Special Re-Release: Jamaica Kincaid, PARTY
[0:00]I interviewed Jamaica Kincaid months ago about her children's book party about an event that
[0:06]took place at the New York Public Library that she wrote about in shouts and murmurs in the
[0:09]New Yorker magazine ages and ages ago. It was illustrated by Ricardo Cortez and I thought it
[0:17]would be a good time to re-release my episode with Jamaica Kincaid who as you probably know is one of
[0:23]the most esteemed African-American authors around living today and we got to chat about her love
[0:32]of gardening and she like didn't even want to come in from the garden to do the podcast and
[0:38]in the podcast I mentioned that I was going to be seeing her, I was going to be attending the
[0:42]same event that she was at the New York Public Library and then months later we did meet there finally
[0:47]and I got to greet her in person and it was so nice to be able to see her and talk to her about
[0:53]the podcast and all the rest so kind of came full circle. Anyway in my own small effort to
[1:01]amplify black voices this week in particular since this is the hashtag Blackout Tuesday hashtag
[1:07]same muted week I am only not meeting myself so that I can give an intro to this amazing author and
[1:14]leader and I hope that you get a lot out of our conversation. Hi I'm Zibi Owens and you're listening
[1:29]to the Webby-nominated podcast moms don't have time to read books. I am just beyond excited to be
[1:34]talking to the legendary writer, novelist and professor Jamaica Kincaid today. Jamaica is most
[1:40]recently the author of Children's Book Party illustrated by Ricardo Cortez originally from Antigua
[1:47]Jamaica who was born named Elaine Potter Richardson came to the United States to work as an
[1:52]au pair at age 16. She was a staff writer at the New Yorker magazine for 20 plus years.
[1:57]Her books include novels Annie John Lucy at the bottom of the river the autobiography of my mother
[2:04]Mr. Potter a small place my brother my garden among flowers and see now then some of those were not
[2:11]novels by the way. Jamaica teaches in the English African and African-American Studies
[2:16]Department at Harvard University she has received the Guggenheim Award the Landon Literary Award
[2:20]for Fiction the Clifton Fatima Middle and the Dan David Prize for Literature she currently lives
[2:26]in Vermont. Hello hello hi thank you so much for coming on my podcast and spending the time
[2:32]talking to me I'm so honored that you're doing this. Oh thank you I'm honored to I mean I
[2:39]yes I've got oh I've got my son's podcast but anyway I mustn't waste time on my podcast history
[2:45]so I have so many questions for you but the first thing I want to talk about is your latest book
[2:51]party with Ricardo Cortez and I just interviewed him too and he was lovely and told me all about
[2:56]everything but how the it became a book but I want to hear it from your perspective how did you
[3:01]do your first children's book party. Oh well it's because of him I never thought of doing a children's
[3:08]book I am I mean I don't think there's such a thing as a children's book I read all kinds of books
[3:14]and the idea that I don't know what a children's book means really so do you have to talk
[3:21]a different way to children so I would I never thought of myself as doing a children's book
[3:26]I mean when I was a child I could have read the book and would have loved to read the books I
[3:32]have written but I don't consider I've written children's books and sometimes I read the book I
[3:37]read as a child which sometimes seem to have been were in the children's library and some
[3:43]the books I read were not in the children's library they were books I found about from my mother
[3:48]or something but in any case I never thought of writing a children's book but Ricardo apparently
[3:56]had read some of the stories I read so talk of the town talk stories and he liked that one and
[4:03]sources would be a good children's book I was quite mystified by Ted Firth because you know I
[4:09]think of the those stories I wrote in talk of the town as sort of little sketches of how I
[4:16]would come to write I mean if you ever read the talk stories they're very weird they're not
[4:21]like talk stories at all the traditional talk story which is piece of reporting but I would combine
[4:29]reporting with stylistic things you know Mr. Sean De
[4:40]and he did I think mean it is a compliment he loved George and he loved me so that story I had
[4:49]gone to the 50th anniversary party of the Nancy Drew of the publication of the Nancy Drew books
[4:55]and I had loved them as child that they were in the children's library though I liked even more
[5:02]series about cherry aims who was a nurse but the Nancy Drew stories I remember them and I
[5:08]went to the system as a party and I think at the time they were suffering in sales this was in the
[5:16]early 80s or 70s I can't remember so long ago and so they gave this big party an old house that
[5:22]was supposed to be a replica of something that Nancy and her friends would be trapped in after they'd
[5:30]gone to investigate some trivial something that seemed to be murder but it made matters seems like
[5:38]a swimming party anyway he said he couldn't make it he would love to illustrate it but I didn't do
[5:46]any writing I think he may have edited it I didn't pay much close attention to what he would do
[5:54]with the text so much as I loved his illustrations I would buy the book just to look at the illustrations
[6:01]they are beautiful they're really really beautiful really just tell a bucket of such a time and place
[6:06]and they're beautiful of the library and they're really great I must say I had to I had to read it
[6:11]like like a couple times and I'm like did I miss what the mystery of this was so you were the one
[6:17]who was at this event can you give us like an inside scoop what were they actually pointing to
[6:22]what did they see well they would have seen how I wrote this story if you read this story is that
[6:31]I was making fun of oh how to say this because it was my interpretation but I was making fun of the
[6:41]whole what we now call home I didn't have this word for it at the time but what we now call white
[6:48]privilege you know the idea of festival of these well-off girls who had you know lived comfortably
[6:58]someplace in New Jersey they were white they they had nothing in their lives really and they
[7:03]would look for something wrong and there was something never really wrong you know the wrong was
[7:10]an invention you know some fearless person with horses or something and the party really
[7:18]was about nothing you know just trying to drum up save for this really kind of sexist racist
[7:24]story I was making fun of I think they what we now call white privilege but Ricardo could see
[7:33]another interpretation of that they would discover something which they would keep a secret
[7:42]and so he thought it would be he would leave it up to the imagination of the child what did they
[7:50]see and should they go back and look for clues in the drawings and I think how I read it from
[7:57]his point of view the clues but this is only because of my own discussions the clues would be
[8:04]in all the flowers captured around and that what they see is some mysterious garden and if I were
[8:13]I left it up to him but if I were to rewrite it I suppose I would have put in the mysterious
[8:20]thing they saw would be Montezuma's garden or something like that or paradise or something which would
[8:26]be garden related but it that would be my interpretation and it's up to the reader to say well what did
[8:32]what do you think they saw when go back through the pictures and what do you think they saw
[8:37]as seen in which the people who are at the party made into A&M or you know because they're not
[8:46]very nice people if you look at them and the institution so that's you know but I really left
[8:53]it up to him but but in my story I was making fun of the nothingness of that was in the books
[9:01]supposed to be the stories that later become interpreted as some empowering of females or some
[9:08]something like that I think empowering of female white females because white women always want to do
[9:18]what white men do I think that's for them is the alert of equality if men can kill six million
[9:24]people why can't we do it too that's my interpretation originally of the the nothingness of
[9:32]in this house but again that's what I get from reading the story and I think Ricardo wisely thought
[9:40]it should stir up your imagination what do you think they saw given all the things where they're
[9:47]from how they address their background they walk up into this grand affair what do you think they
[9:54]are looking for and I think he was very wise to do hey great it's a great it's a
[10:00]great book for any type of audience.
[10:02]I just love the pictures and I love the mystery of it,
[10:05]especially because it's about a mystery book.
[10:07]So anyway, I really enjoyed it.
[10:10]Thank you for sharing it in this form and everything.
[10:13]It's kind of a departure from you,
[10:14]although as you said, you can,
[10:16]doesn't matter who reads it,
[10:17]you're just writing for writing,
[10:19]but I remember reading Annie John years and years ago
[10:22]and I recently finished reading your memoir
[10:25]about your brother, which you called my brother,
[10:27]and how you took care of him and went back to Antigua
[10:30]to deal with him when he had the AIDS virus.
[10:33]And you wrote in such a thoughtful, really interesting way
[10:37]about your relationship with your mother in that book,
[10:39]which I was hoping to talk to you a little bit about.
[10:42]I'm just gonna read a little quote.
[10:43]You said, my mother loves children.
[10:45]I want to say in her way, and that is very true.
[10:48]She loves us in her way.
[10:50]It never has occurred to her
[10:51]that her way of loving us might not be the best thing for us.
[10:55]It has never occurred to her that her way of loving us
[10:57]might have served her better than it served us.
[11:00]And why should it not?
[11:01]Perhaps all of itself serving.
[11:02]I do not know.
[11:04]I do not know.
[11:05]So I just wanted you to talk a little more about that passage
[11:08]and how you were feeling then
[11:10]and maybe how you feel about your relationship now.
[11:13]Oh, gosh.
[11:14]What's next about my mother's dad?
[11:15]And so my relationship with her,
[11:18]and I think about her every day, strangely,
[11:20]we didn't have to bring her up for me to have thought of her
[11:24]because her life seems to be saturated with her.
[11:31]So my relationship to her actually grows more warmly
[11:36]and positive the longer she stays dead.
[11:39]It's not impossible for her to come back, you know?
[11:41]She's that kind of person.
[11:46]Not impossible for her to not stay dead.
[11:49]But my relationship with her as she's dead
[11:52]grows better.
[11:53]I say more nice things about her.
[11:56]Oh, I remember her.
[11:57]I haven't forgotten the cruel, harsh things
[12:01]that she visited on us, her children.
[12:04]But there was also a lot of good things, you know,
[12:07]for a member of this time.
[12:08]I was just telling someone how I learned to read
[12:10]and I learned to read by her teaching me words in books
[12:15]that she was reading.
[12:17]So that way I went to school, I could read everything
[12:21]by the time I was three, three and a half years old.
[12:24]I could read anything.
[12:25]And so when I went to school, I was three and a half years old
[12:28]but I had to say I was five
[12:30]because they would only take you if you were five.
[12:33]I was confronted with this thing called the alphabet.
[12:36]I'd learned to read without knowing there was something
[12:38]called an alphabet.
[12:40]And to this day, I still have a problem with vowels.
[12:44]For the word vowel sounded, it sounded so amazing.
[12:49]So amazing vowels.
[12:51]And then of course, the idea that it was just comprised
[12:55]of these five letters, which weren't even near each other,
[12:59]A, E, I, O, U, you know, they weren't,
[13:02]it wasn't like A, B, C.
[13:04]They were far away, seen far away from each other.
[13:07]They were vowels.
[13:08]It took me a long time.
[13:09]I also say to this day, I still have problems with it.
[13:12]But it paid me feeling a word that, again,
[13:16]well, permeates my writing.
[13:18]I have a lot of words, not all words, you know,
[13:21]I am very particular with them.
[13:23]I have a sort of affiliation with them
[13:26]that may not be good for writing,
[13:28]but they are very pleasurable relationship,
[13:32]you know, to just think of a word for
[13:35]or to find the right word for, to spend a year
[13:38]looking for the right word to go in the sentence.
[13:41]It's incredibly wonderful.
[13:43]And so I owe that to her.
[13:45]So yeah, I have a reason to, as she's dead
[13:49]and stays as long as she remains dead
[13:51]to find the, to think very warmly and positively of her.
[13:57]Is there a chance for your question?
[13:58]Yes, it does.
[13:59]Yes.
[14:00]And I didn't mean to imply a new she had passed away
[14:03]and I'm sorry, I didn't.
[14:04]No, no, no, no, no, no, please.
[14:07]I hope I sound friendly and appreciative
[14:10]because I feel that way, but, you know,
[14:13]to you for doing this.
[14:14]No, of course.
[14:15]Of course, no, it's my pleasure.
[14:18]I thought it was so interesting in your book
[14:20]about your brother when you were growing up
[14:22]that you said your mother didn't like seeing you
[14:24]laying around reading and that she thought
[14:26]you were doomed to a life of slothfulness.
[14:29]And you said, as it turned out,
[14:31]I was only doomed to write books
[14:33]other people might read.
[14:34]So I wanted to hear a little more about
[14:37]how you got your start writing.
[14:38]And I read about the story of what happened
[14:40]when you came to the United States,
[14:41]but I would love for you to tell it in your own words.
[14:44]Oh, well, yes, you know,
[14:47]I was sent away to work as a servant
[14:50]and I did and people knew me as a child
[14:53]and not surprised that I became a writer
[14:55]because apparently I would always pretend I was writing
[14:59]even though I didn't know that people still wrote
[15:02]seriously, Tricia.
[15:03]I think the last thing I read,
[15:06]I thought literature had stopped with Kipling
[15:09]and so was it surprised to me when I was 19
[15:12]that the woman in the household I was a nanny in,
[15:16]gave me, I think it was to the lighthouse.
[15:19]She was a feminist and a very big Virginia.
[15:22]Well, it got into the lighthouse or a room of one zone
[15:26]and then I, she had all these books that I just discovered,
[15:29]you know, modern literature.
[15:31]I remember that around that time
[15:34]while I was there, a book by lighting a new book
[15:37]had come out.
[15:38]I think it was A, D, A, Ada, I don't know how it's,
[15:41]I still don't know how you pronounce it.
[15:43]And I was amazed, I read it
[15:45]and I couldn't understand it at all.
[15:48]I didn't like it.
[15:49]It was perhaps the beginning of me thinking of,
[15:51]I like this, I don't like this and so on.
[15:54]But I didn't know that people still wrote
[15:56]serious literature.
[15:58]I thought they just wrote penguin detective stories
[16:02]and romances, you know,
[16:04]I didn't know that there was such a thing as writing,
[16:06]but I'd like to always want to be an artist or something
[16:09]because I thought I would be a photographer
[16:11]and I studied photography.
[16:12]But I began to write out the photographs
[16:14]and it just occurred to me then that,
[16:16]oh, I'm a writer.
[16:17]And so I quit the college I was going to in New Hampshire.
[16:20]We came to New York and started to write.
[16:23]And, you know, the funny thing about being in America,
[16:26]at least in those days, I don't know any more
[16:29]what America is like.
[16:31]But in those days, you could sort of,
[16:33]whatever you said you were, people said,
[16:35]oh, yes, that's what you are because you said so.
[16:38]So, I was a writer and people said yes.
[16:41]And one thing led to the other
[16:43]and then I started to write, show the New Yorker.
[16:46]Wow.
[16:47]Yeah, it's an improbable tale, but all too true.
[16:52]Every word of it is true.
[16:53]When you look back on all the many things you've written
[16:57]over the course of your career,
[16:59]is there anything that stands out as something
[17:02]that you're most proud of having written?
[17:04]Oh, gosh, yes, I think the last book I wrote
[17:07]by the last novel I published,
[17:09]see now, then I sometimes when I'm asked to read
[17:12]from it because I never really read my own work
[17:14]when I'm, unless I'm paid to or asked.
[17:17]So, I would agree with looking at it again.
[17:21]But I have to read from that book.
[17:25]I sometimes want to stop and just admire some
[17:28]of the things I did in it,
[17:29]that I'd always dreamed of doing in a piece of writing,
[17:33]of carrying on a thought for a long time,
[17:37]dropping something, picking it up again,
[17:39]all in one sentence.
[17:40]I really love that.
[17:41]The things I did in that book,
[17:43]the techniques of writing,
[17:46]that to me are so much like the way I think
[17:48]when I am silent, when I'm thinking
[17:52]with no one around just to myself.
[17:54]So, yes, I particularly love that book.
[17:58]Almost no one agrees with me,
[18:00]but I think it's the best thing.
[18:03]I've written and the short stories,
[18:07]I first wrote the one sentence short story
[18:11]in at the bottom of the river.
[18:12]I'm very proud of those things.
[18:15]I mean, I wouldn't say that unless you asked me,
[18:18]and I don't think I've even ever said admitted that.
[18:20]So, I must be coming to the end of my life.
[18:22]It's very annoying.
[18:23]I hate ending.
[18:26]It doesn't mean you're coming to the end of your life.
[18:28]It could just mean you've reached a place
[18:30]of self-acceptance and you're willing to commend yourself.
[18:34]All right, that sounds much better.
[18:36]Yeah.
[18:37]Anyway, I love writing that,
[18:41]when I love reading philosophy, even though,
[18:45]I'm the sort of person who read being and time
[18:50]and over and over again,
[18:52]because I love the way it asks you
[18:56]to understand a being,
[19:01]existence, even though you can't really,
[19:04]but it's a powerful way, but I, yes, so anyway, never mind.
[19:10]And I hear you're going to be a library lion
[19:13]at the New York Public Lions event this November,
[19:16]and I'm gonna be there as a guest,
[19:17]so I will have to look for you when we're there.
[19:20]Were you excited to get?
[19:22]Yeah, so were you excited to get that honor?
[19:24]I know you've gotten many in your lifetime.
[19:27]Oh, in my life, can I?
[19:28]Oh, God, that sounds so old.
[19:31]My name, sorry, I loved everyone did it again.
[19:34]I guess, I guess time 70,
[19:38]and I don't see, I look at people who are 70,
[19:42]and I thought, oh, do I look like this,
[19:44]but I don't feel like that.
[19:46]And some very sensitive, and not,
[19:48]I would never lie about my age,
[19:50]but I see someone who died at 72,
[19:54]and I think, oh no, only two more years,
[19:56]because I haven't even planted all the annual by one.
[20:00]I'm to plant never mind the perennials,
[20:04]but every time I'm given an award or something,
[20:07]I'm always surprised because I think
[20:10]I deeply, truly think no one has ever heard of me.
[20:14]It's one of the ways I'm able to write what I write
[20:17]because I think, well, no one will ever read this.
[20:19]So I just do what I really want to do
[20:21]because no one will ever read it.
[20:23]So I think, well, no one has ever heard of me.
[20:26]Why would I be a literary writer?
[20:28]But I'm really quite thankful.
[20:31]I mean, and I'm happy, you know, when I was little
[20:35]and I was given prizes in school,
[20:37]you'd have to wear your dress uniform
[20:40]and get it on the stage and curtsy and everyone would clap.
[20:44]And so I find it sort of really everything wonderful
[20:47]that happens to me reminds me of my childhood
[20:50]as if everything terrible.
[20:52]So yes, I am very pleased, surprised and pleased.
[20:59]Yes, I'll be very, very pleased to have that.
[21:02]Yes, it's very nice.
[21:03]Gather my other honorees are so distinguished, I shall hide.
[21:10]No, not at all.
[21:12]When you talk to people just starting out on a writing career,
[21:16]what advice do you like to give them?
[21:18]Oh, never go to a creative writing school.
[21:21]Do not get an MFA or if you do,
[21:24]it's only because you needed the time,
[21:28]but certainly don't take the advice of a teacher.
[21:32]No one can teach you how to write.
[21:34]Just remember, Homer was a blind person
[21:37]sitting at the city's gate.
[21:39]Just remember the apostle Paul that no relations
[21:43]listened to him.
[21:44]And in any case, there are no relations anymore.
[21:47]But his letters to the relations,
[21:50]you can still find them.
[21:52]So just write this, you know, something depends on it,
[21:57]something that you don't know, but something important.
[22:00]And I don't mean to, because I teach creative writing,
[22:03]but as my students will tell you, it's so, you know,
[22:07]my teaching is just, but what would you like to do?
[22:10]What would you, because writing is so peculiar.
[22:13]It's so, you know, you can teach someone
[22:16]how the proper way to put paint on a canvas,
[22:19]might not be the way you paint.
[22:21]Let's see.
[22:22]That's our Jackson Pollock about that.
[22:24]You know, it's very hard to teach people to write
[22:30]or to think you can or you want to teach people to write.
[22:35]Oh, I hope no creative writing,
[22:37]professor, listener, to your podcast.
[22:40]They probably don't.
[22:43]Oh, God.
[22:45]We writers, we don't have to make a living.
[22:50]On the other hand, you know, writing is not,
[22:54]it's not really a career.
[22:56]I don't understand it.
[22:58]Do I have a career I suppose I do?
[23:00]But I didn't mean to.
[23:02]You know, I didn't know one.
[23:04]I didn't know you could do this.
[23:06]That this could be done.
[23:08]I had no idea.
[23:09]That's the other thing with young people
[23:11]starting to write is that they think perhaps
[23:14]this had something to do with being rich and famous and so on.
[23:18]And it really doesn't.
[23:20]It's unfortunate that, you know,
[23:22]we writers are part of something called publicity.
[23:25]But it's really something quite wonderful and holy.
[23:28]I think.
[23:29]I think.
[23:30]But anyway.
[23:31]Well, so advice to young writers.
[23:33]Oh, well, I do have advice, positive advice.
[23:36]Read, read, read.
[23:38]Just read everything, even if it's in directions
[23:41]on a box of over-the-counter medicine.
[23:44]Just read it.
[23:45]Well, I will now spend, I'll spend the rest of my day now
[23:48]at Rite Aid, you know, reading all the boxes.
[23:50]I had to find my inspiration and, you know,
[23:56]directions and dosages.
[23:57]So I knew I was forgetting to do something.
[24:00]Well, I just want to thank you so much.
[24:04]That was, that's the end of our little time together.
[24:06]But I just am so grateful for you for doing that to you
[24:09]for doing this.
[24:10]And I really hope to meet you in November.
[24:12]Yes, yes, please.
[24:14]I'll cost you at the party.
[24:16]Yes.
[24:17]I will be very disappointed if I don't find you.
[24:21]Okay.
[24:22]Well, enjoy the rest of the day gardening.
[24:24]And thanks again for all your time.
[24:26]Thank you.
[24:27]Thank you.
[24:28]All right.
[24:29]Okay.
[24:30]Bye bye.
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[24:45]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the Sound Editing.
[24:49]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic
[24:52]intro and now trim music.
[24:53]Thanks for listening.
[24:54]You could always email me at zibbyoins.com.