Michele Norris, OUR HIDDEN CONVERSATIONS: What Americans Really Think about Race and Identity
[0:02]Hi, I'm Zippy Owens and you're listening to moms don't have time to read books.
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[1:03]Michelle Norris is the author of Our Hidden Conversations, What Americans Really Think About
[1:08]Race and Identity.
[1:10]Michelle is one of America's most trusted voices and journalism, earning several honors over
[1:14]a long career, including Peabody, Emmy, DuPont, and Goldsmith Awards.
[1:19]She is a columnist for the Washington Post opinion section, the host of the Audible Original
[1:23]podcast, Your Mama's Kitchen.
[1:25]And from 2002 to 2012, she was a co-host of NPR's All Things Considered.
[1:30]Michelle is also the founding director of the Race Card Project, a Peabody award-winning
[1:34]narrative archive where people around the world share their reflections on identity
[1:38]in just six words.
[1:40]Her first book, The Grace of Silence, was named one of the best books of the year by the San
[1:44]Francisco Chronicle, the Christian Science Monitor, and the Kansas City Star before joining
[1:48]NPR.
[1:49]Norris spent almost 10 years as a reporter for ABC News covering politics, policy, and the
[1:54]dynamics of social change.
[1:56]Early in her career, she also worked as a staff writer for the Washington Post, Chicago
[2:00]Tribune, and The Less Angelist Times.
[2:03]Welcome, Michelle.
[2:04]Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to read bugs, to discuss our hidden
[2:07]conversations, what Americans really think about race and identity.
[2:12]Thank you, Libby.
[2:13]Glad to be here.
[2:14]I love your podcast and I love the title of your podcast because it speaks to me as a
[2:20]mom who many times has struggled to find time to read books.
[2:24]Yes.
[2:25]I relate.
[2:26]Little did I know that I would introduce even more books to try to fit in by starting
[2:31]this podcast, but that's okay.
[2:32]Totally fine.
[2:34]This book is so beautiful.
[2:35]So for people listening, it is almost like the size and shape of a coffee table book with
[2:41]the most gorgeous combinations of photographs and visual elements and different color pages
[2:48]separating chapters and different color fonts.
[2:51]And it's almost like a photo album homage to all of the race card projects, postcards,
[2:58]and emails and everything that come in to Michelle.
[3:01]So just if you have not seen this book, just Google it while you're listening or something
[3:06]because the actual book itself is gorgeous and so impressive.
[3:10]So just wanted to throw that out there.
[3:11]And now Michelle, tell us about the book.
[3:13]Well, thank you for that because you have to see it to kind of understand it.
[3:19]I went through the process of putting this book together with my editors and you want
[3:22]to do what?
[3:23]You want how many photos?
[3:25]You want it and you described it as an album, which is kind of perfect because I wanted
[3:29]to feel like a scrapbook like you were eavesdropping on other people's lives.
[3:34]And it's a compilation of stories that I've collected.
[3:37]I'm a long time storyteller, been a journalist for more than three decades.
[3:42]But I'm also a story collector and journalists are always story collectors, but I actually
[3:46]collect individual stories and I created the race card project when I wrote my first book
[3:51]because I wrote about my family's very complex racial legacy.
[3:56]And at the time, I thought no one wanted to talk about race.
[4:00]And so I was frankly, I want to say terrified that may be too strong a word, but I was anxious
[4:05]about going out into the world to talk about my story and I felt comfortable with that.
[4:09]But I wanted to have a dialogue with people because I thought America needed that in some
[4:15]way and I was curious, we had just sent a black family to the White House.
[4:19]I wanted to know how America was going to react to that.
[4:22]But I felt like I had to pry open that conversation.
[4:25]And so that's where the postcards came in.
[4:27]This idea of collecting microverse in the form of a story from someone.
[4:32]Your thoughts about race in six words, please send, I now talk about race and identity
[4:38]because one of the things that I learned is that if you talk about race, people think
[4:42]that that is a conversation about those people.
[4:46]When you talk about race in America, it is presumed to be a conversation about people of
[4:51]color and really specifically usually about black people, really usually about black people.
[4:56]And so I now talk about race and identity because if you talk about identity, everybody
[5:01]has an identity.
[5:02]Yes.
[5:03]And it's a way in for people who are white who are Latino because race doesn't apply.
[5:07]It's an ethnicity, not a race necessarily.
[5:10]You can be Afro Latino, you can be white and Latino, you can be, you know, if you travel
[5:15]to Peru, you're a lots of places in Central and South America, you meet a lot of people
[5:19]who are Asian and Latino.
[5:20]So race wasn't the right word there.
[5:23]And a lot of people feel like identity, wait, that's something I relate to.
[5:26]I am a bass fisherman, I am a baker, I am a, you know, University of Michigan fanatics
[5:33]sports fan, you know, whatever that is, I hope to be married to one of those.
[5:39]Just saying, you might be a University of Michigan fan, I don't know.
[5:43]But that, that opens the door for a lot more people and that it made it, I think that's
[5:48]one of the bigger lessons for me is that we need a new way to talk about race and to widen
[5:55]that door so more people feel like they can come in the room and get comfortable or maybe
[5:59]come in the room and be uncomfortable, but at least get in the room.
[6:02]Yep.
[6:03]Well, I love how it just started with an idea that these, these postcards with six words
[6:08]and you would just leave them out everywhere and hope that people would send them.
[6:11]And first you got five, 10, 12 cards and then next thing you know, you're inundated with
[6:17]cards and then you turn it into emails and I just love this image of you, it can goes
[6:21]picking up your first stack of cards and seeing what it becomes, not the least of which
[6:25]is this book, which is, you know, it's amazing when you just follow instincts like that.
[6:30]And you're like, I don't know, there's something about this.
[6:31]I just got to try it and then look what happens.
[6:34]Well, one of the guys who, who was at the UPS store where I was collecting, where I was collecting
[6:38]the cards, he now runs the drawing.
[6:40]He's now the manager of, you know, of the store.
[6:43]I think he actually may own it.
[6:44]I think he may have purchased it from the previous owner, but we, you know, I still
[6:48]talked to him about it.
[6:49]He says I missed the cards because most of the stories now come in digitally.
[6:52]Yeah.
[6:53]But when, when the cards would come in for the guys who worked at the UPS store, there's
[6:57]no sheath.
[6:58]There's no covering.
[6:59]So people were, were writing these amazing things on these postcards and for them it
[7:03]was entertainment.
[7:04]You know, they would like, oh, she's got a stack of cards today and they, they, I don't
[7:08]think they usually read people's mail at the UPS store, but in this case, in this
[7:13]case, they were going into my box and pulling out the cards and actually having, you
[7:18]know, really interesting and yeasty conversations based on the six word truths.
[7:22]Yes.
[7:23]We're arriving in their box.
[7:24]So be careful what you put on a postcard is basically the takeaway because they will
[7:30]be read.
[7:31]I was thinking as I was reading, there must be, I don't know, thousands, hundreds.
[7:35]I don't, I don't know if you've encountered how many of the postcards you represented
[7:38]in the book, but every page, there's like a pastiche of a, of a bunch, not every page,
[7:42]but scattered about.
[7:43]And you, you've grouped them into thematic sections, feeling, you know, unsafe or feeling,
[7:51]what is your identity feeling like, you know, how is your appearance?
[7:55]Are you pretty enough?
[7:56]You know, all that like, which I found really interesting also because then you see how
[7:59]many people have similar cards that they are sending in and thinking and right away,
[8:04]you're like, oh, well, all these people are thinking this, they're less alone immediately.
[8:08]But then of course I started reading and thinking, well, like, what would my six words
[8:11]be?
[8:12]You know, I feel like everybody who reads this has to like contribute to the project.
[8:16]So here's what I came up with.
[8:17]I think mine would be, I'm an American Jew fighting antisemitism.
[8:21]What do you think?
[8:22]I think that's, I think it counts as counts as six, there's, I don't think there's any
[8:26]hyphenation in there.
[8:28]There's a contraction, which obviously works.
[8:31]It speaks to the moment and that speaks to the nature of talking about race and identity.
[8:36]It's a journey that changes over time that that hills little steeper right now because of
[8:40]everything we're experiencing geopolitically and it probably means something different
[8:45]for you now as a parent and it did because you're fighting it on behalf of yourself and
[8:52]other people that are going out in the world with their own identities.
[8:55]So yeah, I mean, it's what I find is in many of these six word stories.
[8:59]There's a whole novel embedded in just the six words.
[9:04]And you're saying I realized that when I, yes, yes, they often do mine did and, and when
[9:11]I call people to do little oral histories, the six words is often the starting point
[9:16]for a story, a tale, a narrative that is deep and rich and complex and it just starts
[9:21]with the six words.
[9:23]So if I were to ask you about, you know, your six words, I'm sure that there would be
[9:28]be fill it in with stories.
[9:29]We'd find out, you know, what's been said to you, what you're fighting.
[9:32]I mean, it's a, it's even if they're somewhat abstract at the beginning, it usually
[9:37]gets very deep and very personal.
[9:39]I could see that.
[9:40]What are your six words today?
[9:42]Well, I land, the one that I always come back to is still more work to be done because
[9:47]in matters of race, we always think the work is over.
[9:50]We want it.
[9:51]We want to think.
[9:52]very quickly.
[9:53]That's what post-racial was all about the discomfort, you know, the idea that can we just
[9:57]be done with us?
[9:58]Can we just stop talking about it?
[10:00]And I called the race guard project in part because I always hated that phrase when people say someone is playing the race guard.
[10:05]It's a convener, elegant or pithy way to say please stop talking and I was trying to just the opposite to stoke conversation.
[10:12]When I started the project, the six words that first came to me were fooled them all not done yet.
[10:21]Because I grew up in Minnesota and spending summers in Alabama where my father was from.
[10:28]I had a significant speech impediment when I was very young.
[10:31]I'm a brown girl who grew up in a largely white state in a largely white neighborhood and attended a school that was on the cusp of integration.
[10:40]And a world behind a microphone was not imagined for someone like me for lots of reasons.
[10:49]And so on top of all the, you know, the fact that I was brown, black, African American.
[10:53]On top of that having a speech impediment no one would say, well that's the one that we think is going to become a communicator.
[11:00]I'm putting my money on her.
[11:02]No one was making that bet.
[11:04]Right.
[11:05]And then not done yet, part is, you know, I'm not done.
[11:09]You know, I'm in my 60s, I'm not, I don't hide that.
[11:13]And you look really young by the way.
[11:16]I don't know what you're doing, but let me know.
[11:19]There's some secret.
[11:20]Thank you.
[11:21]It's attitude is most of it.
[11:22]I just refuse to act my age.
[11:24]But it's at a point where people can often start to look past you or sort of assume that you're, that you're done, that you're hanging things up.
[11:32]And, you know, we always get these 40 under 40 lists or, you know, 30 under 30 or whatever.
[11:39]You know, I'd like to see a 60 above 60 list, you know, people who started doing really interesting things later in life.
[11:47]Because that's often when you finally have time and bad with and glistom.
[11:51]Yep.
[11:52]And it's fun.
[11:54]Courage and the courage of your convictions.
[11:57]And sometimes just playing courage because you've seen things and you've done things.
[12:01]So that's the not done yet part of it.
[12:03]I totally get that.
[12:05]I thought when I started my podcast that most authors would be quite young.
[12:09]And it turns out most authors have had the time to experience things.
[12:14]And many first novelists even are in their 50s, 60s, 40s.
[12:19]Certainly 40s.
[12:20]Yeah.
[12:21]So I find that refreshing and encouraging.
[12:23]I do too.
[12:24]I do too.
[12:25]And I,
[12:26]and I want to hear the services podcast at Julia Louis Dreyfus is doing.
[12:30]Yes.
[12:31]You may have heard.
[12:32]And I love the idea.
[12:33]I just thought that it was podcast of the year on Apple.
[12:36]I just noticed that.
[12:37]So I have to start listening, obviously.
[12:39]It's really interesting.
[12:40]But, you know, it's a great idea.
[12:41]She sits down and talks to a woman of a certain age, you know, about their life.
[12:45]Because we don't spend enough time listening to the wisdom that they have to offer.
[12:50]And it's delightful.
[12:52]Well, speaking of delightful podcasts, your own podcast is amazing.
[12:57]And you have the most amazing guests.
[12:59]I love this whole notion that you want to know not just like the food in your mom's kitchen, right?
[13:05]This is about what is it like?
[13:07]What was it like for you growing up?
[13:08]And of course, that is like the embodiment of what it's like asking.
[13:12]It's a nice way of saying like tell me all about your family.
[13:14]But you don't say that.
[13:16]You're like just tell me about this place.
[13:19]Like you're so good at that, you know, even with the six words and the place.
[13:22]Like it's a, these are shortcuts into a way into something that is so important to people.
[13:27]And so comes out so, you know, emotionally like kind of a visceral reaction without having to go into long questions.
[13:34]And it's like very smart, very targeted.
[13:36]Like it.
[13:37]Thank you.
[13:38]It's all about doors, portals, you know, peering into windows.
[13:41]And whether it's the race or project of the work that I do at your mom's kitchen podcast,
[13:46]I'm always trying to make sure that lots of different people hear themselves and see themselves in the content that I create.
[13:51]Because that's not often the case.
[13:53]And at the same time, I'm trying to make sure that I introduce people's new worlds that I'm pulling them inside different places at the same time.
[14:03]And the simple question that begins every episode of your mom's kitchen.
[14:07]I don't know where we're going.
[14:09]I have done a lot of research and a lot of background, so I have an inkling.
[14:14]But I really don't know.
[14:16]And the idea is that the theory of the case is that the kitchen is where we form a significant part of who we are.
[14:25]It's where our identity is, you know, simmered, baked, whatever metaphor, big, you know, cooking metaphor you want to use.
[14:30]It happens in the kitchen because the kitchen is where we are nourished in lots of ways that go beyond what's served on a plate.
[14:38]It's where we argue.
[14:40]It's where we get advice.
[14:42]It's where when our hearts are broken, where do you go for comfort?
[14:47]Sometimes you open the refrigerator door, but sometimes you just sit down at a table and you just need to talk to somebody.
[14:52]It's where we have devices that bring the world inside that room with a radio or a television.
[14:58]It's where people learn how to be American, trying to figure out what do I feed my kids so they have the same thing that all the other kids eat.
[15:05]School lunches come up over and over again where people talk about my lunch was smelly or my lunch didn't look like everybody else's lunch or where people are desperately trying to hold onto something they lost when they came to this place called America.
[15:18]And the kitchen is the one place where they can hold on to who they were and what they were and what's important to them through food and language and culture and music and traditions.
[15:29]And so I ask a simple question and then we're off to the races and that's kind of fun to do, right?
[15:35]Where you just don't know what we're actually going to talk about.
[15:39]Are we going to talk about someone's parents or are we going to talk about their immigration journey?
[15:43]Are we going to talk about the wars that they had with their siblings or birth order and how that has forever cemented their view of the world or how the world sees them.
[15:54]And so these conversations wind up being they're all interesting.
[15:59]They're all very intimate.
[16:01]They're all with people that we know quite well, Michelle Obama, Conan O'Brien, Kerry Washington in the second half of the season, Matthew McConaughey, Mark Cuban,
[16:09]Gil King, El Roker.
[16:11]We know these people.
[16:12]We've heard interviews with them.
[16:14]We've watched them.
[16:15]We've watched them evolve.
[16:16]And yet in every single case, they have shared something with us that they've never shared with anybody before.
[16:24]Because we're approaching from a different vantage point.
[16:28]And because the kitchen is a space where you just let your hair down.
[16:32]It's, you know, you have your cold cream on.
[16:34]You know, you've still got your boxers on.
[16:37]You know, people literally, it's a metaphor that once you start talking about the kitchen, you can literally see people relax.
[16:44]They're shoulders kind of relax.
[16:46]They sit back.
[16:47]They go to a different space, you know, a different cerebral space that just creates a really revealing and intimate conversation that is a great ride for me.
[16:59]But I think for the listeners also, it's just been interesting and revealing for them.
[17:04]And then we top it off with a recipe.
[17:06]Like something that tastes like home to you.
[17:08]I love that.
[17:09]I had Matthew McConaughey in this podcast and I was like,
[17:11]I'm not going to just like, I'm going to be professional and like just do this podcast.
[17:17]But like, oh my gosh, it's voice and everything.
[17:19]So anyway, and he's so much fun.
[17:21]Oh my gosh, it's amazing.
[17:22]He's like singing and doing all this stuff.
[17:24]Yes, he just goes.
[17:25]He's, he's just like, live as a party and I am a host.
[17:28]Yes.
[17:29]And we talked to him with his wife Camila who is just special.
[17:34]I mean, she, he married well.
[17:36]She is just fantastic and open-hearted and funny.
[17:42]And I mean, he's, you know, it's easy to see how you could be upstaged constantly with someone who is that kind of great big personality.
[17:52]And even in her quiet way, there's a gravitational pull.
[17:57]You know, that, that pulls you in her direction.
[18:02]She's a woman of gravitas and depth and outer and inner beauty.
[18:09]She really fun couple.
[18:10]She was also on the podcast.
[18:11]And then when I listened to green lights, did you listen to the audio book of that?
[18:15]Yes, yes.
[18:16]And he was talking about her and how he just like totally fell for her.
[18:19]And she was like, not at all interested at first.
[18:22]And he was just like, that's the one.
[18:24]Like that was her.
[18:25]Oh my gosh.
[18:26]That was one of the best sections of the book.
[18:28]Thank you.
[18:29]So really good book.
[18:30]It was.
[18:31]It was a really good book.
[18:33]It's going to be on several under the tree for several people for me.
[18:36]I think it's a great dude book.
[18:38]It's small.
[18:41]It is a conversation starter.
[18:43]I mean, he's very vulnerable in that book.
[18:47]And through his vulnerability and his journaling and the way he presents things,
[18:51]which is I should say that book, and I told him this when I talked to him,
[18:56]was a big inspiration for the design in my book.
[18:59]Because I didn't want to write a book that was a traditional start to finish.
[19:02]I wanted to feel like a scrapbook.
[19:04]I wanted to feel like you were listening to someone think out loud.
[19:07]But there was definitely curation.
[19:09]But in terms of the design, I definitely wanted to break form.
[19:14]And green lights does that.
[19:15]It's true.
[19:16]It does.
[19:17]And I like you brought yourself in a lot whenever an author,
[19:20]even in the nonfiction piece or something, you know, as expository or as deeply analytical
[19:26]about, you know, post-racial relations and the United States in this particular time.
[19:30]Like hearing things from you, even what happened with your dad that you found out later,
[19:35]or the family secrets that were unveiled for you.
[19:37]And you're immediately connected to you as the writer,
[19:41]not just as an aggregator of all that information.
[19:44]Well, that was, you know, I write personally.
[19:47]I mean, I write about how we keep where African American, we live in a neighbor
[19:50]that's integrated.
[19:51]We are one of a small number of families of color in our neighborhood.
[19:54]I keep a picture of our family at the front door.
[19:56]Oh, that's action.
[19:57]Oh, my gosh.
[19:58]Because I want, you know, if the...
[20:00]Please never come to our house.
[20:01]I want them to know that we live in the house that we occupy.
[20:05]And that actually happened where my son was up late at night
[20:07]in the police game.
[20:08]And you live here, son, because his hair looked
[20:11]some kind of way.
[20:12]And he was up late at night watching tennis.
[20:15]And so he's in sweatpants.
[20:16]And they were about to interrogate him
[20:18]and he pointed to the picture of the door and said, yeah,
[20:20]that's us.
[20:21]And it's a smiling, happy picture
[20:22]of an African-American family leaning
[20:25]into each other on vacation.
[20:26]But I feel like I have to do that.
[20:27]So I was trying to tell a personal story.
[20:30]But as strong as whatever writing I did for this,
[20:33]and I do feel it's some of the best writing I've done,
[20:38]I am completely upstage.
[20:39]And I'm honest about that.
[20:41]I'm completely upstage by the stories
[20:44]that individual people tell.
[20:46]I mean, I was trying to present something,
[20:49]but also get out of the way so that people
[20:52]could peer into other people's lives.
[20:54]And there are stories in here that, I mean, again,
[20:58]it starts with six words.
[20:59]And you discover that a mom gave up for kids
[21:03]because it was really hard for her
[21:05]to raise an racial children as heartbreaking as that is.
[21:08]And then Luzonan has another family.
[21:12]And the second family doesn't know about the first family.
[21:15]Until a phone call comes and everything starts to unravel.
[21:19]That's like a whole six-part mini-series, right?
[21:24]Yes.
[21:24]And the woman at the center of that story passed away recently.
[21:28]And so I also felt good that I could help her children
[21:32]from both families.
[21:34]Yep, tell that story, find each other before she left us.
[21:38]Oh, sounds very meaningful.
[21:40]I do think, though, that particular story of the frame
[21:44]and the picture that you have and the security guard
[21:48]sort of banging on the door.
[21:49]And when they asked your son, how long have you lived here?
[21:52]And he couldn't quite think.
[21:53]because who can ever remember how long you've lived
[21:55]in a certain house?
[21:56]That was evidence against him, almost.
[21:59]The terror in reading that, oh my gosh.
[22:02]And then even some of the other little clips
[22:04]that you have from other people, the mom who
[22:06]is just staying on the phone with me when her son was being
[22:10]pulled over.
[22:11]And he's like, this is having to be 8 million times.
[22:13]I don't need to stay on the phone with you.
[22:15]But she's like, no, no, no, no.
[22:16]Just the fear.
[22:18]Going back to both of those moms, all the moments in here
[22:22]where you just feel.
[22:24]So it just makes you feel over and over again.
[22:27]Fear, concern, just all of it wrapped up.
[22:32]The one that got me was, it's in that chapter also.
[22:34]It's Kristen Moorehead and her son Che.
[22:37]And she had given him the so-called talk,
[22:40]how to comport yourself when you're out in the world,
[22:42]or reach for anything, keep your hands where you can see them.
[22:46]And then her six words were, I wish she was a girl.
[22:49]Yes, that was another good one.
[22:52]And of course, she doesn't, she loves her son.
[22:57]And is, so glad that the creator gave her this child,
[23:01]that she has been tasked with raising this boy who's not a man.
[23:05]She doesn't really wish she was a girl,
[23:07]but she wrote those six words after reading about yet another
[23:10]police killing the killing of Tamara Rice.
[23:11]She watched the video of police shooting a child
[23:13]who was at that time the same age as her son.
[23:16]Brown Skin, African American kid in a park while it's a getting shot.
[23:19]She wanted to scream and cry,
[23:20]but she was in the next room and he would hear.
[23:23]So she goes to, she goes to the computer and writes to me,
[23:27]you know, writes to the race card project.
[23:28]Isn't that wild?
[23:29]Yes.
[23:30]And sends in those six words.
[23:31]And so when I talk to her years later,
[23:33]and this is how stories evolve.
[23:35]And this is a benefit of collecting stories
[23:36]and being able to go back and talk to people again and again
[23:39]and again, how their stories evolve.
[23:41]At this point, Che is not an unmanned hood, big shoulders,
[23:46]square jaw, voices still kind of squeaky,
[23:49]but it's changing, you know.
[23:51]He's still kind of a goofy kid,
[23:53]but you can see that that's going to go away pretty soon.
[23:57]And he explains to her, he's now giving her the talk.
[24:01]So this is what it's like for me.
[24:04]And this is how I handle it.
[24:06]And I know you asked me to do this,
[24:08]what didn't make it in the book
[24:09]as they talked about how they go shopping
[24:10]and how his mom was always trying to,
[24:13]he wanted by Timbrelands.
[24:14]We wanted by baggy pants.
[24:16]We wanted by a big puffy jacket
[24:17]and she was always presenting
[24:19]in with options that any knew what was going on.
[24:23]You know, I prefer that you look like this
[24:25]so you don't capture attention.
[24:26]And he wants to look like every other kid,
[24:28]including Seth and Julio.
[24:31]And, you know, I mean, every kid at a school dress
[24:33]is like this, not just, you know, the black kids.
[24:35]And because that's the style.
[24:38]But she's giving her the talk.
[24:41]And at the end, she is just a puddle
[24:45]because she doesn't know what to feel.
[24:47]Like it worked.
[24:48]I gave him the talk.
[24:48]He knows how to handle himself.
[24:52]But why did I have to do this?
[24:53]Why do I have to send a young man into the world
[24:57]who feels like he has to be jolly all the time
[24:59]to inoculate other people's fears?
[25:01]What part of his manhood, what part of his personhood,
[25:06]what part of his personality will never really evolve
[25:11]because he has to live in a cage
[25:13]and I helped him do that.
[25:15]And he'll survive because of it, hopefully.
[25:18]But she just was, and to watch all that,
[25:20]because that's the stuff that we know happens.
[25:22]And usually, as a journalist, I know it's happening,
[25:26]but I don't get to see it.
[25:27]And in this case, when people send those six words,
[25:30]it's often an invitation for you
[25:33]to have those conversations.
[25:34]And the surprising thing for me,
[25:36]and the official thing for me as a storyteller,
[25:39]story collector, as a journalist,
[25:40]is that the majority of the stories came from white Americans.
[25:44]And that stunned me,
[25:46]because it's called the race guard project.
[25:49]I'm an African American woman.
[25:50]I thought most of the stories would be from people of color
[25:53]and more specifically, probably from black Americans.
[25:57]That didn't happen.
[25:58]Let me get a lot of stories from people of color
[25:59]of black Americans, people of all races.
[26:02]But the majority of the stories for most of the 14 years
[26:04]that we've been doing this have come from white Americans
[26:07]and most conversations about race
[26:08]are not that inclusive in that way.
[26:12]And so it has been an opportunity for me
[26:15]to have very candid, often uncomfortable, highly
[26:19]unvarnished conversations about all kinds of things
[26:23]that I normally would not get a chance to do.
[26:26]I would not normally have a chance
[26:27]to have these kinds of conversations.
[26:29]And I wanted to write a book about it
[26:31]because I wanted to allow other people to do that, too.
[26:33]Back to your mom is kitchen for just a second.
[26:35]You are a mom.
[26:36]How would your kids describe more than one kid?
[26:40]I don't know.
[26:41]I have three.
[26:42]I have four kids.
[26:43]So how would your kids describe if they were asked?
[26:47]What would their mom is kitchen like?
[26:49]Well, we actually talk about that now
[26:50]because I guess I do this podcast and they are avid listeners.
[26:55]I think they would say the kitchen is a fairly organized space.
[26:59]And I would say the same thing about my own mom's kitchen.
[27:01]I think they would say the kitchen was a space
[27:04]where the family had a lot of fun.
[27:06]Our kitchen is, it is the place that we gather.
[27:09]It is where we, as a family, spend a lot of time.
[27:13]Much more time in the kitchen than the living room.
[27:15]Much more time in the kitchen than the den.
[27:18]I gave up and let them put a TV in the kitchen
[27:20]even though some kind of sports is always on.
[27:22]But, you know, I want to head.
[27:24]But we also play music in the kitchen all the time.
[27:28]And as a mom, I asked my daughter this question recently
[27:34]when we were together at Thanksgiving.
[27:36]And she remembered the way I used to cook on Sundays
[27:40]because I'd cook for the whole week.
[27:42]As a journalist, I was on deadline.
[27:44]I was on a, I hosted a show for 10 years.
[27:47]Most of their childhood where I was on the air
[27:49]until six o'clock.
[27:50]Not just a show.
[27:52]Like a pair.
[27:54]Okay.
[27:55]I just had a studio show, you know, whatever.
[27:57]All things considered.
[27:58]Anyway, good.
[27:59]And my husband was in politics.
[28:00]So he worked, you know, whatever was going on in the world,
[28:04]you know, it often meant a late night for him.
[28:06]He was getting home late.
[28:07]So I cooked on Sunday for the week to make sure
[28:10]that they would have a home cooked meal
[28:13]even if their sitter was the one who got it going.
[28:16]It's cooking as preparation.
[28:17]And they are now all three of them are now very good cooks.
[28:22]And they're pretty organized cooks
[28:24]and they're experimental.
[28:26]And with their cooking, because I also was experimental
[28:28]and which men sometimes things didn't, you know,
[28:30]there were some failures too.
[28:32]But I liked trying different things with them.
[28:35]And the other thing that I asked my son,
[28:38]my youngest son, this also,
[28:40]is that they remembered the table being a place
[28:43]where we worked things out.
[28:45]And we've always had a big kitchen table.
[28:47]We had to replace it after COVID and it was sad.
[28:50]We had, you know, said goodbye to our children.
[28:54]But doing COVID, one of my children is a germaphobe
[28:56]and that child sprayed so much lysaw on the table.
[29:01]And the varnish was starting to peel off the table.
[29:05]So we had to just start over again with a new table.
[29:09]But they remember the table as a place where we play cards,
[29:12]where we have debates, where we actually talk things out.
[29:15]It's kind of like our camp David, you know,
[29:17]if we needed to work something out,
[29:20]okay, let's go to the kitchen table.
[29:21]Let's sit down and let's talk about this.
[29:24]And it was a space where a lot of their friends would do that too.
[29:29]Because I cooked for the week,
[29:31]people knew that there was hot food,
[29:34]the Norris Johnson household.
[29:36]So we could, can Clay stay for dinner tonight.
[29:39]And, you know, when I was always happy to do that,
[29:41]because I knew other parents, the juggle is real, you know.
[29:45]And so if I could help out in some way
[29:48]and when I was on campaigns, you know,
[29:50]they would return the favor and do that.
[29:53]But the theory of the case, I guess,
[29:55]that I explore every week,
[29:57]that we are formed in important ways as Conan O'Brien.
[30:00]to the degree that he is clay, the kitchen is the kiln.
[30:04]You know, that's where it's all baked.
[30:06]Our kitchen was and still is very much the kiln
[30:11]or our family.
[30:12]It's beautiful.
[30:13]Okay, last question.
[30:14]What advice would you have for aspiring authors?
[30:17]Right, often, right in lots of places.
[30:22]Writing is not easy for me, even though I love it.
[30:25]It's not easy for me.
[30:27]And I realized for me, this is an advice for other people,
[30:32]but I'll give you the context of why I'm giving this advice.
[30:35]One of the reasons writing was hard for me is because I felt
[30:38]that it had to happen in an appointed place at a certain time.
[30:45]And maybe I had watched too many, you know,
[30:48]Nancy Myers movies where I wanted the desk that Diane Keaton had
[30:52]and something got to give.
[30:53]You know, I wanted, I wanted a desk with a quilt pen
[30:56]and then it had to have the music and sunlight, you know,
[31:02]ocean that's asking too much.
[31:03]Couldn't have that much.
[31:04]But, you know, something that it had to be like, right or lee.
[31:09]I even had this book, Where Writer's Right.
[31:12]And I don't know that that book is real
[31:13]because I think that most people, Tony Morrison wrote
[31:17]and this was an epiphany for me when I interviewed her.
[31:19]She wrote long hand on the train on a yellow legal pad.
[31:24]Now that's amazing to me that she could write on a legal pad
[31:26]because, you know, this is for a cut and paste and reorganized.
[31:29]But so the advice I would have is right when you can
[31:34]and where you can and on the train and in your head,
[31:39]in the shower, write it down just right and right often
[31:44]and let it sort of ooze out of you and then edit and realize
[31:49]that you can put it, you know, together.
[31:51]Much of the portions of the book in our hidden conversations
[31:55]that I wrote, I realized I've been chunk of that book
[31:58]was written in my phone where I was just talking
[32:02]into my phone in the note section and then later translating it.
[32:05]So that would be one piece of advice.
[32:07]The other would be to listen.
[32:08]So much of what we do in communication is the emphasis
[32:12]and the value is placed on what we say, what we say with our voices,
[32:17]what we say now on platforms on Twitter and TikTok
[32:20]and it was caught Twitter now.
[32:21]X, formerly known as Twitter and TikTok.
[32:24]And Facebook and, you know, all these other places.
[32:26]But I don't think we value and this is, you know,
[32:29]a radio audio girl here, you know, advice on audio girl.
[32:33]Listen, just tune, listening is a skill
[32:38]and figure out how to take the earbuds out, you know,
[32:42]and just listen to the world and you're writing
[32:47]when you really are tuned into that frequency,
[32:51]you're writing will reflect that both your
[32:53]expository explanatory writing,
[32:55]your ability to capture a sense of place
[32:57]because you're listening to the crunch of leaves underfoot,
[33:00]the way that cars don't sound the way they used to,
[33:02]all these electric cars or suddenly, you know what I mean?
[33:04]You're just sort of, you just start to notice things, right?
[33:08]And the way that people talk and the way that they communicate
[33:11]to figure out how to be an active listener
[33:14]and then catalog that in some way so that when you are writing,
[33:18]what oozes out of you is captures your voice,
[33:22]your unique voice, but also is able to embrace
[33:30]the sounds of the world, the actual world,
[33:34]not the world that served to us through shows like this,
[33:37]through entertainment, but the world, you know,
[33:40]to be of the world and in the world
[33:42]and take the earphones out, be where you are.
[33:46]I love it.
[33:47]Michelle, this was so enjoyable.
[33:49]I love it.
[33:50]You're such a great writer and journalist
[33:53]and, you know, audio, audio girl.
[33:55]So this was really an honor and a pleasure.
[33:58]So thank you.
[33:59]Thank you.
[34:00]I have loved talking to you.
[34:02]And I look forward to actually visiting your physical space.
[34:06]Come on over.
[34:07]You invited me in your home.
[34:08]I would, ooh, an all over that bookshelf.
[34:10]And the background.
[34:11]I'm here in New York.
[34:12]Come on over.
[34:12]Definitely.
[34:13]I'm gonna try to visit the bookstore.
[34:15]I love what you do.
[34:16]Thanks for having me.
[34:17]Thank you.
[34:18]Thanks so much.
[34:20]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms.
[34:22]Don't have time to read books.
[34:24]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram,
[34:26]at Zebioans, and at Moms.
[34:27]Don't have time to read books.
[34:29]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebioans.com
[34:31]and sign up for my virtual book club
[34:33]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[34:35]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan.
[34:37]Heck, texture sound for the sound editing.
[34:39]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[34:41]for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.