In today’s episode, Jesmyn Ward reads from her third novel, Sing, Unburied, Sing, which is at once a bildungsroman, a ghost story, an epic, and a road novel. In portraying the suck of Parchman Prison on the generations of one Mississippi family, Ward deftly explores how the real threat of incarceration haunts these psyches and, in turn, these familial relationships. In this moving conversation, Ward reflects on living with grief, on listening for communications from beyond our immediate reality, and on the central commitments of her work: to restore agency to the kinds of characters too often denied a voice--and to grant acceptance to the ones harder to forgive.
Author Bio:
Jesmyn Ward is a novelist and professor of creative writing at Tulane University. She is the author of the novels Where the Line Bleeds; Salvage the Bones, which won the 2011 National Book Award; Sing, Unburied, Sing, which won the 2017 National Book Award; and of the memoir Men We Reaped, which was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award. She is the editor of the anthology The Fire This Time. Ward has received the MacArthur Genius Grant, a Stegner Fellowship, a John and Renee Grisham Writers Residency, and the Strauss Living Award. She currently resides in Mississippi.
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[00:00:00] Reginald Dwayne Betts: There's somebody in like, you know, Sydney, Australia right now with a book in their hand that's thinking about the word along the same lines of the conversation that we're having.
[00:00:12] Jason Reynolds: It's literally us manipulating and maneuvering twenty-six letters into different arrangements that might just liberate somebody.
[00:00:21] Miriam Toews: Literacy is, is freedom.
[00:00:25] Betts: 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, I was like, "This is the importance of books."
You're listening to The Freedom Takes, a podcast from Freedom Reads. I'm your host, Reginald Dwayne Betts. Our guest today is Jesmyn Ward. Jesmyn is a novelist and Associate Professor of English at Tulane University. She has an MFA from the University of Michigan. She's the author of novels Where the Line Bleeds, Salvage the Bones, and Sing, Unburied, Sing, which we'll discuss today. Of note, Jesmyn Ward has won two National Book Awards, one for Salvage the Bones and the later for Sing, Unburied, Sing. She's been the editor at the anthology, The Fire This Time and the author of the memoir Men We Reaped. There's many, many, many awards and praises I would name for Ms. Ward, but I want to cite a few that are stellar and important and signals her to be one of the great young writers of this generation. She has received a MacArthur Genius Fellowship. She's received a Stegner Fellowship, a John and Renee Grisham Writers Residency, and a Strauss Living Award.
Thank you for being here, Jesmyn.
[00:01:44] Ward: Thank y'all for having me.
[00:01:46] Betts: We'd love and our listeners would, too, if you read a passage, but for first, could you could you set it up for us, for those who haven't read it yet?
[00:01:54] Ward: Okay. Um, one of the main characters in Sing, Unburied, Sing is a 13-year-old boy named Jojo. He lives with his grandparents. His grandmother is ill with cancer, and so his grandfather is raising him and his little sister, right? And back in the forties, his grandfather was sent and enslaved at Parchman Prison, right, and so while his grandfather was in Parchman Prison in the 1940s, he met this kid named Richie, who was I think 13, who was also sent to Parchman Prison and like reenslaved in Parchman Prison. So the part that I'm going to read is, you know, Pop, that's his grandfather's name, telling Jojo the story of this kid, Richie, who he met at Parchman. (begins reading from Sing, Unburied, Sing)
That 12-year-old boy I told you about? Richie? They put him on the long line. From sunup to sundown we was out there in them fields, hoeing and picking and planting and pulling. A man get to a point like that, he can't think. Just feel. Feel like he want to stop moving. Feel his stomach burn and know he want to eat. Feel his head packed full of cotton and know he wants to sleep. Feel his throat close and fire run up his arms and legs, his heart beat out of his chest, and know he want to run. But wasn't no running. We was gunman, under the gun of them damn trusty shooters. That was our whole world: the long line. Men strung out across the fields, the trusty shooters stocking the edge, the drive on his mule, the caller yelling to the sun, throwing his working song out. Like a fishing net. Us caught and struggling. Once, my grandmama told me a story about her great-grandmama. She'd come across the ocean, been kidnapped and sold. Said her great-grandmama told her that in her village, they ate fear. Said it turned the food to sand in they mouth. Said everyone knew about the death march to the coast, that word had come down about the ships, about how they packed men and women into them. Some heard it was even worse for those who sailed off, sunk into the far. Because that's what it looked like when a ship crossed the horizon: like the ship sailed off and sunk, bit by bit into the water. Her grandmama said they never went out at night, and even in the day, they stayed in the shadows of they houses. But still, they came for her. Kidnapped her from her home in the middle of the day. Brought her here, and she learned the boats didn't sink some watery place, sailed by white ghosts. She learned that bad things happen on that ship, all the way until it docked. That her skin grew around the chains. That her mouth shaped to the muzzle. That she was made into an animal under the hot, bright sky, the same sky the rest of her family was under, somewhere far aways, in another world. I knew what that was, to be made a animal. Until that boy came out on a line, until I found myself thinking again. Worrying about him. Looking out the corner of my eye at him lagging crooked like an ant that's lost scent. (concludes section of reading) I'm going to skip forward a little bit and move to a section that is told from Jojo's point of view, the 13-year-old grandson. (Begins reading)
Pop's told me some parts of Richie story over and over again. I've heard the beginning, at least too many times to count. There are parts of the middle about the outlaw hero Kinnie Wagner, and the evil Hogjaw, that I've only heard twice. I ain't never heard the end. Sometimes I'd try to write them down, but they were just bad poems, limping down the page: training a horse. The next line: cut with the knees. Sometimes I got fed up with Pop. At first, he told me the stories while we were awake at night in the living room. But after some months, he always seemed to tell me part of his Richie story when we were doing something else: eating red beans and rice, picking our teeth with toothpicks on the porch after lunch, sitting in front of the television in the living room watching westerns in the afternoon, when Pop would interrupt the cowboy and the screen to say this about Parchman: It was murder. Mass murder. When Pop told me about the small pouch he kept tied to one of his belt loops, it was cold outside, and he was splitting logs for the woodstove that heated the living room. We were out of gas for the weekend. Mam had all the covers in the house on her, crocheted blankets and quilts and flat and fitted sheets, and still she moaned: My bones. Her hands tucked up under her neck, wringing one against the other, the skin raspy and chafed white, even though I lotioned them every hour. It's so cold. Her teeth rattled like dice in her mouth.
"Everything's got power."
He hit a log.
"My great-granddaddy taught me that."
The logs split.
"Said there's spirit in everything. In a trees, in the moon, in the sun, in the animals. Said the sun is most important, gave it a name: Aba. But you need all of them, all of the spirit in everything to have balance. So the crops will grow, the animals breed and get fat for food."
He put another log on the stump, and I breathed into my hands, wishing I had a hat for my ears.
"Explained it to me like this: if you got too much sun and not enough rain, crops will wither. If you got too much rain, they, rot in the ground."
He swung again.
"You need a balance of spirit. A body, he told me, is the same way."
The logs fell.
"Like this. I'm strong. I can split this wood. But maybe if I had some of the boar's strength, a little bit of wild pig's tusk at my side, something to give me a little bit of that animal's spirit, then maybe, just, maybe," he huffed, "I'm better at this. Maybe it come a little easier to me. Maybe I'm stronger."
He split another.
"But never more than I could handle. The boar share so much, and I take so much. No waste. Waste rots. Too much either way breaks the balance." He rested his ax on the ground. "Get me another log." I returned from the pile, put the wood on the stump, balanced it just so. Snatched my hand away as Pop brought the ax down, clean through the center of it.
"Or a woodpecker could share something, too. A feather for aim." My fingers stung from the nearness of that blade, how close Pop come to my hand.
"That's what you keep in your pouch?" I asked. I'd noticed this small pouch when I was four or five, and I'd asked him what he kept in it. He never told me.
Pop smiled.
"Not that," he said. "But close."
When that next log split, I looked up at Pop and shook, felt that splintering in my baseball knees, my bat spine, my glove of a skull. Wondered what power he had running through him, where it come from. (Stops reading from section)
And then, I'm jumping to the next, like a paragraph ahead, where Pop is telling the story of Richie again. So this is from Pop's voice. (Begins reading)
Richard wasn't built for work. He wasn't built for nothing, really, on account he was so young. He ain't know how to work a hoe, didn't have enough years in his arms for muscle, or to know how to break the earth good, or to pull with just enough power to clean the bolls from a plant instead of leaving little half tufts of white, ripping the cotton in two. He wasn't like you; you already filling out, getting long through the shoulders, longer in a leg. You built like me, like my papa-- good stock. But whoever his dad was must've been skinny, weak-muscled. Maybe short. He was a bad worker. I tried to help him. Tried to break his line when he was hoeing, dig a little deeper in his grooves. Reach over and clean his plants better while we was harvesting. Pull his weeds. And mine. And for a while, a few months, it worked. I was able to save him, kept him from getting beat. I worked myself so hard I was sleep before my body even hit my bunk. Sleep on the fall. I kept my eyes on the ground. Ignored the sky, all that open space pushing down that made fear gather in my chest, a bloated and croaking toad. But then one Sunday when we was doing laundry, scrubbing our clothes in the wash boards was so that was so weak everything smelled a little less like wet-stink but still didn't smell good, Kinnie Wagner rolled by with the dogs. Kinnie was the inmate caretaker for the dogs. He was a legend even then. I knew about Kinnie, all of us did. They sang songs about him in the hill country of Tennessee, down through the Delta, all the way to the coast. He bootlegged and brawled and stole and killed. Had the truest shot I ever saw. Even though he'd already escaped Parchman once, and one of them break-proof prisons in Tennessee, too, they still put him over the dogs. Even though he put more than one lawman in a dirt. Poor White people all through the South loved him for it, loved him for spitting in the eye of the law. For blinding it. For being lawless in the lawless South, which was worse than the frontier, for standing like David in the old Testament place, where for a century before Parchman, law had been meted out like this Jojo: eye for an eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand foot for foot. I think even the sergeants respected him. Anyway, Kinnie and some of the men he'd chosen to help him was on their way to drill a dogs, to train to scent. And one of the men at ran with the dogs was dragging. Maybe he was sick. Maybe he had been whipped. I don't know. But the short man fell and his dogs broke loose, ran away from his dusted-over face, his receding belly, and ran to me. Hopped around me, like big barking rabbits. Let they tongue hang. Kinnie, who was a big White man, six foot three, probably damn near three hundred pounds, laughed. Told the Black man on his knees and a clay: N*****, you more trouble than you worth. And then pointed one of them big sausage fingers at me and said: you look skinny enough. I hung the pants I was wringing on the line on the way over to him. Took as much time as I could because he was the type of man who expected me to run. To look at his big healthy whiteness in awe. When I came, the dogs came with me, ears flopping, big black eyes rolling. Happy as pigs in shit. Can you run, boy? Kinnie said. I looked at him. His horse was big and dark brown but with a red tinge. It looked like you could see the blood boiling just under his coat, a river of blood bound by skin knit together with muscle and bone. I'd always wanted a horse like that. I stood close enough to Kinnie, so he know I'd come, but far enough away he couldn't kick me. Yes, I said. Kinnie laughed again, but there was a knife underneath, because then he turned them blue eyes on me and said, But do you know your place? Shifted his rifle so the muzzle was facing me. A great black Cyclops eye. I let him think what he would about my place, but I said: Yes, sir. And hated myself a little bit for saying it. One of the dogs licked my hand. They like you, Kinnie said, and I need myself another dog trustee. I didn't say nothing. Animals had always come to me. Mama say one time she left me wrapped in a basket on the chicken stump out in the back when I was a little baby, not more than a month, and stepped inside to get a sharpening stone for her knife; when she came out, one of the goats was licking my face and my hand. Like it knew me. So I just looked at the top of Kinnie's head, his bushy blond hair. He looked at my neck and he said: Come on. And turned his horse, and kicked, and took off.
Once, we tracked a gunman through ten miles of swamp to an abandoned cabin. And I saw Kinnie put a bullet through that running gunman's head at two hundred yards: the gunman's skull burst, Kinnie had killed him as the sun was going down, so we camped next to a stream. The clouds rolled in and night was twice black and fogged with mosquitoes. We smoked the fire; all the inmates working with Kinnie and the dogs leaned in to it. Everyone but me and Kinnie. I mudded myself to help with the bites. The smoke boiled his face, melted it to nothing, but I still felt him watching me in a darkness. Knew it when he stopped his story about how a woman sheriff had caught him in Arkansas, sent him back to Parchman this last time, and then said: I could never hurt a woman; they knew that. And then his gaze is on me. I look right back. Everybody got a line--something to break them, he said. I thought about Richie scrawling through the dirt with his hoe. Everybody, Kinnie said, and spat chew into the fire. (concludes reading)
[00:13:44] Betts: It's wild, listening to you read because, prison doesn't exist in the literary imagination, you know, not in like a real, robust way, and not in a way, I think, that talks about teenagers. The first time I read the book, I was struck by how young Pop was; I guess pop was fifteen. And the boy, Richie, was even younger. And, you know, I went to prison when I was sixteen, and, you know, I almost laughed when, uh, when Pop was like, "I mean, I was a man of fifteen." (laughs) No, you weren't! You know, and he's talking about this kid that was even younger, and I guess my first question is, is why did you choose to explore prison, uh, in this way?
[00:14:24] Ward: You know, what's funny is that no--I don't think anyone's ever asked me specifically, like that question before. I mean, as far as them being so young, you know, Pop being young and Richie being young, um, and being in Parchman, I didn't know that that was, that that would be an aspect of the book. Um, and that, that was going to, like, figure prominently in the book until I started doing research on Parchman Prison, you know, because before, like, you know, I grew up in Mississippi, I've known about Parchman prison since I was really young. Like, the idea of Parchman as this terrible place that you never want it to end up in, but there was a real danger and like possibility that either you or the people that who you loved could end up there, that was something that I felt and that I knew from when I was eight. Like I remember having nightmares about, like, the police, like busting up into my grandmother's house and, like, taking all the men in the family away and taking them to Parchman prison when I was really young. But still, like, even though I, I knew about Parchman prison, I knew that it was a real place and I knew that it was, that it was somewhere that you never wanted to end up, I didn't know that in the thirties, and the forties, in the fifties ,that, you know, kids as young as Pop, you know, fifteen, and kids as young as Richie, thirteen, were sent there. I just didn't know that was the thing. And then I started doing research on it, and I was actually, like, surprised and shocked to find that out. And, and also, I think, to learn that kids like Richie, you know, like they were arrested for things like loitering, things like, like stealing, like really small things, and then sent to Parchman prison and reinslaved. So I was just so, I think, shocked by that fact and that like children, you know, these children were sent there and reenslaved, that I just felt like I had to write about it. And I also wanted to write about it from their perspectives because I wanted them to have the agency that people like them, that children like them, had been denied.
[00:16:42] Betts: Parchment looms large in my imagination because I tell you, I'll tell you a story. So Parchman is in Mississippi. And this historic prison, but it's also the prison where so many folks in the Civil Rights Movement went to. So my first encounter with Parchman was Martin Luther King Jr. and these folks. Now get locked up at 16, and, and I didn't think it was possible to send juveniles to prison, and so a lot of the early animosity I carried was feeling like I was a part of this first cohort where, you know, they sending kids to prison. And this is the nineties, Super Predator Era. And it's a bunch of youngins around me, but, you know, it took a while for me to realize that it was some dudes that was thirty who had been there since they were sixteen. And I read a poem by Etheridge Knight about Freckle-Faced Gerald, and this was the first time that I peeped it, you know, his poem was talking about a sixteen-year-old kid who went to prison. And, and I just thought, man, this is not a new occurrence. And so years later I read Worse Than Slavery about the Parchment farm, and I heard these other stories. And so what I found compelling when you say that you wanted to give these young people agency, it's-- cause I do think, I think that your decision to do that was probably one of the most compelling things that I read in literature over the past decade because nobody does it, and it seems like such an intuitive response. But most of us live near Parchman, and we don't do that. Because also, you know, Jojo factoring so large in the narrative and, um, and not, not to fact-check your book, but Richie was twelve. And I, and I remember Richie being twelve because that meant he was younger than Jojo was. Jojo was trying so hard to be a man, and it was evident that he wasn't, like from the first pages, which made it even more evident that Richie, as a twelve-year-old wasn't. And I couldn't help but to transpose these two figures. And so I guess, my question is, how did this imaginative journey touch you as the writer? What did it do to you?
[00:18:45] Ward: When I really, like, get into the groove of, of writing, it feels like I am sitting there with that character whose perspective I'm writing from, and they are telling me that story. And like an outgrowth, I think, of, of, like, spending so much time with these people that I'm channeling, that I've created-- but an outgrowth of that is that like, I love my characters. And I feel, I feel a certain sense of sympathy for them. And also, I feel a certain sense of empathy with what they're going through. I know it's odd because, like, yes, I am sinking into that, into that moment with that person in my imagination, but I'm just brushing up against the experience, you know.
[00:19:42] Betts: I'm so glad you said that. That is really, I mean, that's like a smart thing to say as one, as a writer, but two, as a writer that's writing about something as, like, big as prison.
Yeah.
But keep--I want to hear you say a little bit more about that. I feel like that is a really insightful thing in terms of being a writer that you could concede that you don't know your whole character.
[00:20:04] Ward: Yeah, and I, and I also know that, like, for as much as I say that I like love them and feel with them and feel for them, like whatever I'm experiencing as I'm writing, you know, the book in living, living with them narratively in that moment, like that doesn't even come close to the, the magnitude of what it really felt like, you know, for kids like Pop and for kids like Richie to live through those moments. Like I'm just doing the best that I can in the writing of the story. Like I said, I'm just brushing up against the lived experience.
[00:20:41] Betts: You know, contemporary writers choose to write about whatever they want to choose to write about. We all have personal decisions and reasons why we go to places, but I was thankful that you went there because, in a way, um, you gave voice literally to an experience that doesn't often exist on page. One of the things, though, you said, you, you love your characters and you have sympathy for them and empathy for them, and I felt that. But I also feel something different. Um, cause, yothis is a hard book, I mean, you talk about, like, bad parents and shit. It's like, it's like, you know, like this is, this is, like, this made me go hug my kid and be like, "Alright, look, um, let me, let me figure out your names first." (laughs) So I wonder, um, I wonder, do you think that, uh, part of love is being willing to confront all of the mess of it and to think through the mess of it?
[00:21:32] Ward: I mean, I think so. And I think that that is part of why--early on in the rough draft, in, like, the second chapter, I was judging Leoni as a mom, right? Because I'm a mom, and, you know, she's, like, struggling with addiction. She is sometimes, like, emotionally abusive, physically abusive to, to her kids, and neglectful, right. And so I, I found myself just like really judging her for her behavior.
[00:22:05] Betts: Oh me, too.
[00:22:06] Ward: Yeah, and just thinking that she was, like, awful, right? But see, I realized that that was, like, on my part as a creator, that I couldn't do that because, because I was judging her. That meant that I wasn't fully understanding her. So like, I like stepped back in the second chapter and just like stopped writing it, and then just sat with her, right, and tried to figure out--or tried to figure out what might have been at the heart of that behavior. And so that's how I found my way to, like, this idea that she's experienced a loss, you know, like a great loss. And she can't, you know, she, she lost her brother, and she loved him very much.
[00:22:52] Betts: I mean, I think a lot about what I want to think about Leoni, and having children is really hard, but yeah, in some real subtle way, I think the book asks how do we deal with what haunts us? You find Pop haunted by Stag. He's also haunted by Parchman. And I think he passes it on to Jojo because Jojo obsesses over the stories that Pop tells him about his experience in Parchman. And then you learn about Richie, and Richie, too, is haunted by Parchman. And Leoni, Leoni is haunted by the death of her brother. And one might say that the death of Given is just operating in the background. And it's not just Leoni who was haunted by that, but also Pop and Mam, but Leoni is the one who was devastated by it, so much so that Given returns to her only when she is at her worst. And I guess, I wonder how important was it for you, like, to make the reader deal with the fact that some of us live like this? And it may be, like, it's some duty that it should provoke in us, you know, because, like, if it, if it ends like a Hallmark card, and I don't know if I'm asking myself about what duty I have, like, like to my cousin, you know, or like to, you know, to some of my folks who struggle in the same way. You know, I was, I was like mad at Leoni for a long time, and now I'm realizing, like, she like some of my fucking peoples, and that's why I'm mad at her, you know? Cause, cause I also feel helpless, so I wonder, I don't know, what motivated you to not tie it up in some neat way that made me be like, "Yo, all you gotta do is be like Leoni. She pulled herself up from her bootstraps, why don't you?" (laughs)
[00:24:39] Ward: I think that the trauma of, like, losing somebody that really changed her, you know? And so I think, as I wrote, you know, forward in the story and spent more time with her character, I began to understand more about her and realized that she has this, not weakness, but just a flaw, I guess. And, and that flaw is that she can't sit with grief. She can't sit with pain. You know, what I believe is that you have to sit with it. You have to sit with the reality of it in order to figure out how to live with it. Right? And so in my life, like, that's, that's my understanding of grief that, you know, it never goes away, but you get better at living with the loss and living with the grief and the love that you still feel for these people that you, that you lost, if you just, if you engage with it, you know? And so, to me, like that was Leoni's flaw. When I got to the end and, you know, she gets in the car, and, you know, and pretends at forgetting and continues to do the same things that she did before, like, for me, part of the reason why that was the case was because, again, like, she can't sit with the trauma of what she, of what she has experienced. And because she can't do that, she can't find a healthier way to, like, live with it.
[00:26:16] Betts: I think we impose a timeline on people becoming.
[00:26:19] Ward: Yeah.
[00:26:19] Betts: And it's, and it's really hard, you know, to, to admit that the book continues after you stopped writing. It's like, it's really hard to, for me to think that Leoni still has possibilities that might not be contained in this book because the book ends when it ends. And like, and all of them, Jojo, they all have possibilities.
We sent books to this prison in Minnesota called Shakopee, and it's a women's prison in Minnesota. And, um, one of them asked, one of the readers inside asked, um--I start laughing when she asks this question, right, but I'm gonna ask it anyway, cause, cause I think it's interesting, you know, whatever. She said: Have you had any paranormal experiences, or how was it that you decided to use spirits to tell your story?
[00:27:03] Ward: Yeah, as far as I know, I have never seen a ghost. I mean, I see, you know, my people, my ghosts in my dreams. But I come from the type of family, like, I remember one of the first stories that I ever, that I ever recall one of my great-grandmothers--I don't even think that she was telling me this story; I think that I was in the room, and she was telling my mom the story. And like all kids do, I was just listening, right? And so I remember my great-grandmother telling this story to my mom about how after her husband, my great-grandfather, died, he came back. And he visited her. And I remember her saying, like, he said, there was something important that he had to tell me. But I can't recall what the important thing was that he had come back to tell her. And you know, now my great-grandmother, she's been gone for, for like twenty-something years at this point. So, I mean, I grew up hearing stories like that from, like, older people in my family. And so I think, I don't know, that maybe that influenced my ideas about the fact that, you know, that I think there's more to the world than what we see, and you know, what can be explained, I think.
[00:28:26] Betts: I often dream, like, about prison and I often find ways for it to follow me in this life, or in my own writing. But I wrote this line, let me tell you the story. Shit is crazy. I don't even think it's true, but I know it's true. So I'm, I turned my book into a solo show, and at the time, I was trying to get my homeboy, Fats--I was helping his lawyer. I got him a lawyer, and then I was helping to get him a pardon. And I was telling part of the story in the show about him being locked up, and, like, trying to get him out. And I, and I, um, had his line from a poem in it that says: "Them fools say, you can be anything when it's over. Told 'em straight up, ain't nothing to resurrect after prison." And I'm sitting in this chair, and I'm working with my director, and I read that line, and I stopped. I was like: "I can't say that." I was like, "my man still locked up, and saying that shit makes it feel like I think he ain't going to get out." Right? So I cut it in the moment. I swear, I get a phone call three hours later Member of the parole board tells me, "I got good news for you. Your friend Rogai coming home." I mean, no way for me to believe that it's true, you know, but he gets a pardon, and he comes home. And so, I do think either we're communicating with ourselves or the world is communicating with us in ways that, that, that, like, exceed the normal medium of communication, cause I'll never forget that moment, and I have at least one witness. But I, I--we got another question from somebody on the inside. She says, she's thinking about the way that addiction makes you a stranger to what you love most, and how you get at that really well in your representation of Leoni, how she has the tendency to abandon her kids and, and really to just, like, feel alienated from them as if it's just this cycle of abandonment, then a sense of alienation. And so what she wants to know is, um, what did you want us to grapple with as we grapple with Leoni's story? Specifically, with her story of addiction, you know?
[00:30:38] Ward: Mm hmm. I don't know if there was like a specific message that I wanted readers to take away about addiction. I think that what was really important to me when I was writing Leoni and, like, amplifying her voice and inhabiting her voice was to, was I just, I just wanted the reader to feel for her, you know, and to feel with her. In part, I think, you know, because something that I find myself doing in all my books is, like, writing about the kind of people who have been silenced, who have been unrepresented in literature, in popular culture, right? Or if they are present in literature and in popular culture have been talked about, and haven't been given the opportunity to speak for themselves, um, and haven't been granted like dimension, and life, and complication, right?
[00:31:42] Betts: We want messages, I think the reason why we want messages is sometimes, without the message, we have to figure out what all of it means. Especially if we've never seen it before. I want to read you this one pass--I want to return to Richie for a second. And then I just got a couple more questions.
So Richie says: "I didn't understand time when I was young. How could I know that after I died, Parchman will pull me to it, refuse to let me go. How could I conceive that Parchman was past, present, and future all at once, that the history and sentiment that carved a place out of the wilderness would show me that time is a vast ocean and that everything is happening at once."
You know, the whole book plays around with the concept of time, and, and really, I think, explores the ways that these moments don't let you go. And that's the same thing with Michael and his father and his mother. And it's the same thing--I mean, the only one who doesn't seem to be tucked and pulled that way is Mam. And so I wonder, I guess I'm asking how cognizant are you of, of some of these structural things that happen in the novel?
[00:32:54] Ward: I thought a lot about structure, and I think, I don't know if this answers your question or not, but when I was writing the book, that one thing that I was like learning in my own life that I think found its way into the book was, was about how--there are several moments in my life where I feel like I am simultaneously there at that moment at the same moment that I am here with you having this conversation. You know, like pivotal, I guess, important, maybe sometimes traumatic moments in my life. Part of me is always in that moment. So I think that because I was thinking about that at the time, like when I was writing Sing, Unburied, Sing, that, like, my obsession with that idea, I think carried its way into the story and made its way into these characters realities, right? Like at the same time that Pop is at home, you know, with Mam and Jojo telling the story, another part of him is always, you know, like in those fields with Richie. Another part of him is, you know, with those dogs tracking Richie. Another part is sitting on the, you know, on the couch with Jojo telling him a story. Another part is sitting out on the porch with him pointing out constellations, right? Like, I don't know, like I just, I feel like the way that we experience time, it's not, it's not linear, you know? And also, because I'm writing about Parchman prison, because I'm writing about the history of Parchman prison and Parchman prison in the past and Parchman prison in the present, like, I think when I was writing Sing, Unburied, Sing, I was also becoming very aware of how history lives in the past, and thinking a lot about like systemic racism and generational trauma. And so I think, too, that, because I was thinking about those things, that, that, I think, informed my ideas about time and the characters' ideas about about time in the, in the book.
[00:35:08] Betts: It's always a book, though, we always have a book that won't let us go, you know, when somebody asks us about a book, we find a way to talk about this one book, cause, you know, we wanted to talk about it anyway. And I wonder, what book is that for you, and how do you talk about that book that you love?
[00:35:24] Ward: Hmm. I think it's hard to choose just one, you know, like I think, like, the last book that really, I think broke me down and then built me back up and like resurrected me in a way was, Kiese's--was Heavy. Like I remember reading the, reading the, God, the first like thirty, forty pages and just crying the whole time.
[00:35:57] Betts: So you gotta understand how I felt when we doing the reading again. And I, I had some shit, but it wasn't like, you know, I was working on Felon, and he was working on Heavy, and, um, he messed around and read before me. I was so-- I was like, oh! I was like, we're going to have to do this again. And, you know, he's like, "You know, you already know you want a rematch? The fight ain't even done, and we gotta do a rematch." Cause I'm fucked up emotionally. And I'm looking--and then I gotta stand in front of these people, who, who literally like, "Yo, I need a minute. Like, are you really about to read some poems? Like, nah. Back up. Just give me some space." I think, um, yeah, I think Heavy, I think you're right. I think Heavy is one of those books that, uh, that'll be here for a while. I think it does all those things that we want great literature to do.
[00:36:47] Ward: Yeah, definitely.
[00:36:49] Betts: We always end with one question.
[00:36:52] Ward: Okay.
[00:36:53] Betts: So as we ask all our, all our guests this question: Frederick Douglass said that "When we read, we become forever free." How do you think about the relationship between reading and freedom?
[00:37:07] Ward: One of the most important things that reading does is it, it takes you out of your own experience and your own life and into someone else's experience and into someone else's life. I feel like there's freedom in that, right? Being in someone else's experience, sort of like freed from yourself, allows you and enables you to, like, understand your own experience differently, and come to, I don't know, like a different understanding about your own life and who you are as a person, and what you've experienced. And so there's freedom in that, too, right? Because you know, reading can then, like, free you of, like, some preconceived notions that you might have had about your own life, or, you know, previous understandings that you had about your own life. It can create new understandings. So I don't know. I think, I think that, that, that's a true statement because reading can function like that.
[00:38:10] Betts: Well, it's been a pleasure reading your work, I think, um--but it's also, for me, been, been a real treat to be able to share your work with others. I think, getting these letters where people ask us questions to ask you, and just, when people just say, "Thank you for the book" has been, um, just an awesome treat. I know you're extremely busy, so I thank you for taking the time. You know, this is truly for folks on the inside, so we greatly appreciate it. Thanks for joining us.
[00:38:38] Ward: Thank you for having me.
[00:38:43] Betts: Thanks for joining us for The Freedom Takes, a new podcast from Freedom Reads. We'll be back next time with another contemporary author. You can find out more about Freedom Reads and subscribe to our newsletter at freedom-read-dot-org. That's F R E E D O M R E A D S Dot O R G. Our initiative was made possible by a generous grant from the Andrew W Mellon Foundation. This podcast was produced by Erin Slomski-Pritz with production assistance by Emily Varga, Elsa Hardy, Tess Wheelwright, and Molly Aunger. Theme music by Reed Turchi.