Rion Amilcar Scott is an award-winning writer who turns a short story into deep glimpses inside the souls of Black folks. Over two collections of stories, Insurrections and The World Does Not Require You, Scott has created a world-- literally -- in the Cross River of his invention: a spot in Maryland where a triumphant slave rebellion led to the founding of a city. And in creating that world, he has fashioned a wild collection of indelible characters and cutting stories.
[I've chosen Love, by Reed Turchi]
Reginald Dwayne Betts: [00:00:01] There's somebody in like, you know, Sydney, Australia, right now with a book in their hand that's thinking about the world along the same lines of the conversation that we're having.
Jason Reynolds: [00:00:13] It's literally us manipulating and maneuvering 26 letters into different arrangements that might just liberate somebody.
Mariam Toews: [00:00:21] Literacy is freedom.
Reginald Dwayne Betts: [00:00:23] And so, so many people was yelling, you know, and it was wild to me, and I was like, "And this is literature right here," you know what I mean? I was like, "This is the importance of books."
You're listening to The Freedom Takes, a podcast from The Million Book Project. I'm your host Reginald Dwayne Betts.
Elsa Hardy: [00:00:42] And I'm your co-host, Elsa Hardy. The Million Book Project sends books into prisons and juvenile detention centers across the country. On this show, we'll talk to the authors of some of those books about their lives as readers and as writers and about what it means to be free.
Reginald Dwayne Betts: [00:00:57] We're here today with Rion Amilcar Scott. Me and Rion go way back. And though we often kick it about the words and books, a cornerstone of our friendship has been intense discussions on the relative merit of U-God and whether Nas should have stopped rapping after Illmatic. Rion has also written some of the English language's best short stories. He is an award-winning writer, who turns a short story into a deep glimpse into the souls of Black folks. Over two collections, insurrections and the recently-published The World Does Not Require You, Rion has created a world-- literally--in the Cross Rivers of his invention, a spot in Maryland where the only successful slave rebellion led to the founding of a city. And in creating that world, he has fashioned a wild collection of indelible characters and cutting stories that meet any measure of dope we'd assign to an emcee. It's always a pleasure to chop it up with you, my friend. Thanks for joining us.
Rion Amilcar Scott: [00:01:54] I'm happy to be here.
Elsa Hardy: [00:01:56] So we'd like to open up these shows with a reading from the book that we're featuring. Can you introduce the novel and read a bit from it for our listeners?
Rion Amilcar Scott: [00:02:03] Sure. Um. So, uh, Interactions is my first book. It takes place in a fictional town called Cross River, Maryland, which has a history of being founded after the only successful slave revolt in this country. So, the section I'm going to read you, um, is a, is a piece from a story called Juba, which, uh, was inspired by a mistaken identity incident. And I wrote a story about it.
[begins reading]
The man walking toward me, stresses hand out as we crossed the street, I shook it and kept walking, as I had never seen him before. Juba, he said. Boy, Juba, I ain't seen you in a long time. Juba woo-wee! Because my name is not Juba, I was content to keep moving. The man stopped right in the middle of busy Carroll Street, still gripping my hand. A money green Acura turned sharply in front of us. I dipped and jerked to avoid being struck. Are you crazy? I asked, as we made it to the sidewalk. Sorry, Juba man. It's just that I ain't seen you in so long. It's good to see you, man. You still up to your old tricks? I had an idea of what sort of tricks might be talking about.
The man looked old, but it was an artificial old, the kind of old that seizes a person who abuses himself. That sort of old comes from too many late nights. The old of hard liquor and worse. He was scarred in the face and on the arms, but also on his wrinkled hands. He wasn't the sort of man you saw around here very often.
I'm sorry buddy, I said, but I'm not Juba.
Stop messing around, Juba! You was always a trickster. Stop playing games. You still hustling?
Sir, I'm hustling to catch this bus. Other than that, I don't hustle, and I really have to go.
I really did have to go. I had a job interview at an accounting firm downtown in an hour, and I had timed everything perfectly. If I caught the 12:45 PM B58, I would make it there exactly 15 minutes early. I'd performed a test run the day before and another one the day before that. This was my second interview. And I could tell the woman who ran the office liked me. All I had to do was show up. Since the layoff. I'd been out of work for several months. In another couple weeks, my unemployment checks will be at an end.
There was something odd in the man's smile. Perhaps something in the webs of wrinkles at his cheeks. Juba, you something else, boy. The man let out a wheezy whining squeal. Man, I'm trying to buy a dub. Can you help me with that?
A dub?
Yeah. Dub. Remember when you used to be selling nicks down by River Hall, but then one day he said since times is hard, dubs are better?
I have no idea what you're talking about, I said. I think you have the wrong person. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a $5 bill. Here, buddy. I said. Go get yourself a sandwich or a coffee.
The man stared at my hand, curling his lip in disgust. Man, I don't need your money, he said. I'm trying to buy some green. I turned and started to walk when the man grabbed at my elbow. Hey Juba, man, he said. Stop playing games, all right? I thought I heard his voice change. I snatched my arm from him and nearly stumbled backward, but I caught myself.
I hadn't been in a fist fight since I was a young man at District Central, mixing it up with guys from the South Side, who thought I was a punk because I lived on the North Side. I wondered if I even remembered how to fight. I balled my fist and stepped backward a bit. He was a big guy, and his hands seemed built for strangulation. I used to be so skinny back then, nearly frail. In college, I lifted weights to give myself some definition, but it didn't work. So I stopped. It was important not to get too wrapped up in his massive arms because then I'd never break free. I had to strike first and then strike again and keep moving if I had any chance. All that was jumping the gun, though. I had no intention of getting into a fight.
He appeared to be looking over my shoulder. I glanced back to see three men approaching me with guns drawn. Confused, I raised my hands over my head. They wore badges around their necks and light black jackets. There was one on my left with a puffy pink face and a brown mustache. He appeared tense. I looked from man to man quickly, disoriented by their shouting.
I put my hands out in front of me. I wasn't sure if that's what I was supposed to do. They kept calling me Juba. All I had to do was explain that I didn't know this man, and that our very conversation was a simple misunderstanding. If only they would stop shouting.
Juba, get down on your knees and put your hands on your head! The man with the puffy pink face said.
I AM NOT JUBA. I screamed it as loudly as I could. You can check my ID. My name is not Juba.
I became aware of each and every one of my movements, each individual heartbeat and blink. I slowly moved my arms to reach for my pocket where my IDs were, but that seemed to make them more agitated.
They screamed at me, and I could barely understand them. I looked over at the man who had started all this confusion. They didn't seem to be troubling him. It dawned on me that he was with them, perhaps an undercover or neighborhood snitch. I fell to my knees as they asked. The officer with the brown mustache shoved me face down, so that my cheek pressed flat against the sidewalk. One of them wrenched my arms together behind my back and pinched cuffs tightly around my wrists. For some reason, even with all my attention on my movements, both involuntary and otherwise, I didn't realize that I had been yelling, screaming all along.
I AM NOT JUBA. I AM NOT JUBA. I AM NOT JUBA. They had been telling me to shut up, but I kept screaming. I AM NOT JUBA, as I lay there on the ground. I suppose I had said it so much that it lost all meaning.
It was the truth though. I am not Juba.
Reginald Dwayne Betts: [00:07:50] Man, that was dope.
Rion Amilcar Scott: [00:07:51] Thank you. Thank you.
Elsa Hardy: [00:07:52] So, one of the most striking things to me about that piece is that we don't ever learn the narrator's name. We know that it's not Juba, obviously. Um, and, and this is part of a longer literary tradition. Ralph Ellison, for example, has a narrator that doesn't have a name. Were you inspired at all by Ellison or by any other authors in making that choice?
Rion Amilcar Scott: [00:08:13] Yeah, I think, um, I used to write a lot of nameless characters, and I think that's directly from Ellison. You know, I read Invisible Man a couple of times, and it's, it's one of those books where, you know, every sentence I wrote was an Ellisonian, Ellisonian sentence, Ellisonian rip-off, and it's still that way. And, uh, you know, I thought myself free of that, that influence for the longest while, you know, but then, uh, I was teaching a class on the Invisible Man, and I had to go back and reread it, and I saw all the places where I had unintentionally stolen from Ellison.
Elsa Hardy: [00:08:45] The narrator's bafflement when the police arrest him for reasons he has no idea about it also has its legacy in literature. I'm thinking of Kafka's The Trial or Nabokov's Love's Invitation to a Beheading or, um, even Baldwin's If Beale Street Could Talk. Did you have Fonny or any other falsely accused literary figures in mind when you were writing?
Rion Amilcar Scott: [00:09:07] No, I didn't. I didn't. You know, I was just thinking of, you know, of the moment where I was--I'm walking down the street, and a guy, you know, thinks I'm a drug dealer, and he tries to buy drugs from me. And I was just thinking, you know, in real life it was just not a big deal. I just walked away like, all right, I'm out, you know? But I was thinking about what, what would, what would have happened? You know, I think a lot of my stories, you know, come from what ifs. Because I was in DC, so it could have been very, you know, in DC, there are police everywhere, and it could have very easily gone the wrong way, you know, very quickly. Um, so it wasn't really a stretch of the imagination to, to think of that happening.
Reginald Dwayne Betts: [00:09:44] I know you just said it was your personal experience, but, but even beyond that, I feel like a lot of your writing is riffing on this relationship with Black folks and the state. My question is, uh, how have you come to understand the relationship between the police in prison and Black men, in particular, since I feel like your world is sort of steeped in trying to understand the psyche and experiences of a Black man.
Rion Amilcar Scott: [00:10:04] You know, we live in, in a situation where certain, you know, certain communities, uh, you know, the police are a constant presence. And when I lived in communities like that, it's very tense, you know, it's a, it's a very tense feeling that, that, you know, you sort of occupy, you know? And I just think the presence, it feels like a psychological tactic. You know, it says something without even saying something.
Elsa Hardy: [00:10:28] So going off of Dwayne's question about Black men and the state, in the beginning of the story, it almost seemed to me like Juba represented Black men writ large in the eyes of the state. He was surrounded by this elaborate mythology. Police officers seem to think he was especially dangerous, and they kept confusing him with other Black men. Um, it was like he was nobody and everybody, nowhere and everybody at the same time. And I started to doubt, like, I'm sure a lot of other readers did that he existed at all. Um, kind of like those TV shows where there's a character you hear about, but you never actually meet. And then by the end of the story, he becomes so beautifully individual. Um, we learn about the post-its and his Bible, his dimly lit cell-like room, his bookshelves. Reading the story almost felt like it was a camera lens that really abruptly comes into focus. So I'm wondering how you decided to introduce Juba to the protagonist and to the reader at all, and how you decided to introduce him in the way that you did.
Rion Amilcar Scott: [00:11:26] When I was writing, I wasn't sure if he was actually going to show up in the story. You know, I was just leading, but I wanted to create this myth. You know, I was thinking of the myths that, that, that we had growing up in a certain era, you know, everyone knew Rayful Edmond, you know, or knew something about Rayful Edmond, and--
Reginald Dwayne Betts: [00:11:40] I'm about to tell you how my aunt worked for Rayful. My aunt was like, Yeah, Rayful was, was her homie. Probably a hundred percent untrue.
Rion Amilcar Scott: [00:11:46] Right. And everybody has a story about how their family was connected to Rayful in some way. And it's, it's like outside of the, uh, the federal government, he was, he was the biggest employer in in DC, right? [laughs]
Reginald Dwayne Betts: [00:12:00] You can't say that!
Rion Amilcar Scott: [00:12:01] I wanted to create that myth, and then when he showed up, you know, I was, you know, wanted to create the counterweight to that, the humanity behind the myth. You know, even smaller than that than Rayful, I mean, I think every, every neighborhood, um, has, has people that it's just like, aw, you got these, these stories about the so-and-so did this and did that. Can't believe he did this. And then, you know, you really know them. You, you meet them, get to know them. Like, they're just, they're just people, you know, they're not, you know, um, they're just humans.
Reginald Dwayne Betts: [00:12:32] Your, your dad was a lawyer, right? Was he a defense attorney?
Rion Amilcar Scott: [00:12:36] Yes. Yeah. He was. Yeah, he did a little bit of everything, but yeah, that's one of the, one of the ways, one of the bread and butter.
Reginald Dwayne Betts: [00:12:43] How did you learn? Did you learn about like incarceration and shit like that from your dad or, or, or, or is it something that came to you? Like, I guess, did your dad talk to you about his work as a lawyer? You know Elsa's in law school, so she, she know, all about the law. Did you learn about the law from your father, or did you learn.
Rion Amilcar Scott: [00:12:59] So, um, so I would pick up a little bit something, you know. He would always tell me about--he was always visiting, um, visiting prisoners, uh, his, his, uh, his clients. Um, and I remember, I told you, he said, you know, some of the, most, some of the nicest people I know are in prison, but there's, uh, they don't need to be anywhere else.
Reginald Dwayne Betts: [00:13:19] [laughs] Don't say that!
Rion Amilcar Scott: [00:13:22] That's what my dad said, Hey, that's what my dad said!
Reginald Dwayne Betts: [00:13:25] No, it's like, yeah, man. I, I respect that.
Rion Amilcar Scott: [00:13:29] Uh, I mean, I take a lot of pride in his, in his, in his, uh, in his career and watching him, um, there's, you know, there's one case I think about all the time where where a guy was, uh, you know, caught up in a murder that my dad was convinced that he didn't do. And I remember I didn't see him all that time he was working on the case. He would just disappear. Um, and he got the guy off. I was, you know, I was just super proud. So, so yeah, just watched this stuff like that.
Reginald Dwayne Betts: [00:13:54] I laughed when you said that, though, because I feel like as a writer, you got to come into the world with a sheer honesty, and in this book, you do it. It's like a sort of, a sort of willingness to look at and confront the darkness of the world, but also to like find that thread in it of what makes folks human, and I feel like when we--I feel like the honest defense attorney is willing to say something like what your dad said, and, um, even if people end up disagreeing with him, like we can't move forward if you aren't willing to say that, you know. It's almost like, it's almost like people assume that if you say something like that, you gotta be like evil or something.
Rion Amilcar Scott: [00:14:27] Yeah. I mean, I can't, I can't say I completely agree with his perspective, but I have to respect it because, you know, he was on the front lines, working, working to get people off, you know, working, you know, working for, as my grandma, my grandma used to say working, working for working for poor people.
Reginald Dwayne Betts: [00:14:43] Yeah, that's what-- he wasn't a public defender, or was he?
Rion Amilcar Scott: [00:14:46] Um, No.
Reginald Dwayne Betts: [00:14:49] He was wor--he was sho' enough work for poor people. See, public defenders, they worked for the state. So they, they at least get a check, but when you're a defense attorney working with poor people, you really, really work for poor people. People be like, I'm gonna pay you. Like, I'm, I'm certain my mamma still owe my lawyer some money, you know what I mean? I just, I'm certain that my lawyer was like, "Look, pay me when you can." And my mom was like, I'll pay you when my son gets out and get a job." How'd you learn, Elsa?
Elsa Hardy: [00:15:12] About what lawyers do?
Reginald Dwayne Betts: [00:15:14] Yeah. Yeah. Cause I, as a kid, I didn't know at all, I find it fascinating that that anybody knows what a defense attorney is who isn't locked up.
Elsa Hardy: [00:15:22] Yeah, I mean, I think--when I was eight or nine, um, or you should say when I was a baby, I went to a daycare. One of my neighbors ran a daycare center out of her house, up the street. And when I was eight or nine, her son was convicted of felony murder, and the alleged murder supposedly happened at her house, so it was like a big neighborhood story, and, um. I remember being really aware that he was going to prison and that somebody was helping him not go to prison, but I don't think I really realized the work that lawyers do until I was in high school, and I took a law elective.
Reginald Dwayne Betts: [00:15:57] At first, I got to tell you that that's not a story I expected to hear. You know what I mean? That is just like, not. And you know, how when you say to like the, uh, fiction writers make shit up, like that is something that could be in a novel or short story, and we will be like, "Rion, did you make that up? Come on, man. That ain't happened."
Elsa Hardy: [00:16:13] The story is actually being turned into a movie. Um, it's a lot crazier than I have time to get into in this conversation, but it's the stuff of fiction for sure.
Reginald Dwayne Betts: [00:16:23] I mean The Million Book Project is arguing that that, that like fiction is the best representation of life that you can actually find, and so I think it's actually compelling to hear you tell that story and also to hear about how, like all of our sort of lived experiences influenced the way we think about incarceration. And I wonder, why decide to write um, a whole book, in fact, now two books about Cross River, which is a place that absolutely doesn't exist. I almost feel like part of this is just inventing the language to say this thing that's missing.
Rion Amilcar Scott: [00:16:55] I feel like in Black life, because of our, um, our origin, our separation from our origin, from the front of the continent, um, there's so much loss, you know? Uh, it feels like we're, we're always trying to, trying to discover and recover something, and it's not always clear what that, what that something is, you know? Um, yeah, I focus on language here, but, you know, we're trying to discover our gods, our ancestors. You know, it's like, um, I don't know, you, you ever watch The Legend of Korra?
Reginald Dwayne Betts: [00:17:26] Nah man. that sound like a cartoon.
Rion Amilcar Scott: [00:17:28] It is a cartoon! It's a real dope cartoon, though! It's a real dope cartoon. It hits on some dope shit. And, um, so she has these, she, she's like a chosen, one character, and the ancestors speak to her, but, um, in one of her battles, she loses her ability to talk to the ancestors. And I thought that was so powerful. It's kind of like, Wow. You know, it's like, it's being Black. I can, I can conjure up my mother. I can conjure up with my grandmother, my great grandparents, and that's about it, you know--
Reginald Dwayne Betts: [00:18:01] You already went further, I mean, I can conjure up the living. You know what I mean? My grandmother died, but I ain't really, I ain't really know her like that, so, you know, when I conjure up the shit, I'm inventing it, and I be doing my damnedest to invent it.
Elsa Hardy: [00:18:13] Rion, I'm interested in hearing more about when you first became interested in language. There are a number of really important books in the Black Literary Canon that are written in vernacular. I'm thinking of people like Charles Chesnutt and Zora Neale Hurston, many of whom had a really hard time getting published because white audiences wouldn't be able to understand. Were you inspired at all by any of these writers?
Rion Amilcar Scott: [00:18:35] I don't know if, um, if there were prose writers writing in, in vernacular that that really struck me back then. When I started writing, I was reading a lot of the Black Arts Movement poetry. That's what really, really struck me, and a lot of that, you know, is, is so much connected to, to the language.
Reginald Dwayne Betts: [00:18:52] And Dunbar. Dunbar got-- he could only get published really when he was writing, you know, in like the broken tongue, he got sorta trashed for it, but I think he wanted to do something else.
Rion Amilcar Scott: [00:19:02] Right.
Elsa Hardy: [00:19:03] I'm glad you brought that up, Dwayne. I was trying to remember the other really famous vernacular author.
Reginald Dwayne Betts: [00:19:09] Yeah, dude is my cousin, so it ain't even, you know, well, great, great, great cousin
Elsa Hardy: [00:19:13] Really?
Reginald Dwayne Betts: [00:19:14] Nah.[laughs]
Rion Amilcar Scott: [00:19:15] I don't know if that's true, but, um, you know, Black folks, it feels like, are, are taught to not respect their language, you know, a perfectly logical and brilliant language system, and, you know, the African American Vernacular English is still commonly called broken English, you know, still commonly disrespected or something, that is corrupted and bad. And, um, you know, language is one of the things that, that makes us human. If you, if you tell someone that their, their, their language, is um, is broken or is wrong, then that's saying that they, they themselves are fundamentally wrong. Fundamentally broken.
Reginald Dwayne Betts: [00:19:54] Yeah.
Elsa Hardy: [00:19:56] I'm still thinking about something you said earlier that you had to figure out who Juba was, and I'm the only person in this conversation who's not a creative writer. So how much of a story do you tend to have worked out in your head before you start writing, or are you learning the characters as you go? Do you have the, the key turns and the ending all planned out, or are you discovering as you write?
Rion Amilcar Scott: [00:20:20] Totally discovering as I write. It's it's not fun to me to, uh, to know, you know? It's a process of discovering. Sometimes that can be difficult because you might go down an alley, go down an alley for several months, and it's the wrong alley, and then you gotta turn back around.
Reginald Dwayne Betts: [00:20:35] I did that shit for eight and a half years, man. I was like, can I go home now? This is the wrong place for me to be. They was like, "When you finish walking down the alley!"
Elsa Hardy: [00:20:46] How do you know it's the wrong turn, though?
Rion Amilcar Scott: [00:20:48] Uh, it just feels wrong. It just feels wrong. Um, and creative writing is just a series of problems. And these are puzzles. You know, if the, if the puzzle is not solving itself, if the Rubik's Cube colors are not lining up, then, then you're-- you know, you're going down the wrong alley.
Reginald Dwayne Betts: [00:21:08] It's wild. You said that your pops is a lawyer. There's no writers in my family, besides me. You know, you talking about lineage and all that. What made you become a writer, especially when, um, it's just a brutal, brutal job.
Rion Amilcar Scott: [00:21:22] I just got an idea one day, and, uh, and I decided to chase that. Just, just, I mean, I just like writing a story. I got some ideas for some words, some poems and stuff, and I, and I just started writing them. I fell, I fell in love with it. Ever since I was like 13, like there's really nothing else, nothing else for me than messing around with words.
Reginald Dwayne Betts: [00:21:41] You made this decision at 13?
Rion Amilcar Scott: [00:21:43] When I started writing my poem, my first poem, and, uh, and, uh, you know, I, I think that week, I was like, yep, this is it.
Reginald Dwayne Betts: [00:21:51] This is cool that that some young folks will hear this, cause I tell you the truth. I guess I was like 16, but I only made the decision because I was in prison. Cause there can't be nothing else, man, might as well write. They ain't gonna take the ink pen from me. They did take the ink pens from me.
Rion Amilcar Scott: [00:22:06] [laughs] I mean, I, you know, I think that's, there's a similar impulse, you know, I, you know, I felt like this is something I could control, you know? Um, I wasn't in prison. Um, you know, but I felt like. I mean, I'm the youngest person in my family, you know, everyone's always telling me what to do. You know, here is like this, this space you can't, no one can tell me what to do. And you know.
Reginald Dwayne Betts: [00:22:26] I, I hope your folk listen to this cause cause they gonna be like, "Rion, come on, bro. You got to get over that, man. That was 20 years ago."
Rion Amilcar Scott: [00:22:33] Well, the good thing I haven't gotten over it!
Reginald Dwayne Betts: [00:22:35] That's true, actually. Yo, so, so we had some youngins from Nebraska, you know, we shipped your book out to we sent 200 copies out to, you know, people all across the country, and we had some youngin in Nebraska get at us, and I wanted to ask you a couple of they questions, so, do you want any of your stories to be turned into movies?
Rion Amilcar Scott: [00:22:53] Um, I write specifically for this medium, you know. You know, I try to do things that you can't do in other mediums. If someone sees it, and they have a vision for it, then I'd be willing to talk to them in hearing their vision. It's not something that, that has to happen for me to, uh, to feel great about, about myself and my work. You know, if it happens, it happens, or it doesn't, it doesn't.
Elsa Hardy: [00:23:14] I had this question, too, so I'm glad that one of the students asked this. Why don't you use quotation marks for dialogue?
Rion Amilcar Scott: [00:23:21] Early on, I started reading this author, Junot Díaz, who wrote a book called Drown. And he didn't use quotation marks, and I really liked the, the effect of it. To me. It helps create this dreamlike atmosphere that's a part of my work.
Reginald Dwayne Betts: [00:23:35] It also though, I mean, it also makes the dialogue more on point. I mean, if, if I can understand it without quotations, then that shit ain't a conversation, you know what I mean? So,
Rion Amilcar Scott: [00:23:44] I mean, it's like when you're in a dream, you know, you don't know where things start, where things end, but you understand it, you know? And, and, and, and that's kind of what kind of, what, uh, you know, what I do with the, with the quotation marks and, you know, I've just grown to not like quotation marks.
Elsa Hardy: [00:23:59] So switching gears, talking about reading, in the past, you've said that you read to prepare to write. What's the book that has been most helpful to you or shaped who you are as a writer?
Rion Amilcar Scott: [00:24:11] That's a good question. It shifts, I think, over time, you know. I think, uh, you know, going back to Invisible Man, that shaped me a lot because the, the writing had a grip on me, had a hold on me, and it still does. And you know, it was so dense and so smart, so intellectual. And even as I, you know, I grow older, and I challenge some of the, some of the ideas in there, it's still, it makes me think a lot. You know, I'm, remembering going and reading The Book of Revelation from The Bible, and that had a lot of influence on me because it has, you know, such, such high poetry, and that's something that I dip into every once in a while, just, just to let the poetry, uh, wash over me.
Reginald Dwayne Betts: [00:24:50] Yeah, that makes sense. I don't even know what book I would say. Um, I think, yeah, that's funny, man. I don't know what book I would say. And I almost feel like I wouldn't want to say poems, but I would say Schooner Flight by Derek Walcott. I mean that joint is just mean, and it has the storytelling, but it also has the, just to hot one-liner that sort of breaks something down. Maybe Brodsky. Brodsky said, "I have braved, for want of wild beasts, steel cages." I was like, who is this Russian talking about the penitentiary? You know, it changed like so much.
But yo, Jason Reynolds on his website, he, he says something like, uh, here's a plan for what to do as a writer. Do not write boring books.
And I think about, especially, um, for both of these joints, you know, you think about Juba we talked about a lot, actually a lot like Edward P. Jones is a story about the brother who's, um, who's like hanging from the balcony, and he starts building a relationship with the old head. And then, and then in The World Doesn't Require You, uses all kinds of stories that are anything but boring. And so I wonder, like how do you understand the relationship between reading and boredom? And, and like, especially for serious literature, cause you write serious literature, is it a matter of learning to tolerate that the sorta patience that's required to like absorb some of the work? Or is it just a matter of, of a reader needing to find different works if, if they feel like one thing ain't hitting them the way they want it to?
Rion Amilcar Scott: [00:26:23] I think for me, a lot of times, yeah, I'm uh, you know, I, I power through a lot of, you know, books that are not connecting with me just to find that one, that one moment, one sentence that that connects. But I don't want people to be bored with my work. I write about a lot of heavy things, a lot of frustrating things, but you know, I'm trying to find that that element of it, that that's going to connect. I think that's why there's a lot of humor in my work. That's a way to get at the truth.
Elsa Hardy: [00:26:51] Is there a book you can think of that has changed your life or how you think about the world?
Rion Amilcar Scott: [00:26:56] My mind tends to go blank when people ask me this, and I, uh, I would say Sula, by Toni Morrison when I first, when I first read that. I read that as a, as a teenager, um, I was, I was failing, I was in an honors English class and I was--I felt like I shouldn't be there. So I was like, you know, being the class clown all the time. Um, and I had worked so hard to get into that class, but I, you know, I got in there and I just felt like, you know, I shouldn't be there. Um, and then the teacher assigned Sula, and it's like, you know, this is like the last chance for me to bring my grade up, I was like, all right, I'm going to read whatever, whatever, you know, BS book is being assigned. And I just, I just couldn't put it down. I read in a day. There's just such high, high intellectualism in, in Morrison's work, you know, just, just so much to think about. And you know, this character, is so wrong she's right. And that is even haunting now, more than 20 years later, that the idea is just haunting.
Reginald Dwayne Betts: [00:27:54] Yeah, what Dr. Washington said is that, um, Morrison wrote two women that the world weren't ready to allow to exist. And it was a book where, where like women have like pure joy, you know, and they fight for joy, in a different way, she felt like the exist in most Morrison books. And I was like, yeah, and I think paradise is the book where you see how women get punished for trying to assert that kind of freedom.
Rion Amilcar Scott: [00:28:19] Mm hmm.
Elsa Hardy: [00:28:20] It's interesting you read Sula in high school. There are some educators who think that high school students shouldn't read Toni Morrison, and it's also interesting that as a writer, you were flunking Honors English.
Rion Amilcar Scott: [00:28:32] [laughs]
Reginald Dwayne Betts: [00:28:34] Especially since your folks is really educated. I mean--
Rion Amilcar Scott: [00:28:37] Well, they, they weren't happy with that, so that was why I couldn't play--you know, I was playing soccer at the time. That's why I didn't play soccer anymore.
Reginald Dwayne Betts: [00:28:46] Yeah. [laughs]. Yo, my kid is in a seventh grade, and they got them reading, uh, Things Fall Apart
Rion Amilcar Scott: [00:28:52] Really?
Reginald Dwayne Betts: [00:28:52] And I was like, what the fuck-- I was like, wait, why was this on the list? I got to read it with him just to be like, wait a second, what did you get from those last six pages? And I don't even know if I trust the teacher to be the, the roadmap to understanding what's going on in that book. I, at first I was really taken aback that they had him reading it, and then I figured, well, he might not have gotten to it on his own until, you know, high school or college. So I'm kind of glad that he got a school, where they got him pushed--they pushing him like that, but he in the seventh grade, man, that boy don't even-- how the world you gonna read Things Fall Apart? That's going to be the description of, like, puberty for him, you know what I mean? Like, it's like certain books that should come after--Sula is probably like that too, actually. Sula is definitely a post-puberty book.
Elsa Hardy: [00:29:40] I also think, though, like when I was in high school, I remember I was assigned this book called The Worldly Philosophers, and it was like, you know, as thick as War and Peace. And I had no business reading that book. I didn't understand what was happening at all, but like, I would just flip the pages and absorb like one or two words.
Reginald Dwayne Betts: [00:29:57] Hold up you actually read it?
Elsa Hardy: [00:29:59] Well, you know, I flipped the pages and absorbed one or two words. And by the time I was done, I was like, I read that book. And it was really, like, I just felt so proud of myself, even though I hadn't actually read it at all. And I think that's powerful for kids, too.
Reginald Dwayne Betts: [00:30:13] No, that's, that's probably true. Yeah.
Elsa Hardy: [00:30:15] So our last question for you. Frederick Douglas, who I see is up on your shirt there said that "When we read, we become forever free." And so, I'm wondering how you think about the relationship between reading and freedom.
Rion Amilcar Scott: [00:30:31] When I was a kid, I used to, you know, my parents had bought these, these encyclopedia. And I used to get lost paging through the encyclopedia. And every time my brother and I had an argument, we'd run through the encyclopedia to settle that dispute. And in that way, books freed us from, you know, a level of level of ignorance. Just the act of, you know, imagining something takes you out of yourself. And there's a freedom in that, you know? And reading's not the only way you can do that and get out, get out of yourself, but it's a very powerful one. Cuz you're communing with another, another mind. You know, I just started meditating. You know, that takes me out of myself, and it feels like, you know, I'm going to a different space, but that's just in myself. That's just in my mind. That doesn't give me access to someone else's thoughts. One of the powerful things about reading is you get access to someone else, and take you out of your enclosed existence, you know, through, through just words, you know.
Reginald Dwayne Betts: [00:31:26] Man, that's a good, that's a good way to end this joint. That's, uh, a beautiful sentiment, and so we hope people keep reading your words and entering and exploring your mind. And, uh, and we hope you keep writing stories to give us a glimpse of it.
Rion Amilcar Scott: [00:31:39] Thank you for having me.
Reginald Dwayne Betts: [00:31:40] Yeah, man, our pleasure.
[I've chosen Love, by Reed Turchi]
Thanks for joining us for The Freedom Takes, a new podcast from The Million Book Project. We'll be back next time with another contemporary writer. You can find out more about The Million Book Project and subscribe to our newsletter at law.yale.edu/justice-collaboratory. Our initiative was made possible by a generous grant from the Andrew W Mellon Foundation. This podcast was produced by Erin Slomski-Pritz with theme music by Reed Turchi. Production assistance was provided by Elsa Hardy, Tess Wheelwright, and Molly Aunger.