The Little Spoon with Jason Reynolds

[00:00:00] People don't know that when I came in the industry, they literally were just telling me that they didn't see that there was a market for books about regular black kids. Straight up and down. But I trust me though. I trust me. 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.

[00:00:23] Today's guest is Jason Reynolds, author of the YA novel, 24 Seconds From Now, A Love Story. The novel is one of Jason's first forays into romance and part of his constant quest to challenge his craft and dedicate his life to art. I won't write a book that I know I can write ever. I won't bother trying to attempt to make a thing I already know I can make.

[00:00:47] That's when you really become like more of an author than an artist. And I always want to err on the side of creativity. If I write a book and at the end of it I'm the same person, then it wasn't difficult enough. Even though Jason is the author of more than 20 books and a certified genius, he is very clear that his work is not his only identity.

[00:01:12] Why he believes the love of a friend is the closest we can get to the love of God. Plus, why he pays so much attention to life's small moments and what he finds worthy in 18 month increments. And the one virtue he says everybody needs more of. That and more is next when Black & Published continues.

[00:01:52] First question, when did you know that you were a writer? I like how you jump right into the deep end. It's like the meaning of life, you know what I mean? How did I know I was a writer? There are days that I still question that. It's tricky for me, the writing thing. I love doing the work. I'm just always careful about calling myself the thing. I knew I wanted to write when I was a kid, a 10 year old. I started taking it seriously when I was 16. I got signed when I was 21.

[00:02:21] And I touched a bit of success starting at around 31, 32, 33. But I've also seen so much over the course of a lifetime to know that I'm just careful to attach myself to anything. And I'm careful to allow that thing to be attached to my identity. I know we all love our association with what writing is and our heroes and the legends that we sort of base and model our careers and lives off of.

[00:02:49] But the truth of the matter is that if I decide to one day put the pin down, I don't want that to feel like I've lost part of myself. Right? So it's what I do because I love to do it. And the moment that I decide that I don't love to do it any more than I won't, and I'm totally okay with separating myself from it. So I understand that part of it, like not wanting the work to consume your identity as a person because you are not what you do.

[00:03:13] But then I also wonder in you talking about the things that you've done and the things that you've seen in this world, is there a hesitation to claim the label or the title because of the fickleness of the industry? So really, I think the caveat I should say is I'm okay with the idea of being a writer. I'm not always okay with the idea of being an author. And I think because the authorship part of it is the ideas around publication, right?

[00:03:39] The idea around like the author part of it is like, I don't know. I don't know. Right? But like, could I write for the rest of my life? If I feel like it, will there be moments later in life where I might kick back and stop with the author part of it? Probably. And I'll still have my notebook and jot the things that I want to jot, but they'll be for me. You know what I mean? They'll be for me. And I don't know.

[00:04:06] And maybe that still makes me a writer or maybe that makes me somebody who processes their emotions on a piece of paper. You know, it's a weird thing for me, but I do think it's a question that should be considered. I think we're so cavalier about the way we talk about this particular thing where it's like, yeah. And it's like, I just want to be considerate of it. That's all. Because I think it is a heavy weight. I appreciate the consideration of it.

[00:04:28] In the course of the years that I've been doing this podcast and talking to all authors of color, most of them black, a lot of authors have trouble claiming the title of writer. Whether it's because they don't like it because of being marginalized in the industry, whether it feels inauthentic, whether it's storyteller or folklorist or whatever other word feels more authentic because of the kinds of stories that they write.

[00:04:57] Right. And I get all that. But listening to you speak and taking consideration with separating the vocation from the art, from the person, you talked about wanting to do it at 10, taking yourself seriously at 16. And then again, you know, starting to really do it at 21 and then having success a decade later. Like you do this for real. Right.

[00:05:21] Right. And so even if you decide to say, you know what, I retire from like writing publicly, that doesn't change the fact that at your core, you are a writer. And I would challenge and say that it is a part of your identity because it's what you turn to. You could do anything else, but you choose this over and over again. It's true. Perhaps, perhaps. Perhaps. Right. I can see. Right. I mean, perhaps. But, you know, I liken it to sort of a person on oxygen.

[00:05:51] Right. If we see a person on oxygen, does the oxygen tank change their humanity? Do we see them? Like if you saw me and I had an oxygen tank, would you call me Jason, the oxygen tanker? No, you would just call me Jason, even though the oxygen tank has been keeping me alive for 30 years. The oxygen tank is a thing that I use and it has allowed me to sort of stand straight. It has allowed me to move forward.

[00:06:15] It has allowed me to experience a full life and it has kept me alive, but it is simply an appendage of who I am. It is a thing, right? You still only see Jason, the person. You don't see Jason, the person with the oxygen tank. And that's all I'm saying. Right. That's all I'm saying. We can argue about this for the whole hour and I'd be good. Right. No, I don't want to argue with you about it for the whole hour. I just.

[00:06:41] Your pondering of the question makes me want to ask something that I've never asked anybody on this podcast before. And that is, well, then who is Jason, the person? Jason, the person is. Is first of all, Isabel Reynolds son. I'm my mama's kid. All right. Allen Reynolds son. I'm my daddy's boy. Right. First and foremost, these are the people who have poured into me and have made me who I am before any of this other stuff came into my life.

[00:07:10] Second of all, I'm still a six year old with curiosity, the size of the world. Right. I live a life of wonder. I'm a person who really believes that there is still wonder, even as we at this big age. Right. I'm I still just think there's so much wonder to experience. Everything is interesting to me. And other than that, I'm a bit peculiar and I live a peculiar life.

[00:07:35] I have my own idiosyncrasies and I'm a complex person like all human beings. Right. There are layers there. I've been therapizing for years and years and years, trying to figure out how to unlock the parts of me that I need to free up and also how to change the parts of me that I desperately want to change. The things that I don't always feel are so healthy workaholism being one of them. And so that's really who I am. Right.

[00:08:01] A bit obsessive, extraordinarily anxious, a good time guy, an introvert who lives an extroverted life a lot of the times. And somebody who loves black people, all of the black people, by the way, even our cousins who have broken my heart time and time again. I love them, too. Right. Even the black people that don't love me. I love them, too. Black babies, black children, black women, black trans and queer folk. Right. Like I'm all about it all day. I think that would be probably me in a nutshell.

[00:08:32] OK, so with all of that said, your latest book is 24 Seconds From Now, A Love Story. And you just made a point to acknowledge that you love all black people. What makes you excited or interested or curious about writing love stories for black people in all the myriad ways that love can be encompassed?

[00:08:56] Because I think that blackness as a concept and as a reality is expansive. And because of its expansive nature, I think that the way love looks is also expansive, let alone the expansive nature of love. Right. And so I think you have these two wide ideas. Right. Blackness and love, which creates just a multitude of opportunity to explore love in a myriad of ways. Right.

[00:09:23] And so the reason why I look at all my books as love stories is because I think that we love each other in ways that we don't always, especially when you're young, that you don't always see as love. Right. Parental discipline is a supreme form of love. Right. Truly. Right.

[00:09:40] And me as a cis hetero black man, it's the same kind of discipline and I use discipline differently here, but it's the same kind of discipline that I like and need from the black women in my life. And I think that's the same kind of thing. Right. It's the exact same thing. Right.

[00:09:55] This idea that like, like, hey, if I'm telling you where the boundaries are, if I'm telling you when you are wrong, if I'm telling you when you have crossed those boundaries, if I'm telling you that you are better than this, that is me expressing a form of love that you may not get outside this house. Right. That is the safest form of love. It may feel like a paddling. It may feel like chastisement.

[00:10:19] But those words have been connoted negatively, but they don't always have to be negative things. It's sort of like creating standards for the people that you care about. Right. So that's the first thing. And I like to show that in my stories. The other thing, though, is the love of friendship. I write about friendship and I really believe that above all other love, that the love of a friend is the strongest. I think it is the greatest. Right.

[00:10:41] I actually believe that even beyond romantic love, even beyond familial love, parental love, I think that the love of a good friendship is the closest thing to me that we have to the love of God. And I only feel that way, perhaps because of my own friendships and because of the way that I've experienced it. So I know its capabilities, its possibilities. I know what it what it can catalyze a person to be and do who weren't for my friends.

[00:11:10] I'm not sure that I would be here. I'm not sure that that this whole thing would have happened to me because they allowed me freedom in a way that perhaps my mother couldn't, even though she was the best mom. But she also was an old lady from the South who basically was like, hey, we need you to focus on a good job. Whereas my friends were like, man, you can do whatever you want to do, bro. We're going to make space for you. We'll pay your rent in New York until you get yourself together.

[00:11:38] We'll let you be the weird little art kid, the bohemian kid in our group without judging you. We'll let you be you. We'll show up to your events, the open mics, and we'll stand in the back of the room and support you. We don't know what you've been talking about, but we love you. So we're going to hold you down. You get a little emotional, a little sensitive. It must be all that art you be doing, but we're going to let you go ahead and cry. We're going to let you be mad and cry and feel all your feelings, right?

[00:12:03] If it weren't for the padded room that they created for me, I don't know. And they still hold me down. And of course, it's different now. And I hold them down in different ways these days. But I don't know. Friendship is something that I think would free a lot. Like true friendship. I tell all the little black boys out there, get you one. Get you somebody you can stand in front of and cry and not feel shame, not feel small. Get you a boy in your life, another black boy in your life that you can look dead in the face and tell him you love him and not feel strange and weird on the inside.

[00:12:32] Get used to that. Somebody to help you get used to what it feels like to be whole. Somebody who can hold a mirror up to you and show you that you're already great, right? Like these are the things that I think friendship has the possibility to do without the messiness of romance, without the dopamine that comes with romantic interactions, right? It's different. Very different. In equating love and discipline.

[00:13:01] In my own therapizing, I realized that once you get to a certain point as an adult in your big ages, the guardrails of life, those boundaries come down off. But there's nothing to keep you back from indulging sometimes in the worst of your vices and proclivities if you want to.

[00:13:22] Outside of friendships and that kind of discipline from love, from friends, from family, from partners, do you find that the page, because you mentioned workaholism, which I share, gives you a boundary to not go off the deep end sometimes? Sometimes. And that's so real, by the way. It's so real.

[00:13:47] Listen, if it weren't for my obsession with the work, if it weren't for whatever that thing churning in me is that keeps sort of, it gets me up at six o'clock, sits me down for eight hours where I'm just sitting there focused on this thing every single day. I think I'd be drunk. I'd be broke. My vices, I got all the writer's vices, right? I got the stereotypical writer vices, right? And so for me, I come, and I come from a family of indulgent people.

[00:14:17] I was raised in a space where I was exposed very young to a lot of, to all the vices. So if it wasn't for what it requires for me to make a thing, for the difficulty of writing and the amount of discipline that is imperative to make a thing, I would drink too much. I would gamble all my money away, right? These are things I know. These are things that I love, right? Let me tell you something. The other thing about being grown, grown is you don't feel no shame. But I know where I come from and I know who I am.

[00:14:45] I think the other beauty of getting older, especially if you've gone through your therapies and you've done this, that, and the third, and you got good people around you and you're taking your lumps, you also become hopefully a bit more self-aware. I know exactly who I am. I know exactly what I'm capable of. I got all the monster stuff in me and I got all the masterpiece too. But in order for me to make sure that the monster stays where the monster belongs, I got it. The work is definitely part of the buffering. It's part of that. Let me just do this because idle minds and idle hands, it's tricky out here for someone like me.

[00:15:14] Everybody's different, but for somebody like me and apparently you. You don't have to read me, Mr. Reynolds, on my own podcast. That's between me and my therapist, okay? My vices and my stuff. You don't have to read me, but yes, I have my own stuff too. Stuff, stuff, stuff, yeah. So then why children? Yeah. You say you are like eternally six at heart.

[00:15:41] And so I can understand wanting to always satisfy that internal part of you, but really like why children and focusing on giving them stories that can help them shape not only their worldview, but their own self-identity. I mean, first and foremost, it's fun. Kids are fun, right?

[00:16:03] To think about childhood or think, whether it be our childhood or their childhood, there's just so much fun to explore because when you're young, everything is new. I get to experience my first kids, my first job, my first friendships, my first betrayals, my first straight A's, my first failures. My parents together, my parents apart for most of us, right? I get to experience my siblings and what they're going through.

[00:16:28] All of my sexuality and my human, my sort of self-identity, as it changes and morphs and molds into whatever it is that it is going to ultimately be or whatever version is going to be in this moment for that matter. I get to experiment with individuality and communalism. I get to figure out what does it mean to be strange and weird? Do I want to fit in? Do I not want to fit in? Am I going to be an athlete? What am I going to be interested in? My hobbies? It's like this whole world of newness and that interests me, right?

[00:16:57] Because my life is one where I'm always itching for that anyway. I just feel like I'm such a restless man, for better or for worse. I'm just a restless person. I'm always sort of like, I just need something to shake it up. I'm just always kind of itching for more. And I think as kids, you're itching for it and it's there for you, right? You're itching for a thing that is inevitable and that interests me, you know?

[00:17:26] Does writing glow your restlessness? No. Not at all. If anything, it fuels it. It fuels it. Because there are so many stories I want to tell. But my experiences don't meet up to my ambition, right? So what I see in my mind and what I want to make, my intellectual capacity isn't there. My talent isn't there. And my experience isn't there. Right?

[00:17:52] And so what happens is just because I have an imagination and I have a good idea, I got to go catch up to my good idea by getting better at the craft, by getting smarter on the topics in which I want to write about, and by experiencing, for me, by experiencing some things to help sort of shine a light on some things that maybe I don't understand right now. Help me prune the idea a bit.

[00:18:17] So then in allowing experience, time, craft, and skill level to catch up to imagination, is there ever a point where you feel like all three are on point and working in your favor when you begin a project or when you finish a project or when you're in the middle of the project? Or is it always elusive? It's elusive at the beginning. Always. I won't write a book that I know I can write. Ever.

[00:18:47] Ever. I'll never, ever start it. It's a waste of time. I won't bother trying to attempt to make a thing I already know I can make. It's just not very interesting to me at that point. Because at that point, you become more of an author than an artist. And I always want to err on the side of creativity. I always want to err on the side of art. I like to make pieces of art. It doesn't mean that we all have to.

[00:19:14] But for me, I try my best to make something that I believe can be held up as a piece of art. And I want to challenge myself to grow in the midst of this process. If I write a book and at the end of it, I'm the same person, then it wasn't difficult enough. It wasn't challenging enough for me. And so I always try to start with something that's really, that I feel is going to be really complicated for me to pull off. Really hard for me to pull off. And I've failed a lot of times. There are a lot of books that have never come out because I just couldn't get there.

[00:19:43] That I'll probably go back to in a decade. And maybe I'll be ready then, right? Then I have a book like 24 Seconds, right? You take 24 seconds. The idea around all of it was really scary from the jump. All right, yo, you're going to write about teenage sex and teenage sexual relationships. Even though this doesn't scare me in my real life, on the page, it's kind of a complicated thing because I'm not a teenager.

[00:20:07] And it's really easy to toe the line between writing something that is responsible and writing child pornography. And I'm not interested in writing child pornography, right? That's not my jam. So then how do I use my deft hand to tell this story responsibly? And I have to take in consideration that I'm a cishet man, which matters in this space. So how do I manage this? Well, I got to figure out how to use temporal devices.

[00:20:35] Like we'll go with time here and we'll use time as a way. And we'll go backward, right? And if we go backward, then that means we never have to get to the sex scene because the sex scene is in front of us, right? So we're going in the opposite direction. So you get to build this kid's life and his relationship and all of the things he's going through. And you can make it romantic and even sexy at times without having to venture into waters that I think err on the side of irresponsibility for me. But that took time to figure out.

[00:21:00] So I wonder, how do you find ways to challenge yourself? Or what is it that you're chasing when you're challenging yourself? People always ask me, if I were to look at my life, if I look at all the books that I've written, so that's 20-something books. And if I were to equate them to a moment in my life, let's say these are all autobiographical, right? And there's a lot of my stuff that is sprinkled in all these books anyway.

[00:21:28] All of these books, all 20-something of these books take place in like 18 months of my life. Right? That's it. And so what challenges me continuously is understanding that there are so many small moments, small moments, right? That I get to find and then explore and explode and unfold. I'm taking very small moments. I'm not a person who is looking at, I'm not a person who writes like Scope, right?

[00:21:58] Who's like, yo, I'm going to take generations, right? Like Yajasi and all these brilliant writers, right? I ain't got, homegoing is not in me, right? At least not right now, right? Like I ain't got, I don't got Pachinko. Pachinko ain't in me, right? Beloved, not going to happen, right? But like the idea is that, right? You keep reading me, man. You keep reading me because the book that's coming out is epic from 1995 to 1860. And I didn't need to read. Nah.

[00:22:28] See, while you writing about 100 years, I'm writing about 100 minutes. That's what I'm talking about, right? How can we get all of this in an hour and a half? Let's explore an hour and a half of this kid's mind. And because of that, and because of that, I'm always searching for like a small nugget to explore, right? Just a nugget. I don't need, right? The challenge for me doesn't come from expanse. The challenge of me comes from distillation. Tiny nugget.

[00:22:56] How can I build an entire world around a single moment, a single moment? How can I take what most people would consider a short story and make it a novel? So then in focusing on those singular moments and challenging yourself in that way, when you take the writing of that and then enter the authorship and in the industry, what are your challenges there in publishing? I don't have any anymore.

[00:23:29] For now, it ebbs and it flows. You might catch me in two or three years and I'm like, man, they ain't let me publish nothing. You know what I mean? But I haven't, look, I've been very fortunate and I don't really get too much pushback on anything these days. But early on in my career, it was tough. I mean, look, people don't know my story, right? Or at least the part of my story where people don't know that when I came in the industry, they literally was just telling me that they didn't see that there was a market for books about regular Black kids. Straight up and down. And nobody wanted to publish me.

[00:24:00] Right? And not these particular stories. I came in on poetry when I was 21. So my first publication was when I was 21 with HarperCollins and it was poetry. It was like an art, poetry and art and all this kind of creative stuff. But my first novel, when I was the greatest, everybody want to publish it. Everybody was saying that it was just too, basically it was too Black and there was no, there's no market for it for kids. There's no, even though we had Walter Dean Myers and Jacqueline Woodson and all these brilliant writers writing in the space,

[00:24:27] their generation was 10, 15 years before mine, but still working in the space. They were like, yeah, this kind of contemporary work is we really don't have space for this. It's not a thing except for one editor. And everybody had the book, but only one editor decided to take a bite on it. Right? And I knew in that moment that there would be an uphill battle just to try to make sure that the industry understood what I knew already about my people.

[00:24:50] Which is, it's not that we don't read, it's that we looking for a particular thing that y'all won't make or that y'all won't publish because we making it, but y'all won't publish. And so let's see how it works. Right? And we buy into, you got to know your audience. We buy into people we believe for better or for worse. We buy into people we believe. So what I knew was that we're going to put out this book and then I'm going to hit the road and I'm going to hit the road hard.

[00:25:19] Y'all ain't, I'm not going to be around. I was doing 180 days on the road, 200 days on the road. I'm in every school, every community center. I'm in the projects. I'm in the libraries, the prisons. I'm everywhere so that everybody could see, oh yeah, this is the man who wrote these books. He really a regular dude. He come from where we come from. He know what it is we know. He can communicate with us in the ways that we can connect to. Right? He can hold us to the fire when it's necessary.

[00:25:47] He can love on us in the ways that we want and need to be loved. And so by the end of my second or third year of touring in that way, there started to be a buzz. And it was like, hey, I don't know what he's doing, but there's this thing happening where the kids are now reading the books. And I would get messages and notes and fan mail of people saying, hey man, my kid, for whatever reason, all of a sudden has begun to read because he met you and he believed you. He met you. So he decided to give it a shot. Right? That was the way that it all happened for me.

[00:26:16] And because I trusted my gut, because of my own intuition, because of my own curiosity and wonder, because of what I've learned as a child being raised by who I was raised by, about sort of listening to my own voice, then you prove the industry wrong. And after you prove the industry wrong, then they trust you. Right? Even if it's against their better judgment. Right? All American Boys at the time it was written about police brutality. Nobody wanted to touch it with a 10-foot pole. This is before The Hate U Gives. This is before all these books. Right?

[00:26:45] Like it came, it was one of these early books that got out and did this thing. And my agent told me, had you told me you were writing this book, I would have told you it was career suicide. But I trust me. Right? And so we did it behind her back and publisher was like, we're going to take a swing on this thing. Cool. Boom. Long way down. Same thing. It was like, yo, I don't know. It's kind of like, yeah, but I trust me. Let's give it a shot. Look both ways. They said, oh, there's no market for short stories. I trust me though. I trust me.

[00:27:14] And it's out of here. Boom. Spider-Man. Miles Morales. Oh, we don't know. It's a novel. Blah, blah, blah. I trust me. I think I can make it go. Right? And so I think for me, that's really what it is and how it's worked. And so I don't really get that much pushback these days from the publishers. Shout out to my publishers, by the way. I got love from my editor, Caitlin, who is the best. But we're a partnership. She trusts me. Was there ever a point in those early years where you stopped trusting you or where you

[00:27:42] faltered on trusting you and you had to build it back up? Between 23 years old and 27 years old, I had a hard time. Because when you get on young, 21 years old to have an outsized ego. Right? It's a part of being. And the truth is that they need it. Right? If I don't have that outsized ego, I don't get the deal. But I have this like, but I really believe at that particular time that I was like a genius and nobody else could see it. Right? Because you're 21.

[00:28:12] And you believe that everything you make has never been made before. And it's like, no. Right? There's no such thing. You know what I mean? Nothing is new. You're doing it your way for your generation. Right? But it's been done a million times over. But when you're 21, 22, you really believe that you've invented it. Right? And so I felt that way. And I got my deal. And nobody bought the book. And the industry, the publishing company didn't support the book. And I was locked into a funky contract.

[00:28:40] So you go through that weird thing where it's like, I thought I was this, but I'm not. And you go through your pity party. And I did all of those things and decided I was going to quit. I was going to retire at 25. You know, all this silly shit. And, you know, but fortunately for me, I had one of my very good friends came to me and was like, hey, you should probably try to write one more book, man. Like, tell a different story. Tell your story. Just be yourself on the page.

[00:29:09] And that's how, when I was the greatest came and that's how everything changed. But I've been discouraged, of course. So that's how I feel about all of it. I'm like, yo, I was down on myself and I beat myself up because honestly, I just, I'm not good enough yet to make the thing that I want to make. What I see in my mind's eye, I'm just not good enough to make it come true. Yet, I will work and I will get there. But it feels terrible to, you know, to beat your head, to bang your head against the wall

[00:29:37] wondering why can't my brain, my mind, my talent, my imagination and my skill make this happen. And it just ain't time yet. Keep working. You know. Thank you. How long did it take for you to make 24 seconds from now from idea to publication? It's a tricky question because most of my books get crashed. And what I mean by crashed is we typically don't do much of a runway, right? So when I turn in a book, they expedite the process to get the book out in the world as

[00:30:06] soon as possible. That's typically how it goes with me. So the idea of the book, just me sitting with it in my consciousness was probably for like a year. I started having conversations with people, with men and boys and realizing that like there's this crazy drought when it comes to representation of the lover boy. Like we've only seen a particular version of the lover. And usually he's either the bad boy.

[00:30:32] He's sort of the slick talking, like really confident guy. He's the athlete who also has a sweet side, right? He's that, right? He's like, oh yeah, I'm the captain of the football team. But nobody knows that I really write poetry, right? He's like that guy, right? Right, we know. We've seen all these interesting stereotypes. But for Black boys, one, we haven't seen many of much of any love story from their perspective.

[00:30:59] Two, we never get to see a Black boy just be tender without any of the self-consciousness, right? Like he's, this kid in my story is not like, there's no pretense. He's just like, yeah, like I love her. That's it. I love her. She's great. We really have a good time together. That's it, right? And now after this, after these months we've spent together, two years together, we both want to have sex, right?

[00:31:26] There's no other, there is no like other thing happening in this story, right? There's no big breakup, no blow up. Nobody's parent is on drugs. Nobody gets shot. Nobody, right? It's like, yo. We go together. It's like, we go together and we seniors in high school and I feel all kinds of ways, right? My body is feeling a way. My mind and my heart are feeling a particular way. My anxiety is on a million, but my desire is on a million and one.

[00:31:54] And I'm trying to figure out what that means, right? That's it. And I've never seen it. I've never seen it, even though I felt it as a young person. So I know it to be true. And I know that black boys be cupcakes that everybody turns into like feral animals. And it's like, yo, we really be out here cupcaking. And right. It's so funny, right? It's like, I tell all my homegirls, we all laugh.

[00:32:20] I'm like, dog, every woman who's ever dated a man, specifically a black man knows that he really want to be the little spoon. And that's just the truth, right? I'm like, he really want to like snuggle up. He want to take your arm and do like this, you know? And we really be acting like that's not the case, right? But it is the case. But I, and I really want to show what that is, right? Because the internet will have us believe in that we hate each other.

[00:32:50] Mm-hmm. Social media will have us believe that black men and black women hate each other, that we have such disdain for one another, which is not true. It is a fallacy, right? Do those men exist? Of course. Are they a very small subset? Yes. The internet and media has really skewed and distorted and perverted some of the truths about who we are. And this story like this is just to push back and say like, yeah, what if they just love each other and they just want to share in this new form of communication?

[00:33:20] What if he comes from good parents who have a healthy relationship and who know how to speak to him, who struggle with it, but know how to talk to him? What if he has a sister who knows how to explain to him what it is to be a woman, what it is to sort of want to date without any obligation, any, right? Like she's got like, she's dating. She's like, yo, I'm dating. I got to, there's a couple of guys that I date. I have a right to do that. There's nothing wrong with this, nor do you have any right to judge me for wanting to

[00:33:49] spread my time in the way I choose to do so, right? Like that ain't your business. And what if we could have a grandma who has a love story of her own and wants to share it with her grandson? What if we have a grandfather who speaks to him in particular ways and gives him gain that, right? And most of the stories in this book are the stories of my own life. This is the way my mother, that is my mama's talk. My mama's sex talk is the exact verbatim talk given in this book.

[00:34:17] My father, the way he spoke to me was in the same ways, right? This is the way it was for me. My friends, they all just lie. And that's okay too, right? We're figuring it out together, right? We're all sort of stumbling through this strange gauntlet of human sexuality together. But like, why can't we just tell these stories about how there's such thing as Black late bloomers? That a Black boy gets to be a late bloomer. That he gets to be nervous. That he gets to have body image issues.

[00:34:45] That he gets to like having... Think about what it's like to be a little kid, an 11-year-old in middle school with Black boy and you get told at that age what your physical expectations are. And what it does to you when you're like, but I ain't even finished growing. But if you're Black, it gets pressed upon you very early in life, which is wild to consider. And what that turns into, how it metastasizes by the time you're 17, 18, 19. If your body don't add up, or if it does.

[00:35:15] Because on one side, your skin is undesirable. On the other side, you believe yourself to be overly desired, right? You believe yourself to not have to put in any extra work, to not have to know intimacy because you've got a large phallus and you feel like that might just be enough, right? All this weird... But that starts when we're like 10, 11 years old. You're right. There hasn't been a story about that particular aspect of maleness and masculinity and growing for boys.

[00:35:42] Because I think about like, I think you hear it more in the news about Black girls and then their development and then their adultifications and like the street harassment and how that manifests when you're still trying to figure out like you haven't finished growing. So you don't know where things are going to land or sit or fall or all of the things. And so like to see that from a male perspective, I think it's eye-opening because we don't have these conversations as men and women.

[00:36:08] So then without further ado, can you read something from 24 Seconds From Now and then we can go deeper into the book. 24 Seconds From Now, a love story by Jason Reynolds, is a YA novel that explores the budding relationship between Neon and Aria, high school seniors who've been together for two years and are both ready to take their relationship to the next level of love and intimacy. Here's Jason. I'll just read a little bit from chapter one.

[00:36:37] This is our protagonist, Neon. He's in the bathroom with her house. He's preparing himself for this moment, right? He's in the back. You know, he's giving himself the pep talk that so many of us have given ourselves. Where it's like, get it together. You know what I mean? Don't mess this up. And this is what he said. Here I am gazing into the toilet just in case those fries I had a half an hour ago decide

[00:37:06] to exit through the chimney and not the basement door. Here I am running laps from toilet to sink, sink to toilet, a three-step mile that got me all out of breath. Here I am wondering what she's in her room doing, what she's thinking. If she's wondering where I am. If it feels like there are teeth stuck in her throat. If there's a ceiling fan in her gut. If she's reponyed her ponytail or checked the chicken on her breath. Here I am wondering how I got water all over the floor in here. And if I remember to put lotion on my legs.

[00:37:36] And if I've licked my lips too much and now they smell like spit. And I have to remember not to rip the condom open with my teeth like in the movies. Only had to practice that once to know it's a bad idea. Don't nobody want to kiss. Tastes like a tire dipped in Vaseline. That could actually kill the mood. And if I do rip the condom open with my teeth like in the movies, I have to remember to be careful not to bite a hole in it. And I have to remember to put it on right on the first try. She'll be watching. Pinch and roll. No fumbles.

[00:38:05] And I have to remember a bra is the most complicated lock to pick. So don't bother trying. Which is why, which is why, which is why I should just go in there and tell her. Just get myself together. Drive my hands and face on the back of this towel. Walk into her room and say it. That I, Neon Benton, her boyfriend of two years, am nervous as shit. That's me. Thank you.

[00:38:31] So you said that the conversation with Neon's mom was a conversation that your mom had. Was the bra also on the table in the diner as well? Because that's it. Nah. The bra part, actually all the bra stuff comes from my little brother. My little brother, when he was ready, he called me. When he was ready, he called me and he was like, yo, Jay, I got to talk to you, bro. Like, I think I'm, me and my girl, we getting close. It's getting kind of crazy. I think I'm ready. She say she ready. We just ready. And I'm like, this is great, man.

[00:39:01] Congratulations. Let's talk about it. What are your fears and concerns? And he's like, I got so many fears, I'm any concerns. And I was like, well, give me your biggest. What if I can't get her bra off? And that's what he said. I was like, that's your biggest concern? He was like, yeah. He was like, bro, that's, them things are like contraptions. You know what I mean? And I wanted to tell him, listen, bro, the older you get, the hook and that, it becomes more and more hooks, right?

[00:39:28] Like, I'm like, the hooks grow, bro. Right now, she got one hook back there. Like, it ain't no big deal. In 10 years, it's going to be a lot more hooks, man. Like, eight of them jobs, right? And so I really, and when I, but when I really, after I sort of walked him through that and honestly told him that, like, hey, man, don't worry about it. She can take off her own bra. Like, women can undress themselves, right? But there's this interesting thing about movies. They're all thinking about, like, movies.

[00:39:57] And I'm like, hey, man, in real life, everybody's going to take off their own clothes. Like, it's okay. You know what I mean? It doesn't make it any less romantic, I promise, you know? But I thought about it later on and was like, wow, what an interesting small detail that's really big in a boy's mind. And I remember when I was young, how my friends, once we started being sexually active, how there was all this talk around the bra and around the hooks in the back of the bra and around who, and around who could do it with one hand and all this.

[00:40:24] It's like a big deal around, like, who knows how to take off a bra. And so I just wanted to make, it's a real thing. So I added into the story. So that wasn't me, but that was my little brother. It's cool. It's just, it's funny to me as a woman because like, it's a big thing at 17, I think the first time, but then it's still. A big thing at like 27, 37, 47. It's always a big thing. There are some men who still can't take it off or can't figure it out and to be like, take that shit off. Just be back there. Just be back there doing this. That's what I'm saying. It's a real thing, right?

[00:40:54] And you're like, all right, I got it. Don't worry about it. I can take care of it. You have so many different kinds of young characters. You have Neon, who's just like your regular dude, goes to school, he helps out his family. You've got Amari who comes from this very musical family. Her sister is a synesthete. They're always painting the house a different color because it correlates with the sound.

[00:41:21] Why show all of these very nuanced portrayals of Black children that are not often centered in Black literature? Because we need it. Because they exist in the world. I tell everybody all the time. You got a Black kid in a white environment. The expectation is one of two things. That they're the coolest kid in the room or the toughest kid in the room. And that's unfair because they get to be the weirdest kid in the room, right?

[00:41:51] They get to be the nerdiest kid in the room. They get to be manga and anime lovers. They get to be skateboarders who wear costumes to different cons. They get to be musicians and singers. And the musical instruments they play get to be the violin and the flute and the oboe, if that's what they so choose. They get to be artists. They get to be dancers. The nerds and the weirdos and the Black goth kids and the athletes and all of us already

[00:42:19] existed in the same classroom. There is no such thing as acting Black. There is only being Black. And however you act and however you act is Black, right? But this idea that like a kid who decides that they want to rock out with their guitar and spike their hair and do whatever, that kid is any less Black than the kid who's rapping is internal hate. It's like, that ain't true. We made rock and roll anyway. That's ours anyway.

[00:42:48] So why does that kid, why is he any less Black? He's not acting less Black. He just don't act like you. And that's the beauty of Blackness, that we all get to act like ourselves and still be under the beautiful umbrella of what it is to be a part of this culture. In this story about teenagers who are on the cusp of the rest of their lives, whether they know what they want to do or not, why was it important to show Neon's own uncertainty about

[00:43:16] his life, even as much as he was certain about his girlfriend? I think there is pressure that's sort of inherently baked into every stage of our lives, right? Like you said, right? You're standing on the precipice, the brink of the rest of your life, when the reality is every day is the brink of the rest of our lives, right? But the way we talk about young life is, hey, 18, which is also wild because you're supposed to make decisions that are supposed to... You're supposed to choose what you're going to be and do for the rest of your life at 18, which is insane because we don't know who we are at 18.

[00:43:46] I'm still a child, right? And so I think that pressure is something that is sort of... It's inherent in, I think, specifically in American society. It's sort of woven into the American way. It's like at 18, you are now grown. You are now supposed to go off to college or not and decide who and what you are going to be for the rest of your life. I think we get there again at 25, you feel it. At 30, you feel it. At 40, you feel it.

[00:44:11] And then I think from 50 to 65 until your AARP kick in and all of that, I think you got like freedom, right? Because if you was going to have kids, you ain't having them now unless you adopt them, right? So that pressure is over, right? You're done with that. You let that go. You're far past your childhood stuff. You're usually toward the end of whatever career you have. You're like right in the middle, heading toward the end of it. If you got a traditional job, you're going to be retiring in the next 15 years anyway, right? So you're really in like this sweet spot for you to like do your dance before it's time

[00:44:41] to start thinking about like, you know, how are we going to end this thing? How are we going to land the plane? Do I got my papers in order? And this, that, and the third, right? Right. So like, I think, so I think that there's always for every sort of era of our lives, there's a little bit of weight there for most of us, not for all of us. Some of us really be free out here, but there's always a little bit of weight for most of us. And I think Neon just feels the natural weight of like, what does this mean? Especially because the person who was closest to him is leaving, is going on about her business. She's smart. She's focused.

[00:45:11] She knows she has to get out of her house and she's going to college and he's not. And I think that kind of, it's impossible not to sort of wonder about what your plan is when the person next to you has one. And he has one too. He has one too. It's just not as concrete. It's not as stable. And that's how my life was. Like, why isn't that okay for a person to be like, but that's not really what I want or how I want to live my particular life. It's the only thing that I own is this thing I have, right?

[00:45:40] It's the only thing that's worth anything is this life I have. The rest of this stuff can go. So I might as well do my best to invest in it in the way that I choose. And I think Neon's going through that now. He's like, I want to be a filmmaker. So because that's what I want to do, I'm going to stay here. I'm going to work a job. I'm going to buy a camera and I'm going to try and make a movie. Why not?

[00:45:59] So then what do you say to the 14 to 17 year olds or the 34 to 37 year olds or the 84 to 87 year olds who pick up this book and come to this story, who are on the precipice of the rest of their lives, no matter how old they are? What is your message to them? I think that tenderness is a virtue. That it's a virtue. It's a virtue as it pertains to tenderness toward others and tenderness toward oneself.

[00:46:25] I really think we have to get back to, you know, I hear all my homegirls telling me about their desires for a soft life. And I understand what that means in particular ways. Right. And I don't want to co-op or bastardize what it means for them. But what I do also think is I think we all could use a bit more softness in our lives.

[00:46:44] And in this particular context, I mean, like in a very literal way, you know, I think that it's okay to be gentle with one another and to have grace for one another and to be patient with one another and to be kind. To me, there is nothing more attractive. But that comes from a particular kind of tenderness, right? A particular kind of compassion. And I think we all could kind of use a reset when it comes to sort of understanding that as a virtue, a true virtue. Tenderness is a virtue. Amen.

[00:47:15] So I'm going to move into a speed round. I don't know how speedy it will be, but we're going to try. It'll be speedy. I promise. What is your favorite book? How Rich the Bones by Jasmine Ward. Who was your favorite author? At the moment, Julia Oksuka. Who was your favorite poet? When I was a kid, I was obsessed with Langston Hughes. But I think now it would have to be Kamoan Felix or Tyra Gay.

[00:47:44] I mean, that whole group of them, like Saeed and Danez and like that whole Mahogany Brown, who was the mother of a lot of them. I love Ocean Vuong. I think they're brilliant. There's a lot. There's not so many poets. You know what I mean? You got like Gwendolyn. You got Lucille. You can't leave out the OGs, right? That we all sort of quote ad nauseum. But there's a lot. Okay. So in the same vein, name a poet that you think people don't know enough about. Tyra Day. That dude can write.

[00:48:13] Him and Kamoan Felix. Kamoan Felix. Because Kamoan has such a broad, like frame of reference. Because I know her personally. She reads like all this Russian stuff. And so her tools are different. And it's experimental. And it can be difficult to read. It's something you have to kind of work through and concentrate on. But you can still feel it. She's going to be a force. She's a baby. She's going to be a force. So this might be a weird question. Because I don't know if you're pondering this in life.

[00:48:41] But if money were no object, where would you go? What would you do? And where would you live? This is a hard question for me. I won't lie. Because this isn't a hypothetical anymore for me. Fortunately, right? But here's how I'll frame the question. If I didn't have responsibilities, right? Because for me, it's not about the money anymore. It's about my responsibilities to take care of my mom and so forth and so on. So if I didn't have those responsibilities, I would go to the desert.

[00:49:09] I would build a house in the desert. Whether that would be in Arizona or somewhere out in California or Morocco. Morocco might be a bit much because that's like a really aggressive desert. But like Arizona with its flat land, that's sort of my power central, right? You know how people are always like, I go to the beach to like reset. I go to the desert. What brings you joy? So many things.

[00:49:33] But I love my mom, being around my mom and hearing her laugh or seeing her laugh. Children laughing, being outside and like looking around and walking around. Like taking a long, long walk. Like a 10-miler. Like taking a long walk. I love that. I love that. Every single day. Sometimes twice a day. We're all of the shit in there.

[00:50:02] I put everything in there, just so you know. All of the things. We got the oils. We got the bath salts. We got the bubbles. We got the flowers in there. We got the rose petals. Everything is in there. For me. Yeah. A good massage brings me joy. I've been in a spa once a week. Like I go in there once a week just to go and get in all the waters and saunas and everything. A good facial brings me joy. Like, yeah. Somebody washing my hair brings me joy. Like all of that kind of stuff. Black people. Ha ha. Ha ha.

[00:50:32] Black people bring me so much joy. Black people are joyful and joyous. And it's amazing. Yeah. It's amazing. What brings you peace? Same thing. Because for me, so much of my joy is rooted in a peaceful life. But also, when I think about like my father, who's no longer here, man, there is a washing of peace that comes over me. And he's not here, right? So, like, of course, there is the hole of absence.

[00:50:59] But I guess because of the way we ended things and because of the way we sort of comported ourselves through the process of that transition, I just feel almost proud of the both of us and of the way we handled what was happening and what he tasked me with moving forward for my family, my siblings and my mom, my stepmom and all of that.

[00:51:24] I never felt more at peace with being a grown-ass man than I did the day he died. Mm. That's beautiful. So my final question for you today. When you are dead and gone and no longer here, what would you like someone to write about the legacy of words and work that you've left behind? That he toiled on behalf of his people, but boy, did he make it look like magic.

[00:51:54] Mm. Mm. That's it. Big thank you to Jason Reynolds for being here today on Black & Published. You can follow Jason on the socials at jasonrenolds83 on Instagram. And make sure you check out 24 Seconds From Now, out now from Athenaeum. You can get a copy of the novel 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.

[00:52:24] If you liked this episode and want more Black & Published, head to our Instagram page. It's at blackandpublished, and that's B-L-K-N-P-U-B-L-I-D.

[00:52:54] Author of the middle grade novel Onyx and Beyond. No matter where Onyx was, whether he was at the bookstore, whether he was at the barbershop, whether he was at Grumma's house, there were people who were concerned about him in L-K-P-U-B. Because that is Black community. One of the quotes in the beginning is Nikki Giovanni, Black love is Black wealth. And when I read that quote, I was like, that's the thesis. That's the thing. It's like, Black love can do a lot. It can heal a lot. And it can elevate a lot.

[00:53:25] 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 for listening to this episode.

[00:53:50] 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.