Inside 'The Seven Daughters of Dupree': An Evening with Author Nikesha Elise Williams

Foreign.

Hello, hello, hello everybody.

I am excited.

I've got my clapper with me right here because I'm here about a party.

We are about to party tonight.

My name is Ramonda Lark Young and I am proud to be the co owner and co founder of Mahogany Books.

And tonight we welcome you to Mahogany Books.

Front row, good people.

And I say front row because y' all got the best seat in the house.

You're in the comfort from your own home, your own space, wherever you are.

And so we just encourage you to sit back, relax, grab a good beverage, grab some food.

We won't be able to see you, so that means you can just really get, get comfortable where you are.

But just a couple of quick housekeeping things.

One, we do have a chat that is open, so if you have a question that you want to drop in the chat, we'll do our best to round up those questions around 7:30.

But if you have excitement, if you're ready to party in the chat, please note that as well that you're excited or something really resonated with you as the authors are talking also too, I just want to just say thank you for making space tonight.

We had to make some quick moves to switch from being in person to being virtual, but things happen the way they're supposed to happen.

I'm personally excited that a lot of you are able to join from all over, know from wherever you are.

So in the chat, actually I encourage you just to drop, you know, where you, where you're from, where are you watching from tonight?

And that would be great to see and we're excited to have that pop up there too.

So yes, if you're able to see this from where you are.

I see people are dropping things in the chat as well.

Just drop where you're, where you're listening from.

Some people talking about I'm ready, you're excited.

We're excited and ready as well.

I'm just excited for a lot of different reasons, but I won't make this about me.

We're excited to have this conversation.

We're excited for spaces for authors to be able to connect with you and to share their stories and all the hard work that goes into some of these books.

This is a night where people can listen and hear about those imaginations and ideas and be part of something very intimate, something very beautiful and a time where a lot of us are looking for community.

So I'm excited about that as well.

So again, thank you for making space tonight.

Really quickly about Mahogany Books.

If you're not familiar.

Mahogany Books is actually based right here in the Washington D.C. area.

We've been in business now about 19 years.

Craziness.

And actually we've been married for about 23 years.

My husband Derek has got a, he's in the background trying to keep us together with all this technology tonight.

So yes, 23 years married, HBCU grad, shout out to Langston University, my alma mater and of course Bowie State here in the area.

But for Mahogany Books, we are just lovers of culture, community and of course connection.

And so this avenue, this business has allowed us to really tap into all those things that are dear to us.

So you all being here means so much.

It's a dream realized, but it's only realized because you all participate, you all show up, you all make it an intentional space for yourselves.

And that's something that's, that's very dear, dear to us.

So anyway, let's get into it.

Let me see here a couple of quick things.

Again, the chat is there.

I see people dropping there.

There are locations in the chat.

I see some Bowie State love in the chat as well.

Dallas, Texas is popping up.

California.

So again, thank you for being here really quickly.

So let's get into it.

Tonight we have with us two amazing authors and I'm going to kick it off with our moderator who is someone very just dear to Mahogany Books.

And I can't remember, I know where we met.

I just can't remember what year it was.

It was a long time ago.

And he is someone who was native Washingtonian here in the area and is someone that when we have a reason to call an author or thinking of an idea or really just want to be a part of something that we're doing, we call him.

And I can't tell you how many times he answers.

I want to say all of them.

It might be one.

He may not, but almost all the time he answers.

But Mr. Jason Reynolds is a number one New York Times bestselling author of many award winning books.

I'm going to give all the bio.

He's a poet.

People don't, I don't know if people know all that, maybe do a poet.

He is the recipient of a Newberry honor, he is a Prince Honor, NAACP Image Award winner and multiple Coretta Scott King Honors.

He's also the 2020-2022 National Ambassador, Ambassador for Young People's Literature.

And you know, Jason lives right here in D.C. so Jason, thank you for saying yes.

You and Nikisha worked all this out.

So we just appreciate you all the time.

How you feeling?

Exhausted, but I'm good.

I'm happy to be here.

More than anything, I'm happy to be here.

Keeping it real, everybody doing a lot of things, but just appreciate you for being here and I am excited to welcome everyone to this amazing sister.

We're all here to talk about the Seven Daughters of Dupri by Ms. Nikisha Elise Williams.

So yesterday, for y' all that don't know, yesterday was the, the publication day for the book.

So in the chat, I just want y' all to put happy book birth.

It was yesterday that this book made its debut into the world and tonight we are excited to have her here.

So Nikisha Elise Williams, two time Emmy award winning producer, award winning author, producer and host of the black and published podcast, Shout out to the Black and Published podcast, which is also on the Mahogany Books Podcast Network.

And she's also a narrative strategist by day and journalist.

Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, Essence and Vox.

And Nikisha is also a Kamblio Fiction fellow and a DeGroote foundation writer of note grantee.

She's a Chicago native.

She lives in Florida with her family.

Y', all, please help me welcome Nakisha to the stage so we can get into this amazing book that's all over the Internet, all online, everybody.

Every time I log on, I see the Seven Daughters of Dupree.

Everybody's talking about this book.

So give it up for the amazing Nikisha.

Nikisha, thank you for being here.

How you feeling?

Like I told you earlier, I'm hungry.

Listen, listen, listen.

Somebody should arrange for some kind of delivery meal to be able to pop off and be delivered.

I think that should have been Jason, but we're not going to put him on the spot, you know.

So we looking for food, we looking for meals over here, Jason.

But thank you both for just making space, being here with Mahogany Books.

We don't take something like this, this conversation lightly.

Just us being in community, we don't take it lightly, especially during moments like this where some people are feeling so isolated.

So some, some feeling very helpless in different ways.

So being here tonight and talking and being a community is something very special.

So thank you all for making space.

And so I'm going to turn it over to you all.

Let me say this last thing for everybody in the chat.

Around 7:30, 7:40 or so, we'll be able to grab your questions.

So if you have questions, please drop them in the chat so we can bring them up.

And for an audience, Q and A. I'LL read those questions off.

Yeah, we'll turn it over to y'.

All.

Let's do it, y'.

All.

Wait, I gotta do my Clapper again.

Hold on.

Nikisha.

She booked Birthday sis yesterday.

Yesterday.

Let's get into it.

We always are short on time because there's never enough time to have these kinds of conversations.

The first thing I want the audience to know is if you hear a beep, it's.

Cause Nikisha didn't change the battery in her smoke detector.

She really kept it as black as possible for y' all tonight.

She wanted to make sure she set a cultural tone for you.

You know what?

I'll take it.

It's fine.

In full disclosure.

Yeah.

I ain't been in town and I gotta say it.

Cause I'm ashamed.

I ain't been in town.

I came home and all my smoke.

You heard that?

Look.

Yeah, I've been trying to.

I done took them all down.

It's still more going on.

I feel blessed to have a home where I can't find out which one it is.

But at the same time, this is a problem tonight.

I apologize in advance, but y' all gonna hear that beat.

We good.

Happy book birthday, homie.

How does it feel?

It feels good.

It feels surreal is the word that I've been leaning on.

So I'll just say that again here.

It feels surreal.

But, yeah, here we are.

Isn't it strange?

And we are going to get into it in a second.

But I love to talk about this because this is debut, right?

Yes and no.

I was Indy, right?

Yes.

I was indie for many years, so this is technically, like my eighth book, but this is my big traditional debut, so.

Exactly.

Yeah.

It's weird because you don't.

I mean, it's old hat at this point, but at the same time, I always like to talk about it because the assumption is that the feeling is one of happiness.

And that's not necessarily true.

It's a bit more complex.

So if you could think about it, let's try to figure out how to put a name to it, because it is a strange experience.

How do you put a name to how you're actually good is not going to cut it with me, unfortunately.

How are you?

Okay.

Yeah.

Like, find your language.

How.

What is this feeling?

I feel like you're getting me back from our interview on black and publishers.

Okay.

I feel it already.

How am I act?

It's a multitude of feelings.

So, like, I was.

I'm very excited that the book is in the world and that people are getting it.

But all of that is happening inside of the algorithm of Instagram and Facebook and wherever people seem to find me on the Internet.

And, you know, as soon as I log off, it's back to my real life.

So, like, I have two children.

I think my daughter has infected us.

So she had a fever on Monday.

My son is now not feeling well.

I woke up with a scratchy throat.

She had a tantrum this morning over toothpaste.

So, like, life is still life in.

It's been great and all, but it's like, you know, children will keep you humble, they don't care.

And so it's holding all of that.

But then also.

So with respect to the industry, you know, I got my first sales update yesterday of like, what those pre sale numbers really look like and what the print run was and who bought what and when and where.

And I was like, yeah, I'll be in touch next Wednesday for your first week sales.

And I was like, I don't need this information.

I don't need it at all.

But, you know, it's been a 20 year career and I have yet to check my sales.

I need not know.

Yeah, Like, I know I have access to it in like the author portal, but I was.

I'm completely ignorant.

I had been ignorant of all of that information until I opened that email yesterday.

So I may not open hers anymore.

Yeah, not.

Not worth it.

Yeah.

I want to ask a couple of sort of, a couple of questions about you and sort of your feelings around this work.

And then I want to get into the book a bit before we open it up for Q and A.

This always speeds by, but the first question I have is, who were you before this?

Because books change us, right?

Like, for any of you watching, to be a writer is to be.

Is to basically put yourself through the wildest boot camp over and over and over again.

And it's an emotional boot camp.

It's a physical boot camp.

It's a mental and intellectual boot camp.

Sometimes it's a spiritual bootcamp boot camp and it's impossible to come out on the other end the same.

So.

So my question is, who were you before Seven Daughters of Dupri?

The real answer is I was a wife.

Was.

Operative work, no doubt.

That's real, you know, so like, that's a part of it, but with respect to the writing, I think, and maybe not necessarily just with Seven Daughters of Dupree, but I can say, like, when I first started Indy, I was maybe way more rigid in that I wanted this.

So Badly that I was afraid to mess up.

I took everything.

I took myself way too seriously.

And I can see that if ever I go and look back at an old something I've done, how nervous and how my nerves kind of took over because I just.

I didn't want to mess up.

I wanted it too badly.

And now I'm just like, girl, let it go.

There are other things to do.

But I think before this book, it was the dream.

And then not knowing if I could become what I believed, and then being who I am and just saying, eff it, I'm do it anyway.

And, you know, if it works, it works.

And if not, I can always do it myself.

And I think that's how we got here.

That's real.

That's real.

You know, I was thinking earlier, before we got on the call, when I was running around with the.

Fuck.

With the.

With the smoke detectors, and I was trying to pinpoint which smoke detector was making the sound, right?

And I'm sort of moving around the house, like, freaking out because we're running out of time, and I'm unscrewing and checking batteries and hitting the weird button that makes the chime and doing all the things.

Writing a novel about seven sisters.

Did it feel like that?

Like, how does so 7.

Seven sisters live in your head, right?

And at some point you have to sort of figure out, like, who's talking, who's doing what, who, right?

And sometimes it's like, it's not this one.

I thought it was this one, but it's not, right?

It's the one down the hall.

Let me check that battery.

Maybe not that one.

I'm hearing it from over this side, right?

So I want to talk.

And this is such a.

It's an obligatory question, but because this is the beginning of this book in terms of its life in the world, and I know that no one has read it just yet.

I do want.

I have to give some of the.

Like, I hate the question, but, like, where do they come from?

Where does it come from?

But also, where do these women come from?

So they didn't arrive all at once, thank God.

The first two to arrive were Tatiana and Nadia.

So the mother ended in chapter one.

They arrived first, and I immediately knew who they were and when I.

They, like.

And they arrived in, like, 2019, when I had no time for them.

So, like, I was just, like, taking notes.

And that's something that I do as a writer.

I may have an idea, and if I pay attention to it, I'll start a Notes app thing and just take notes on whatever the idea is as it comes to me, whenever it comes to me.

And then when I'm ready to do a new project, I may start with those notes.

Whoever's been lingering the longest or whose story is really feels like it's next and has legs, then I'll go and I'll start playing and see what I have and start trying to make something shake.

And so Nadia and Tati arrived first in 2019.

And when I actually started writing the.

What became the novel two years later in 2021, the grandmother was there.

And so they.

Those three arrived first.

And then when I realized that I was going to do an expanded timeline with seven generations, the enslaved ancestor came immediately because of the first line in the prologue.

And then I started to have to ask questions.

Okay, I know I have enslavement.

I know I have to go back to a certain.

Go back to a certain area.

Apologize.

If you hear my mother and my children in the background.

It's crazy around here.

It's bedtime.

Cultural tone, man.

We got cultural tone.

It's all good.

So the enslaved ancestor arrived, and then I started to ask the questions, well, who are the other women?

What are your names?

What are your issues?

And the one that I've arrived fully formed is a character that people probably really aren't gonna like.

So in the finished copy, if you look on the end paper, you see the character Jubilee.

I don't think people really gonna like her like that, but she arrived completely herself.

And what was great about it was that the grandmother Gladys, when I first wrote her sections, all of the other daughters were there.

Her mother, her grandmother, and her great grandmother, they were all together in her section.

So then I knew them, and I had them all at once.

And then it about writing them and listening to them and telling the story as they told it to me, fixing it if I got it wrong until it was done.

Does this feel good?

Like, you know, for me, it always feels such an emotional labor, right?

And this isn't like a.

Some of this isn't liked, right?

Like, some of this.

Some of this is real stuff, right?

Family stuff and memory and secret and, you know, like, all the things that.

That so many of our families contend with.

I mean, so many of our families, right?

Like, we're dealing with, like, you know, how do we sort of uphold this strange.

This strange sense of, like, cultural pride while also dealing with the dirt that's there, right?

Cause there is so much dirt there.

There's so much.

There's so much stuff there, the stickiness of it all that we try to pretend is not there, that then exacerbates and becomes all sorts of other things over the course of generations that nobody wants to talk about and everybody wants to talk about, but nobody has the courage to talk about.

And it causes all the things that happens in our families.

And so my question is, like, even how do you maintain or manage like even just the emotional stakes?

This is a lot of people that you're.

This story is being told through a lot of people, you know what I mean?

Look, I write like stories that's like, hey, it's about two or three of us, we gonna go ahead and lock in, right?

And it was wild, Nikisha, that I'm so impressed by.

And I have to admit this because I don't have.

I don't know if I had the creative capacity or the talent.

I like it's a character driven novel, right?

Like, it's a novel that is definitely about the interior lives of these people.

And it's a lot of people that's telling a particular story and it works really, really.

Like, the reason why I'm so my stories are very tight is because I'm afraid of that I'm afraid of doing, like.

Cause you could lose a thread, right?

It could get a little in the weeds, right?

And so my question is, how do you manage the emotional stakes, but also how do you manage the narrative arc, right?

Is this just planning?

Is this like, how, how does this work?

You know, the emotional stakes?

I think my career in television taught me how to compartmentalize a lot.

Because no matter how you feel, no matter what the story is that you're working on, the News starts at 5:00'.

Clock.

It probably starts at 4, 58 and 57 seconds.

So whether you're ready for it or not, the show is going on, right?

And so learning how to live under that kind of pressure every day, because I worked five days a week in television, taught me how to compartmentalize.

So the emotional stakes of the novel.

I was kind of able to shut part of myself off because I could not hold both the emotional stakes of the novel and the emotional stakes of my life at the same time.

And like I said at the beginning, I was a wife, so life was life.

And I was also a parent because I started this novel seven days before my daughter was born.

Don't recommend.

Absolutely nuts.

Don't do it.

But you know, here we are, we have a book and we have a four and a half year old, beautiful Baby girl, right?

It's great.

It's great.

So I was able to kind of shut off what I should have been processing about what I was writing because I was dealing with my own life, and I only had so much.

And I found that writing the novel and writing the characters and diving into their lives and their interiority, there was escapism there for me because I didn't have to hold my own stuff.

I could play in their own stuff.

They're not real.

And then, because my life was a shambles and it was literally crumbling, it was the only thing I had.

And so it was an urgency to it.

Like, writing this book was like a fever dream.

There was an urgency to writing it and getting it down every day from 5am to 6:15 before I had to wake up my son to take him to school that I can't replicate, that I'm still trying to figure out.

Like, as I'm writing on a new project now, like, you know, I should be able to do this, and I should be able to do this because I did this, that.

And third, for the seven daughters of Dupree.

And my body is like, sis.

No, we're not.

We're not.

We're not.

So it's like, I know the novel is emotionally heavy, but I didn't feel it in writing.

That's amazing.

Let's.

Let's play a game.

Okay?

Pick one of these words.

All right?

We're gonna go with this picture.

Come on.

Like, let's go with.

Let's see.

Love is one memory.

Womanhood or trust.

Pick one of those words.

Trust.

Okay, so what do you think you learned about trust that you did not know?

So, like.

So think about this book.

What did you learn about trust when it comes to, like, in the process of this book that maybe.

Or maybe just as you know, Nikisha, at this big.

At this age and at this part of your life, right?

Also having written this book that maybe you didn't know 15 years ago.

It's earned.

It's earned.

It's earned.

Like, it's in the context of the book.

They may be mothers and daughters, but they don't always trust one another.

You have to earn that trust to get their story for them to be willing to bear their lowest moments in their lives to whoever you are, whether it's the husband, the partner, the daughter, the grandmother, whoever it is.

There's so many different levels to how often you can be fully naked and honest about your experiences and with whom that, you know, that kind of trust and that level of trust, that level of intimacy.

Because trust is also intimate, is earned.

And you don't get it just because you asked the question.

Brilliant.

If you had to think about, like, let's think about heroes, right?

I love to talk about sort of our lineages and literary lineage and like, all the things.

If you had to pick one, you only get one hero to choose.

And we could be fair and say, like, living or dead?

Let's say one living, one dead.

You only get to pick one from each.

Who has to read this book?

Like, who would you be like, please, you have to see what your daughter has made

living and dead.

Living.

Alice Walker.

Oh, let me remind me to tell you a story about Alice Walker.

Continue.

I have one, too.

Let's do that.

We'll do that after this.

And then dead.

I'm gonna be controversial.

Cause I know y' all want me to say Toni Morrison, and I'm not.

I'm gonna say Eric Jerome Dickey.

Yo, you know what's crazy?

Is that what I was hoping you was.

You know what's wild is that I knew that everybody wanted you to say Toni Morrison, too.

And I was like, please say Terry McMillan in my mind, right?

I was like, please.

We gotta start putting some respect on what they did in the 90s.

We really gotta have a real conversation.

And maybe this is for a different time.

Maybe me and you will sit down and go through this at another point.

But, like, there needs to be a real conversation about the respect that these people deserve that they do not get.

Right?

I mean, we could go on.

I mean, there's a whole bunch of them.

During that time, I used to work in a black bookstore and we sold those books.

Yo.

People were writing black life in a way that we do not credit them for.

Like, you gotta give credit to the air drone Dickies, the Elin Harris's, the Bibi Moore Campbells, the Mary B. Monroe.

You even gotta give credit to the Carl Weber and the Omar Tyree.

I'm like, you just gotta put some respect on the name whether you think it's problematic or not.

Right now, you know, those are 20, 26 perspectives.

But put some respect.

Put some respect on what we used to read back in the day when we were passing it around and everybody had a crease copy of Cheaters, like, exactly.

Put some respect on.

I wasn't the only one.

No.

And the truth of the matter is, is that what they were writing was very.

It was important.

We don't like to think of.

First of all, we have to remember that literature Is entertainment, first of all, like, first of all, we work in the entertainment industry.

People don't like to think of it that way because all of.

Because apparently, writing, because of its difficulty, we're seen as intellectuals, and we're seeing that what we make is intellectual.

But the truth of the matter is, that's what y' all do.

That's not what we do.

Right.

What we do is try to tell a good story.

Right?

Try to tell a good story.

And I think, like, when you look at.

Yo, I saw somebody recently on Instagram reading Waiting to Exhale for the first time, and they're talking about how brilliant.

They're like, yo, this is mind blowing.

How good the book is.

And it's like, yeah, she is and was a whole legend.

And we act like it's pulp, which is crazy.

So I'm just super grateful.

Thank you for saying, like, Alice Walker, and you know what I mean?

Like Eric Jerome Dickey, who, by the way, was moving units out here, which is a whole other thing.

Can I ask why, though?

Yeah, please.

I used to love Eric Jerome Dickey.

Still do.

May he rest in peace.

I hadn't had the chance to meet him a few times on his book tour stops, and I would read him, and whenever his books would come out, it was like an auto buy.

I'd be the first to get it.

And then, like, you know, as the social media platforms have shifted and changed from MySpace to Facebook to Instagram, if ever I messaged him about anything, he would always respond.

He was always very kind.

And I loved his work.

I love that even though he started to write in genre, so he would write a thriller, he would write erotica, that there was still an underlying story to it and there was still craftsmanship on the page, despite how people felt about what the genre was.

Right.

And so, yeah.

Ej, hey, why Alice Walker?

Why Alice Walker?

I mean, I was talking about a friend talking to a friend about this the other day, but I'm like, you know, Alice Walker been eating off the Color purple for, like, 40 years.

And not that that's the goal, but, like, that.

That's a life well lived.

We've had a book, a movie, a musical, and a movie musical, but I'm not.

I don't want to replicate that.

But also, she is someone who paid homage to her forebears with what she did for Zora Neale Hurston.

She was someone who told the interior lives of black women through the Color Purple, specifically that.

That people are still talking about and also still imitating and I will include myself as one of those imitators.

And then she also did something with her politics and her beliefs about the world and life and activism.

If you think about there's a sequel to the Color Purple, I think it's Possessing the Secret of Joy that follows the characters.

The daughter who was born in Africa and talks about female genital mutilation.

Like, people aren't always doing that in books where they have a deeper message beyond the entertainment that we are initially providing.

Right.

And so she has been the goat of that since forever.

Word up.

Shout out to Alice Walker, yo.

One day there when I.

When.

When 1.

When either Alice or me are long, long gone, a video will surface that's gonna blow your mind.

I was so fortunate.

It was like one of those weird moments in my life where I was invited randomly to her 75th birthday party, right?

And so I go to Georgia.

It was in Eatonton, Georgia, where she's from.

I go down there and there's one moment where, like, they're having like a party that we're having, like a dance party and she's on stage.

And I have no idea how I ended up on the stage.

I don't recall how I ended up on the stage.

Rocksteady by Aretha Franklin is on and Mia Alice have like the wildest.

Like, we just cut it.

Like, me and Alex was just getting it together and like, you know, and in my mind, I'm also kind of like, woo.

Alex got a lot of magnetism.

You know what I mean?

Like, it's a whole lot happening.

Yeah.

I'm like, whoa.

It's a lot of energy.

And I'll never forget.

I'll never forget that moment.

And I'm really grateful.

I'm really grateful for it, for dance, for having been able to dance for a good bit with the great Alice Walker.

I appreciate that, for sure.

I want to ask about, like, I love thinking about intention.

I know a lot of writers, we try our best to not sort of think about what.

What.

You know, it's like we write the thing and then the thing exists, and then you do what you do as a reader.

You also have a job to do in the process of this book, right?

It's like we do the.

We sort of present our side of the conversation and then you present your side with the reading of the thing.

But I do want to know, like, if you had to choose an emotion that lingers, right?

Because I do think about that in my own work, right.

Like at the end of this, when they finish the Last word and a week has gone by.

If there is a vapor of an emotion, which emotion is it and why?

I don't know that it's an emotion, but the word that comes to mind is understanding.

Fair.

And why is that?

If there's anything that lingers, and I think that's to the wider concept that I'm having, that I want mothers and daughters to be able to understand one another as people outside of their titles.

I think that's what I think lingers for me at the end of the novel and I hope that lingers for other people.

That we all just kind of want to be understood and there's so much misunderstanding and sometimes it's intentional that I think that's the one that I want to linger.

I love that.

I love that.

I usually save this question for the end, but I'm so curious about asking it now just because it kind of leans right into my normal sort of way of doing things.

And I know you have a daughter.

You know, we get asked this question about, like, what would we change, like if we could go back to our younger selves?

Right.

What would we, like, what advice would you give your younger self?

I actually don't like the question.

Right.

So the question that I've been asking for the last 10 years, and I'm sure Ramonda and Derek have a gazillion tapes of me asking all these people, from James McBride to Jesmyn Ward to all of our buddies and this same question, and it's amazing to hear the answer.

And the question is, if you could go back to, let's say, 10.

Your 10 year old, right?

10 year old Nakisha.

What would you thank her for?

What would I thank her for?

Mm.

All what she wanted.

What did she want?

There were a couple things.

She wanted to write and she wanted to dance.

That was it.

She kind of just.

That was me at 10.

Those are the two things that I love.

I love reading, I love writing, I love dance, I love music.

Those things haven't changed.

And at the end of the day, in some of the roughest seasons of my life, those are the things that I have leaned into.

Music and dancing and writing and reading.

What's your song, by the way?

I was the same kid, 10 years old.

All I wanted to do was dance music and write.

That's all.

I love to dance and I love to write.

What's your song?

What's the song that gets you through by the way?

Shout out to Richard Smallwood.

Let me tell you something Let me tell you hey, look, and I'm somebody who's not even a religious person, but the music is the music, and the spirit is what it is.

And I'mma tell you, I've been listening to a lot of Richard Smallwood since his death.

Lot of tears on this side.

Lots of tears.

Lots a lot of tears.

My song that gets me through.

Sir, I have playlists for different moods.

If we gonna go to the gospel playlist, we got Kirk Carr for every mountain on that thing.

I didn't grow up Kojic.

But Karen Clark Shear can do no wrong.

I mean, nobody got a voice like that.

Sheesh.

That's it.

She can do no wrong.

No wrong.

So we'll stop there, because this will be a whole other kind of conversation.

Answer this, then.

What's the song?

What's the song?

Who do my cousins text me?

What's the song for the book?

It's gotta be something from Mary.

Like, it has to be something from Mary.

Like, Nadia's listening to Mary.

It's the whole My Life album.

It's the My Life album.

That's the song for the book.

That's the album for the book.

The My Life album.

The My Life album is for all of y' all who don't know what, like, the tone of the book for all of y'.

All.

If you wondering.

Cause you're like, yo, I haven't got the book yet.

It's the first day.

We're ready to read it.

I don't know.

I've been hearing about this all over the Internet.

We doing this, that, and the third.

But I don't know.

I'm still in the dark.

If you.

If the tone of it is the My Life album for Mary, that should make you want to run to it.

We already know what type of time Mary was on.

We already know what it is.

If you don't know Mary's first of all, if you don't know Mary's My life, I'm also a little bit like, what you doing?

What are you doing here?

You know what I mean, right?

You.

You probably don't even understand the beep.

You don't even know why the beep is important to us.

You know what I mean?

Like, you don't know.

So we need to go.

Go.

So first, listen to My Life.

It'll take you an hour, jam out, cry a little bit, and then crack open Nikisha's book.

Nikisha, I want.

I.

You know, honestly, because we're about to get into questions, and before we do, I just want to say, first of All I appreciate what you've given to a lot of other authors.

I think that there is something important about making sure that we love on each other and give megaphones to the people that we care about and to the work that we care about.

Especially for black writers who don't always get a swing like that.

We don't always get an opportunity to speak our piece or to explain or talk about the work in which we do to be intellectualized.

Usually we're.

When black artists are talking, it's about their blackness and not about their work.

Right?

It's like, I want to talk about.

I want to nerd out on my language and my work.

I want to think about the work in interesting ways.

And I think you do a wonderful job on your podcast.

And so I would be remiss if I didn't plug it to say that, like, yo.

For those of you who don't know, Nikisha has an amazing podcast that features a whole lot of your favorites.

She gives a whole lot of people a platform to talk about their work.

And it feels so fitting, and it feels like a kind of poetic justice in the best possible way to know that.

And now we get to celebrate yours.

And I'm happy for you.

I know the burden of it all, but I'm just happy.

I'm happy that I'm happy that we get to share this space with you and we get to see a beautiful story in the world in this particular way.

You've got lots of stories in the world, but this story in this particular way, make the people put the machine behind you.

You know what I'm talking about?

Like, tell me who I need to call.

They are.

They got the book on the homepage of the Simon and Schuster website, as it should be.

I wish it was in New York.

You know, if you go in New York, if you go into the office right now, they probably got it in the glass in the lobby.

That's what they probably got it in the glass in the lobby.

Like, telling people, do what they supposed to do for you, because we deserve that, and you deserve that.

All right, now we're gonna get into these questions.

Ramonda, am I handling the questions?

I can, if you want.

Let her pop up.

All right, I'm gonna go for it.

Ramonda, I don't know where you at.

Let me look at the.

At my chat also, even though it would've been nice to see you, it's kind of cool doing stuff on the Internet like this because so many more people can come, people from all over oh, Ramonda, you there?

You about to freestyle.

I saw you.

You got to freestyle.

I'm gonna handle it.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

No, no.

We can.

We can tag team if we want to.

I saw a few of them.

I was writing them down.

One of the questions that I saw was, was there anything that surprised you in regards to the way any characters came to think of the notion of lineage?

Was there anything that surprised you in regards to the way characters came to think of the notion of lineage?

No, because I don't think they think about that like they're really just living their lives.

Like, the notion of lineage really only becomes a question for them when a few of them are trying to have children.

And then it comes up.

But it comes up in passing, but it really only becomes a sticking point for the final cast, for the first character that you meet, but the last character in the line, Tatiana.

And you see that in the epilogue.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next question I have on here is, in writing this book, that you often think of the connection with your own daughter at her age, and who were you at her age and what these characters needed.

Like, did you ever think about that connection?

I did not.

She has grown up with this book.

She's four and a half, as I just said.

She's also a Gemini child.

She's very spicy.

There's one of her that's very sweet and very loving and all the things.

And there's the one that rolled her eyes at me while she was doing her homework yesterday because she was over me, and I was over her.

I am told by my own mother, who was also in the other room, that I, too, was a talkative child, because she talks to me from the time she gets in the car to the time she goes to bed at night.

I love her so very much.

I never want her to change.

She's so very headstrong and stubborn and knows her own mind.

I just wish it wasn't with me.

And so that's her, and that's our relationship.

And that has nothing to do with the people who populate the seven daughters of Dupree.

They are not quite that young.

You see gladys at about 2, but she's not speaking then.

But everyone else is aged up, so there's no correlation between her and them.

That's a whole other talk about how we raise these kids and how they show up in ways that we never imagined.

I mean, that's a whole.

I don't want to go there, but that's a whole Other thing, how they show up.

I always tell them.

Sometimes I feel like, who did I raise when I think about our child, like, what?

But it was me.

You know, I see a lot of myself showing up in ways that I didn't think that they would see, but they see.

So anyway, don't get me going down that path, but I loved how you were, how you shared that and saw it come out on the page.

The next question I see here is asking, are there other genres of literature you're thinking about venturing into in the future?

Like anything else, children's literature.

You got that unlocked, friend.

You got that unlock, friend.

You know your strengths.

I know mine, yes.

You know, honestly, this was a stretch for me.

I had never written historical fiction before.

All of my self published novels are contemporary stories.

And then the book before this was actually nonfiction.

So I mean, that stretched me in that it was.

I had to dig a lot in the archives to get the history I was writing about the Mardi Gras Indians of New Orleans or the black masculine Indians of New Orleans, which is a history that goes back to the very founding of the Louisiana colony in the 16th century.

So that was a lot of research and that stretched me there.

What I'm working on next is more contemporary, but then I also have another historical story in my mind.

So I may go back and forth between contemporary historical stories.

We'll see what, what the end gonna be.

I love that you get to choose.

You get to choose.

You know, I just remember back in the day, when I think of music, everybody was put into these pigeonhole.

You got to stay in this genre, you got to do only this.

And as soon as you try to venture out, people want to say, oh, she's not being true to herself.

You know, all these things I think of, you know, Christian fiction authors, if they want to venture out, it was like, you're not, you're not hearing your audience, you're not.

They get to write what they want to write.

So I love that you're thinking like, I want to jump over here.

I want to.

Whatever I choose, I want to write about this, I want to write about that.

And not locking yourself in.

So that's dope.

Because the writers, the readers get to win.

I should say the bookstores get to win, but the people getting to read get to win because we get to get all sides of it of you.

When you come across those from, from

being indie for so long and being able to do whatever I wanted because I was paying for it.

And also, like, I don't it's no disrespect, but I don't think about readers when I'm writing.

I'm thinking, what am I obsessed with at that moment?

What questions do I have?

That's where my novel start is with an unanswered question that I can't find because I, you know, I'm a trained journalist.

I started in television as a journalist doing broadcasts and producing.

You know, there are still questions that remain when the news goes off.

There are still questions that remain when you get to the end of the article on whatever newspaper or blog site that you're reading.

Right.

And so my novels usually start from the premise of what question has not been answered in the story that we've just told in these 1500 words or these two and a half minutes on TV.

So what question was that for you in this seven dollars of Dupree for you to say, I'm going to pull out this pen, this laptop, whatever.

I got to answer this question.

I can't sleep at night.

Just keep like, what was that?

For you to sit down, put your baby over here.

Baby hadn't even come yet.

To put that energy into answering that question, what was it?

Or question.

Real talk, she was in the bed right next to me.

Like, real talk, she was in the bed right next to me, spread out the question.

I think there were two.

The first question which showed up in the contemporary storyline with Nadia and Tati was that I wanted to write a story about a girl who didn't know her father, to explore my own complex relationship with my own father and exploring what that looks like in a character.

And she's immediately not me because I did grow up with my dad.

So I was able to play in her life and with those dynamics and find out very quickly that, you know, the way she feels about him is very idolized and romanticized because he's not there.

Which made it a good emotional break for me.

Me.

Once I got the expanded storyline and I saw somebody talk about the curse in the chat, that question was that of the black maternal health crisis.

So I started this novel in 2021.

I was pregnant when I left television in 2019.

I freelanced for a very for about three years for different publications.

And when the pandemic hit, my first mindset was, there's a global pandemic.

How are women giving back?

Like, what does that look like?

And I think at the time, my son was like five.

So I was removed from it.

But then I went right back into it.

And so as I wrote about the black maternal health crisis, the disparities, the numbers, and with anything, whether it was, you know, the number of women that had, you know, adverse pregnancy conditions after the birth, because you're always in that red zone from the time you are pregnant to one year postpartum, it's just not in that immediate window after giving birth.

I interviewed so many different women about their stories and like, they were so honest and laid themselves there and some were talking about, you know, pregnancies they had in the 70s to now.

And those stories have never left them.

And I didn't realize they had imprinted themselves on me as much as they did until it showed up on the page.

And I was like, oh, well, here we are.

These are my questions.

And what did that look like?

So there's a character named Evangeline in the novel who is a.

Who is a midwife.

And.

And as you see the generations go along, there's a question that's asked as one of the daughters is giving birth is like, well, do you think so?

And so knows the way?

Because if you aren't trained and you think about how the medical industrial complex codified obstetrics and gynecology to push black women out of the industry, some of that knowledge was lost.

And so those are some of the lingering things that I was pulling into the novel and telling the story and the questions that I had and still have as a woman, as a mother, as someone with two children and friends who are embarking on that journey that we still don't have answers for.

Wow.

I'm trying to ask another personal question.

Let me.

Let people, because I can go.

I got follow ups to that, but let me.

Let me stay focused.

Somebody asked, did any of the daughters begin as one thing and then evolve into someone very different as the story unfolds?

They all did.

And that was intentional.

So the way that I thought about them and the way that I wrote it to, like, make it manageable for me as the writer, I thought about them and I thought about their turning point.

So what was the point in their life where they were one way, maybe more optimistic, maybe more naive, a little bit more ignorant to the ways of the world and then on the other side of whatever happens to them, either by their own choice or of no fault of their own, they are completely different.

I think that's clearest with the character Gladys.

I think you see it with.

But I think you see that with all of them.

They all have a break almost in their personality from something that they've had to get over or become or to stuff down and deal with.

And that changes them because our low moments change us.

Monumental things in our lives change us.

And they don't always have to be traumatic, but they can be impactful.

And so those impacts, impactful moments will change how we operate and move forward in this body and in this life going forward.

Absolutely.

I love that.

And to.

To kind of add to what you were saying, there's a question in my mind, kind of relates to it, and it's asking, with so many daughters and perspectives, how did you keep each voice distinct while still holding the family together as one story?

Like Jason was saying that there's a lot of people in here and they all have amazing voices and perspectives.

How did you.

How did you feel?

That is detective.

Whole lot of smoke.

I was everywhere.

So bad when you were talking.

I was trying to come off.

But how'd you.

How did you do that, Nikisha?

Like what.

How did you keep them separate like that?

So I attribute this to my.

Again, to my television background, because I worked in broadcast.

I was always writing for a voice.

I was not the anchor.

I was not the reporter.

I was the producer.

And so when you produce at the local level, you're writing the script and you're writing the show for the people who are going to deliver it as your anchors on the news.

And so to do that, you have to learn their voices, what they will say, what they won't say, how they like to bend a phrase so that they don't get on air.

And then they see something come up in the prompter.

They'd be like, oh, I don't want to say that.

And now they're struggling to find their words on camera.

And in tv, you make all your mistakes on air, which is not a good thing.

So, like, I worked as a producer for 11 years, trained, which trained me to write for a voice.

So when.

When I write novels, voices come to me naturally.

I hear the dialogue all the time.

With the seven daughters, Tati's 14.

She can only say but so much.

Nadia is an adult, but she still is under the deference of her mother, just because of that respect and because she's trying to prove something to her mother.

Gladys is very sharp, very sardonic, and.

And I had to get to why that was.

And she was one of the hardest characters, if not the hardest character to write, because it was like she didn't want to tell me her story, even though I already knew it was kind of like, well, you know already.

So what I Got to tell you, for in the writing of it, but once I found her voice and I said this before, all of the other women were in her scene.

She's like the linchpin between the historical story and the contemporary story, because she knew both worlds.

She grew up in Alabama, and that she was a part of the great migration that brought her to Chicago, and then she started her new life there.

So when she is having her moment where she's in the middle of her turning point, her grandmother is there, her mother is there, her great grandmother is there.

They're all there to talk to her, to comfort her.

And so I had to distinguish them in the scene and rely on what I knew about them, what their own turning points were, and then have them trying to care for her, but then also bickering back and forth about the things that they haven't talked about, the secrets they were keeping from each other or not dealing with.

And so because they were all there, it was easy to pull them out and understand what their points of view would be.

So that when I then did go and write their sections, they were very clear in who they were as people and what their voices were.

You say it like it's easy, but really, we talking about craft, and I want to make sure we all understand that what we're talking about is craft.

Right?

We're talking about craft.

Right?

That's a real thing.

And I want to ask one more question, if you don't mind, Ramonda.

Cause I want to talk about the ending, not talk about the ending.

Don't worry, everybody.

I don't want to spoil it, but craft wise, how did you know?

First of all, thank you for not ruining the end, which so many of us do, I think.

But thank you for.

Thank you for the nuance of the ending.

And my question is, how did you know it was over?

How did you know the story was done?

And also, was there a different ending before the one that we get without spoiling it, by the way?

No, I don't want to spoil it.

So is.

Was there a different ending to, like, the end, or is there a different ending with the epilogue?

Because the epilogue didn't always exist.

Ah, okay.

So.

So can you talk about that a little bit?

Yeah.

So when I first conceived of the generational story, all I had was that very first line in the prologue, and that line informed the ending.

I knew exactly where I was going.

I knew how I wanted to end.

I knew what was going to happen there.

And I knew, even in the brutality of that, that I Wanted to, as I say, turn the camera so that you get the perspective of someone who still has complete autonomy and complete agency, even at the end of their life.

I always knew that that was the ending.

And then when I started to go through of it, to get the agent and to get the.

And once it was acquired, my agent was the first person who was like, so you need an epilogue, because you can't end the book like that.

And I was like, why not?

Like, I'm good with it.

He was like, maybe you want to soften it a bit.

And I was like, okay, let me see what I can do.

And so then once I started working with my editor, the epilogue I had written, she was like, yeah, you need to rewrite this because it's not giving what needs to be gave.

And.

And I rewrote the epilogue to address some of the issues that she had pointed out.

But the true ending, which is a poem.

Excuse me.

And it's Tati's dedication.

I had to write that, like, three different times.

And what's funny about it is that I talked earlier about how I have an idea and I have a note in my phone.

A few of those lines that are in her dedication were from an unrelated note in my phone from, like, years ago.

Lines that just.

Only to me.

And I was like, well, this is interesting.

And I didn't have.

It was like, maybe three.

Three lines.

And then as I was trying, struggling to write her poem, I was like, wait, I have something in my phone and I pull it out.

And then it came together.

So it's.

It took a minute to get it together.

Wow.

Thank you for answering that.

I see the.

Another question in the chat.

We have a couple more here.

Where did the idea.

You spoke about it earlier about the curse, but where did the idea of curse being a christening come from?

And the rest of that says the ancestor veneration and generational bonds were so incredibly powerful.

So where did this idea of a curse being a christening come from?

I mean, so I do identify as a Christian.

I grew up Catholic.

I have friends that practice a lot of different religions.

A lot of.

A good number of them practice ifa.

Some practice.

I have a friend who was initiated in Nigeria, others who were initiated in Puerto Rico in different places.

So I know what that is and what that looks like in practice.

And then I also recognize it in black Americans who will go to church every Sunday.

But then, you know, they have altars all over the house, but they don't call them that.

Right.

Ancestors all over the walls all on top of the credenzas and the pianos.

And everywhere in the house, there's candles, there's flowers, there's doilies, there's mats.

There's all the things.

But we're not calling it that.

Right.

And the incense is burning.

That's real, right?

The blessed oil.

The blessed oil is there, right.

So I reckon I recognize it.

And so I wanted to incorporate all of that because I feel like even.

Especially in black Americans, and I'm being specific about that, who will identify as Christian, but if you really see how they live their lives, it's a little flexible in there.

It's not dogmatic.

And so that was where I wanted to have the ancestor veneration from.

From.

And to be very intentional about what it was they were practicing, even though they may call it God or Jesus or Christianity or whatever the case.

And they go to the church every Sunday.

As far as the curse being a christening, honestly, I always say I like to leave room for play.

So I don't like.

I plot to a degree in the sense that I can answer the question of what's going to happen in this chapter and what happens next.

That might be an outline, but the specifics of it, I have no idea until I start writing.

And so I was just writing that scene with the two characters in that, Emma and Evangeline.

And they're just talking, and Emma asks and says, you know, what are you saying?

You're saying me and all my babies were cursed?

And she just says, well, what is a curse but a christening by another name?

And I wrote the line, and I was like, damn, that's fire.

I was like, bars.

That was a good one.

But it wasn't a planned thing, but it came out.

And even I was like, that was good.

That was good.

That was good.

Keep going.

And so that was very organic.

Wow.

Just the idea of curse and christening.

Christening being in the same sense is in the same idea, you know, it's just such a juxtaposition in my mind.

So I love that you wove them together unashamed.

That's why they want you to mention Morrison.

That's a Morrison.

That's why they want you mention Morrison.

But we didn't.

We mentioned who we should have mentioned.

I love Toni Morrison.

Everybody loves Toni Morrison.

We all can agree.

Toni Morrison, everybody.

People be lying.

People really be lying.

Most of these folk ain't even read Tony Morrison.

They just be lying because they don't want to be left out.

But go ahead.

Okay.

Yeah, I agree.

Derek and I were just talking about that.

Not.

We were just talking about that probably a week ago.

Everybody, you know, we were just doing.

I think it was Song of Salmon, even for our book club.

And.

Yeah.

So everybody got different opinions.

Let me put it like that.

Some people just be coming there looking.

I'm gonna leave it like that, keep it pg.

But it's real talk.

People have different feelings.

Let me not.

Let me be quiet because it's going some and Derek in the chat talking about they be lying.

So.

But it's real.

Everybody has different things.

What they connect with and.

And yeah, and it's fine to be

like, you know, everything ain't for everybody.

If you don't mess with Toni Morrison, then you don't mess with Tony Morrison.

Totally fine.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Go ahead, continue on with the story.

Go ahead.

You said the last one.

Last two last.

God bless the child.

And home was okay.

God bless the child was like, come on, bro.

Like, listen, we.

I love it.

You can't wait till you 80 to write a contemporary novel.

Continue on to this conversation.

Yes.

Yes.

My question I was gonna ask was which part of this book.

I'm trying to say, folk, which part of this book was the hardest to tell and why'd you decide to still need to be told?

Like, you could have exit out you writing this thing.

You could have been like, no, I'm not gonna say that.

This feels, in this feeling crazy.

But what was the hardest part of the book of the hardest part of the book to tell and why did

you decide to tell was the enslaved ancestor.

That was absolutely the hardest part.

And it's at the end and it's not woven with any of the other daughters for that very reason.

I think in that respect, I did think about the reader because I thought about myself as a reader, that even though I do enjoy historical fiction, sometimes I can't take the heaviness of it.

And so I need something lighter.

And so.

But I didn't want that to be a turn off.

So I was like, okay, we're going to do this one time.

One time only.

Right?

And because I knew exactly what the story was going to be, I knew I could make it hopefully impactful, but also quick.

And so that was the hardest part to tell also, because I don't understand that level of cruelty.

I don't understand that level of callousness, how you can be so barbaric toward another human being and sleep at night.

Like, I don't understand it.

And so trying to get inside of the mind of a slave owner who viewed the person he was, had bought and had assaulted and all of these different things as subhuman.

Trying to get into that mindset, to write their interactions, to write the cruelty of what happens to her.

It was weird for me.

I didn't know because I don't understand it emotionally.

I don't understand it.

So how can I put it on the page?

And I don't want to make it a caricature of the worst horrors of slavery that we've ever heard.

I did want to keep it here, but I didn't know the balance of what was too much and what was not enough.

What was just.

It was difficult.

And so I tried to do my best with that.

And again, making sure that even while that woman is in bondage, she is still in full control of her faculties.

Even if it's just her mind.

Like, even if it's just her mind, she is still in control of her own mind.

She knows her own mind.

She knows what she wants and how she goes after what she desires, which is freedom is her choice to make.

I love that.

I love.

And even though it is this very emotional space, like there's still.

There's still.

I don't want to say hope.

Hope is not the word.

There's still a space where we have ownership of who we are.

And like you said, it may even just from a mental space.

So I love that it just didn't.

Just didn't rapture in that way.

But there's.

She had a mental space to go to and not succumb to it all in such a. I don't know, trying to find my wordings with it.

But I love how you just.

How you just said that, that it wasn't all loss, so to speak.

She still had that space mentally to go to.

So my other.

My last question is for you and Jason, you might have another one too.

But like Nakisha, do you see this book going into a movie?

Are we adapting this thing?

Where are we going?

What are we doing?

Like, we trying to see this on the screen.

Have you thought about it?

Have you imagined, like seeing as you were writing, that this could be go to the next space and be a movie, something on the screen?

Have you thought about that?

I've come from tv.

Of course I have.

Of course I have.

And allegedly what I had heard yesterday is that apparently my agent sent it out for film rights.

Rights.

I wasn't told that I wasn't on that email thread, but I had heard from a.

A reliable source that that's what had happened.

So, you know

who plays.

Who plays.

Who plays Tati.

You gotta go find Tati.

She 14.

Somebody knew.

Yeah, you gotta go find Tati.

Preferably on the south side of Chicago.

Okay.

Come on.

No doubt.

I love it.

Well, I just want to say to both of you, Nikisha, this.

I know so many people are going to walk away excited to read this book.

It just came out yesterday.

And so many people are just thrilled to go on this journey, a historical fiction journey.

And it's because of your courage, your boldness, your intention to sit down and bring what was in your mind to paper.

And people now get to experience it.

So I'm excited for that.

So thank you you for sharing that with us and with everybody else who's going to get to read this.

And brother Jason, thank you for making space to be here.

I don't know how you doing?

You dancing last week or whenever it was filmed on, you know, you know, on what's her name, Jennifer Hudson show.

Now you here.

But thank you for making space to.

Yeah, just to be.

Listen you.

Thank you for making space to be here.

What you about to say?

It's love.

It's love.

It's love.

It's all good.

We make space for each other.

Absolutely.

And thank you to everybody for being on in the chat tonight.

And we don't know what y' all drinking, but I hope it was good and just go out and get the book.

The link is on our website.

We want to be.

Be able to support Nikisha and this work in a.

In a very powerful way.

And yeah, we are going to do that.

So thank you, Nikisha.

Thank you to everybody.

Have a great night.

Good night.

Victoria, another amazing historical fiction author in the chat who's been so excited to be on tonight.

So thank you for.

Thank you, everybody, for rolling with the punches and switching to virtual because the weather won't let us be great.

It's all right.

We here anyway.

And I'm in Florida.

Yo, we ain't trying to hear that you live in Florida.

It was 32 degrees.

All that.

You live in Florida.

No, it start.

It was 32 degree and frost on the grass this morning.

Morning.

Frost on the grass.

Jason, we slipping aside now.

Here.

Slipping inside.

Frost on the grass.

Frost on the.

Frost on the grass is frost on the grass.

Don't try me, try me.

Can't leave the house.

Misha, listen.

We stuck, sis.

He stuck.

We stuck.

That's all right, though.

That's all right.

We.

We did it tonight.

We glad to see.

Enjoy your frost tomorrow.

And Jason, you be safe.

Have a good night, everybody.

Take care.

Please, please.

Bye.

By.