to a lot of essay writing.

[00:25:49] I'll say that not all essay writing. I learned how to make consequence consequential action. I learned how to make secondary characters. I learned how to bring poetry into my dialogue in a way to make it make it believable.

[00:26:02] All of those things are things I think you need for the essay. But what I'm interested in hearing from you, Deesha, and this is tied into this kind of our conversation about think pieces. One, I'm interested in what you feel like is the distinction

[00:26:14] between a short essay and a think piece. And do you like if somebody's like, Deesha, I've read your essays, like what what is the difference between your essays and your fiction other than one is called essay and one is called fake?

[00:26:28] Like, I'm just going to say for myself, I don't I'll buy into the genre distinctions and I can talk historically and futuristically about the essay and that. But I'm really not sure what the difference is between fiction, short storytelling, storytelling and essayistic storytelling.

[00:26:47] I mean, I know I know they can be as different as night and day. But I think there's more similarities than we let on. Well, I feel like an essay is successful when it, you know, it embodies the best of fiction, the best of storytelling, the scenes,

[00:27:04] the voices, all of the things that we try and do in our fiction. I think I agree with you. They, you know, I want them to show up in my essays as well. And I have some essays that let me see if I say this right.

[00:27:18] I have some fiction that I've passed off as essays. I have some essays that passed off as fiction. You know, it just depends on how much do I want you to know about me? Yeah, that's the best answer. That's the best answer.

[00:27:32] You know, and so they sometimes they can be, you know, they can operate kind of inter interchangeably. And so they're just I think about this one essay that I wrote that was very kind of meta and it reads lyrically. There are scenes in it.

[00:27:55] It reads to me like a flash story, but it's it's nonfiction. And it's nonfiction that was inspired by my needing to write a love story. Tyrese Coleman was doing a reading series for Valentine's Day 2020 right before everything changed, right?

[00:28:17] And there were three categories, good love, bad love, sexy love. And she assigned us and she assigned me good love. And I'm like, motherfucker, like I. Right. Sexy love. I could write bad love, you know, my eyes closed and, you know,

[00:28:35] and I was struggling to write this story. It was so what I was coming with was just flat, flat, flat, flat. So I started writing an essay about trying to write a love story. To while I was stuck.

[00:28:49] And then the essay helped me go back to the story and I was able to get unstuck in the story, finish the story. And then I came back and I finished that essay.

[00:28:59] And and it's called Water Come Back to You on Writing About Love or something like that. And so so there's a big entanglement. Often there's an entanglement between my essay writing and my fiction writing. But the very first writing class I ever took was a flash fiction course.

[00:29:19] And I took it multiple times at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. And I never got better at it while I was taking it. Right. But we read a lot and, you know, I'm someone who learns a lot from reading and and and critiquing other people's

[00:29:34] work as much as my own. And so, you know, not to say that those classes with Lisa, Lisa Tuning, who was incredible, weren't useful. I mean, they were definitely planning seas. But in the classes, I just couldn't nail flash fiction because

[00:29:50] I was too long when it like brevity was just not in my wheelhouse at all. And when I finally nailed brevity, it was through the essay, a flash essay. And so in the like early 2000s, I wrote this 20 page essay. I have to laugh at it now, right?

[00:30:09] About my father and everything he had ever done wrong. And it was like an indictment, a deposition like, you know, I laid it all bare because as a kid, I couldn't talk about the things that, you know, the ways that my father left me wanting,

[00:30:27] the ways that he didn't show up for me in the ways I needed him to. And I had to, you know, defer to him. I had to consider his feelings. It was a mess, right? But when I got older and now I'm a parent of my own child

[00:30:41] and it's like and I'm writing too. Here we go. I'm just telling it, right? So I had two mentors at the time and I sent the essay, the 20 page essay to each of them.

[00:30:53] I was like, oh, I just please tell me where you think I should submit this for publication. And they both separately were like, nowhere. There is a journal entry. They love me enough to tell me the truth. Yeah, that's love.

[00:31:07] They did. And so, you know, one one of my mentors, that's the word. One of my mentors was a woman named Laura and she calls me Disha and she's like, Disha, all emotional expression is not artistic expression. True that. And I spent 15 years figuring out the difference.

[00:31:30] And 15 years later, I wrote this flash essay called Whiting and it was everything I needed to say about my dad. And I don't even think right. Whiting is 500 words. Now, same time I had therapy and my dad also died.

[00:31:44] So things did happen, but I did need to become a better writer, a better crafts person at this as well to know the difference, to take the experiences, the feelings, all of that, the journal entries and to make art. And sometimes when we think about making art,

[00:32:00] we do think of the fiction as making art, but the essay is no less. When you say that, do you think that think pieces? I've never asked this question before. I just want to I've never asked a question like this, but OK.

[00:32:14] Like, do you think pieces are art? And because let me just let me just say before before you answer that, I want to say I'm not trying to disnobody by even asking that question because I believe I believe I believe when we ask those

[00:32:25] whether it's such or such art, I think we I think we describe the fact that like there's really fucking terrible, like that bit vacant art. But but but I'm not asking you how you value the thing piece. And I think you understand

[00:32:36] because I just want to make sure people listen. I'm asking you like what kind of how about this? What kind of art do you traditionally think of think pieces as being? It's like they're typically there, the equivalent of like fast fashion, right?

[00:32:51] Like it might look you, you know, but at what cost, you know? Because I think there's something to be said for letting ideas marinate. I think there is a way to be reactive and thoughtful. Yeah. And sometimes think pieces lack the thoughtful piece

[00:33:11] that we typically associate with taking more time. I think it's a real gift if you can be reactive and thoughtful the same news day. I can't. Yeah, that's never something I have mastered. I can't sit here and say I even tried to. I just know me. Right.

[00:33:30] And by the time I have solidified my thoughts beyond a few sentences on a topic that just happened, you know, the news cycle has has changed, you know? And so I realized early on, even though I was not, you know,

[00:33:48] that's not how I kind of made my career, because I wrote a lot of things that were that could be considered think pieces about co-parenting that were of the moment, like Tyrese would stalk like his his baby mama.

[00:34:01] And then I would use that as an opportunity to talk about healthy co-parenting and how to build a schedule and things like that. And so it was quick and it was timely and it was tied to the news cycle.

[00:34:14] But I felt like because my intentions were honorable and noble, I never called them think pieces. Right. Right. Right. Right. It's like when people it's like nowadays, you know, people will call things that come out of their own mouths, rants.

[00:34:28] But I think when we were younger, like rant was some shit you didn't want to actually like be like responsible and for. But you know what? When you say that, like, I think if I'm going to be honest, like, I think that there's variations within think pieces

[00:34:41] just as their variations in essays, do you know what I'm saying? And so most think pieces bore me, but actually most essays bore me. And I think think pieces seem to bore me a little bit more

[00:34:51] because I think, you know, often people stop when they should have started. I think they stop where they should have started off and think pieces, especially think pieces like especially. But but often essays, I think start where they should have started.

[00:35:02] And I'm not into the essay where in the first paragraph, you tell me what you think and you substantiate the shit with seven other paragraphs after or fucking 17 other paragraphs. Right. Like I'm interested. I mean, I'm most compelled by writing general and essays that move.

[00:35:17] You know, I'm saying like there's two or three. Tell me a story to you got to tell me is and even when you think about the ways like, you know, you bring in like what's the name of that essay 13 men that you wrote.

[00:35:27] Oh, yeah, 13 guys you meet on a dating app. But and the thing about that that I say that is so fucking like brilliant to me. There's so many things as one, you're letting the reader know immediately

[00:35:37] that there are at least 13 moves that are going to be made here, meaning I'm going to introduce you into 13, not quote unquote people, but characters and really shades of characters, shades of voices. And I just love that you did that shit in an essay

[00:35:51] because because traditionally we would see that in innovative fiction. And I'm just saying the essays that move me in two thousand twenty three, just like I think in 2013, are essays that make moves.

[00:36:04] Now it's interesting to me and I want to talk about this when we have more time is I'm interested in what we do with all of those huge essays. Rachel, God's the Cosy's pieces about shit about anything. She anything, right? Like, like she was she was going off

[00:36:20] and she made a genre out of writing the profile piece about the person you couldn't meet. You know, she couldn't get your pal. She wrote a classic. She couldn't get Dylan Roof. She wrote a class ton of Hossies, you know, reparations piece.

[00:36:32] You know what I'm saying? Yes, like there were there were there were these major long essays in the tens of 20s. I'm not trying to put that era up as the era, but I'm interested in like whether or not we see because we still see

[00:36:44] think pieces galore, but I don't know if we see or if the culture is as interested in in 2023. And I think this has a lot to do with how we got to 2023 in like the long essay,

[00:36:56] the long essay, like, I mean, a lot of long essays being written. But I don't know if the long essays are getting traction the way they used to. I started thinking about and this is one I meant to pull it, but I didn't.

[00:37:07] But we can definitely talk about it later. But after American American Dirt came out, Mir is there her name Miriam? Yeah, yeah, she just wrote Crete. Yes. Right. And so that was a part book review, part manifesto, part read, capital R read on American Dirt and its author.

[00:37:33] And so I don't know if this is different about now versus the 2010s. But you like I don't know that we can do any more quiet long essays. Oh, maybe that's it. Maybe that's it. That they got to come out swinging. You know, I'm looking at our friend,

[00:37:53] Nafisa Thompson Spires essay from 2020. So, you know, I guess we would say that this essay is on the cusp of that era. But it's in the Paris review on no longer being a hysterical woman. And the first sentence, I cannot locate the day that I finally meant it

[00:38:12] this heretofore speculative suicide think. But by some point, not long ago, it seemed I had only two choices. Get a hysterectomy or die. Come on. I have to read the rest of this.

[00:38:24] I'm all come if I didn't know Nafisa, you know, I got to read the rest of this immediately. You talk about, you know, fiction and the essay. Immediately we know the stakes. Immediately we hear we this is the character and we have her voice

[00:38:38] and we know some things about her. And that if that's not the crux, the heart of a good story, then I don't know, you know, what is a class master class. The sentence is a master class on force, pacing and voice to propel a reader to the end.

[00:38:54] Like if the next sentence was wack and the next paragraph was wack and the next paragraph was wack, I got to keep going because that first sentence and we know Nafisa, she's coming at each sentence after that. It's just like unfurling more and more and more.

[00:39:06] But absolutely, I agree with you, fam. And it's interesting that those pieces came out like early 20s, right? Twenty twenty like twenty twenty twenty twenty. And I'm glad you use the word, you know, you find a lot of essays boring.

[00:39:17] I find a lot of books boring and I am always I feel embarrassed to say that because I'm like, maybe it's me. I don't know. But yeah, there's a lot of shit that's boring. And so I think the the if we were to call it the new wave,

[00:39:31] the post twenty twenty way of essays, at least the ones that are resonating with me long form, they're loud at the outset or they are subversive at the outset. I subscribe to Memoir Monday, which is a curated list of first person

[00:39:50] memoir essays and I'm always discovering voices there that just jump out at me. Electric Lit also, you know, has some fans as a newsletter that has very voicy things coming through but all genres, but you know, including the essays.

[00:40:08] But people say, you know, oh, it's our attention span. I don't know that it's our attention spans anymore necessarily. I think we just might be a little bit exhausted from the essay that either takes too long to say something or it's saying some shit

[00:40:29] I don't care about, you know? Whereas I think what we don't get enough of are those where like, oh, I didn't know I would care about this. But the way you wrote that first line made me want to know about this thing

[00:40:42] that I didn't even know anything about or I never, you know, never, never considered previously. So I don't know. I don't know what shifted. I just refuse to believe that it's a simple thing as our attention spans. But I think in some ways and you tell me

[00:41:00] if you have observed this as well, like I don't find myself having to claw through too much boring stuff to get to the good stuff anymore. Like are they publishing stuff? Have the rules change where, you know, editors are also less inclined to go with the quiet nothing.

[00:41:20] One thing I think happened is the last thing I'll say, I think the 10s to the 20s recalibrated readers. And so like when I'm like when I'm writing that, like when I was writing my shit in 2012,

[00:41:32] like I was hoping praying, you know, maybe this could get to Disha. But now I think a lot of us because, you know, your work is out there changing people's fucking understanding of what books and words and rhythms can do.

[00:41:46] And all those people we just talked about, Damon has come out and changed. I just think now one of the reasons if we see a change in the way like voice and tone are being used in what we call the essay.

[00:41:56] I think it's partially because we now notice so many dope black, brown, queer folk are readers of the essay, which was what they were telling us all along. Well, right. Like we've been telling the publishing, we've been telling the publishing all along, you know, we want more.

[00:42:12] And then I think what a lot of us had to do is like, fuck it, you don't believe it? Well, we're going to go out and write the shit we want to show you there's an audience for it.

[00:42:18] And all of those people we named had to do that, had to start out on blogs, writing essays that eventually showed publishing that there was a market for that kind of packaging of idea and story. I just think it's amazing now that we are literally writing to ourselves

[00:42:35] when before we said it, but I don't know if it was true. You know what I mean? Well, I know it wasn't true of me early. Like, I mean, I I wasn't thinking to myself like, oh, how can I,

[00:42:47] you know, tailor what I'm writing to get people to publish it? Like, I definitely wanted to know the secret sauce. Right. And so I just wrote these annoying fan letters to other writers, like basically asking them to tell me the secret sauce.

[00:42:59] Right. And of course, there is no secret sauce. But I just remember thinking that this is what I'm writing. This is what's interesting to me. And I just got to figure out how to get somebody to want it.

[00:43:14] It you know, it never occurred to me to dilute myself or to, you know, squeeze myself into some kind of box that didn't fit. But I couldn't. I was like, but what is the key? You know, and I know like now we know whiteness is the key.

[00:43:29] Elitism is the key. You know, there's a lot of reasons that, you know, we we didn't, you know, 20 years ago, there weren't all of the spaces even that are publishing the kinds of things that that we're writing.

[00:43:41] And so, you know, so that was part of the challenge too. But dang, there was something else you said that you something you said made me think about another essay. This one was from Ulster magazine, which I don't know if you know Ulster,

[00:43:54] but Sarri Botten, I hope I'm pronouncing your name correctly, curates this magazine about age and her, you know, interest in fascination with age and aging. And this one by Stacy Greason is called Farrell. And she has this now this isn't the opening paragraph,

[00:44:12] but it's later in the essay. She said, from the AM radio on my bedroom dresser, I heard Helen Reddy's voice saying, I am woman hear me roar. I dance through Aspen Groves pretending to be Marlo Thomas from that girl,

[00:44:27] making it alone in the big city in my treehouse. I'd light up another Virginia slim cigarette stolen from a babysitting job. You've come a long way, baby. And a dream of my life as an independent woman, like any feral thing. I was unprepared for the cruelty of men.

[00:44:43] When I tell you, I gasped when because it what she did there again, great storytelling is we see her on the cusp of, you know, young womanhood and freedom and independence and that sentence just like she was snatched. That sentence just snatched. Absolutely.

[00:45:03] You know, and in a way, I wonder if there's is there's a kind of snatch that only the essay can do because I know fiction can snatch us and I know poetry can snatch us. But I wonder, I wonder if there's a particularity

[00:45:16] to the snatch that comes from the essay. And hopefully that's something we can continue to explore and we keep talking because my heart tells me that there is, but I don't know if that's true. You know, like, like, I don't know.

[00:45:27] But anyway, right? Because we're saying two things. We're talking about the particularity of the essay, but then we're talking about its storytelling as much as fiction is telling. And I think those things can exist in tension and we could certainly have

[00:45:40] an entire show shows, you know, a whole podcast dedicated to parsing those things out. And I hope we do. I hope we do that. Thank you for this, Deisha. I appreciate you. Thank you. He essay, it's been so wonderful. A dream truly to be here with you today.

[00:46:05] I feel so lucky to be here with you and please come back. Please, please answer the door when I knock. Please come back. Please let me come back. Bet. Bet. Thank you, everyone, for listening. If you like what we're doing at Wreck and True Stories,

[00:46:26] share this podcast with your friends. We've got a lot of incredible conversations in store for you this season. So see you soon.